Post by Harkovast on Dec 19, 2018 18:59:31 GMT
A lot of things I saw as a kid influenced me into wanting to make Harkovast, but I realised the other day that one major influence has gone rather unmentioned.
I don't think I ever talked about his show, so I'm going to set that right!
Animals of Farthing Wood was fucking awesome.
The premise was that a load of animals live in a wood that is getting paved over so they have to escape. They go off looking for a nature reserve one of them has been to, and they all band together to go on an adventure.
Sounds adorable, right?
Well fuck you, this is farthing wood, mother fuckers! This was some stone cold, bad ass shit!
Think Water Ship down the series and you get a better idea of what this show was like.
Turns out getting to White Dear Park was no easy task and the casualties start to stack up. Yeah that's right! Our adorable little animals friends start dropping like flies!
Oh hello Mr and Mrs Mouse, where are your babies?
Oh look, a bird stuck them all on a spiky bush.
Yes this was a kids show, why do you ask?
Pretty soon you started to realise that on this show, anyone could die and nothing was safe.
Game of Thrones can go suck a hedgehogs dick!
Speaking of which...
The hedgehog couple are crushed under a truck when the husband is too scared to continue and his wife returns to him rather than abandoning, pleading with him to keep moving, though her voice sounds more and more resigned up until the point that they are both crushed.
It was a harsh world out there!
Whats interesting with this show is that it doesnt really shy away from how nature works. Predator animals eat other animals and thats just an accepted reality. The animals of farthing wood make a pledge to not harm each other, but a predator has to eat so other animals are fair game.
The leader of the group is fox, who was really cool.
Fox protected the animals in their group, but was shown killing and eating other small animals and the show treated this as a completely reasonable act.
Probably the best character was Adder.
Adder was an A-Moral reptile with a killer instinct. She was very murderous, very dangerous and often only seemed to be paying lip service to the oath.
However, her sneaky snake ways and lethal killing skills made her extremely useful to the team.
Having such a morally ambiguous character was really fascinating to me as a child.
Farthing Wood was a show with edge.
Dark characters, seemingly arbitrary deaths and an over arching story made it really gripping.
It had the talking animals and adventure kids like, but it wasn't sugar coated.
Honestly, I think most people remember the show way more bloody than it was. As kids used to no one getting hurt, the show felt like a constantly meat grinder, and the deaths that did happen left you afraid for the remaining characters.
But eventually our heroes reached white deer park at the end of the first series.
So everything was okay after that, right?
Or maybe not!
This blue bastard is Scarface, a rival fox who doesn't want any new arrivals and sets out to drive them off.
Season 2 arguably got even darker.
Some animals die of old age (yes, really!) and new animals are born.
Fox becomes estranged from his son bold who leaves the park and by the time he comes back hes so injured he dies at the boundary to it (though his pregnant girl friend he met out in the world goes to live in the park.)
The rivalry between fox clans claims lives on both sides, including Scarface murdering one of fox's kids!
Eventually Scarface is assassinated by Adder who bites him on the leg, bringing the conflict to an end.
Fuck off Scarface, I'm glad you're dead!
Fox is kind of a flawed hero, and his actions get questioned a lot. His relationship with Bold is very fraught and they only reconcile as Bold is dying.
The show only had a kids show budget, so sometimes the animation or art would be a bit janky.
But the overall character designs were very appealing to me.
If you look at Vixen there behind Fox, you can kind of see the influence in the way Scatterpod looks.
That wasn't deliberate on my part and I only reflected on it as an influence recently.
The look of this show was definitely something that affected the way everyone looks in Harkovast.
Vixen was bad ass. One time she bit another chicks ear off!
Don't mess with her!
I loved this show, so much so that I read one of the books to see what was coming in the future.
The one I read was the last one, where the animals battle an invading horde of rats that start takign over the park.
As you can imagine I was excited to see these events played out on the show, so I was looking forward to the next series....
And the series...was balls.
Seriously, it was terrible!
It was more cartoony, more silly, the threat was reduced and there was far less death.
The evil rats looked like this-
What the fuck are these? Did they wander in from another show?
What the hell?
These guys are played totally for laughs. They have silly voices, look ridiculous and are utterly none threatening.
I dunno if someone complained and the had to tone things down for the new series?
In the books, the rats leader bully is finally killed by vixen who bites him and then flings his body out of the park, casting him out and symbolically casting out his influence.
Very cool, don't fuck with Vixen.
In the show one of the weasels kids sneaks up on him when he is laughing, bites his tail off (with no blood and seemingly little pain) causing him to be mocked by the other rats and decide to go back to the sewers, so all the rats just leave.
Yeah, it was shit!
So the show went out on the low, but the first two series were great.
The harsh adn violent world of talking animals really spoke to me as a kid, and I guess still does!
I don't think I ever talked about his show, so I'm going to set that right!
Animals of Farthing Wood was fucking awesome.
The premise was that a load of animals live in a wood that is getting paved over so they have to escape. They go off looking for a nature reserve one of them has been to, and they all band together to go on an adventure.
Sounds adorable, right?
Well fuck you, this is farthing wood, mother fuckers! This was some stone cold, bad ass shit!
Think Water Ship down the series and you get a better idea of what this show was like.
Turns out getting to White Dear Park was no easy task and the casualties start to stack up. Yeah that's right! Our adorable little animals friends start dropping like flies!
Oh hello Mr and Mrs Mouse, where are your babies?
Oh look, a bird stuck them all on a spiky bush.
Yes this was a kids show, why do you ask?
Pretty soon you started to realise that on this show, anyone could die and nothing was safe.
Game of Thrones can go suck a hedgehogs dick!
Speaking of which...
The hedgehog couple are crushed under a truck when the husband is too scared to continue and his wife returns to him rather than abandoning, pleading with him to keep moving, though her voice sounds more and more resigned up until the point that they are both crushed.
It was a harsh world out there!
Whats interesting with this show is that it doesnt really shy away from how nature works. Predator animals eat other animals and thats just an accepted reality. The animals of farthing wood make a pledge to not harm each other, but a predator has to eat so other animals are fair game.
The leader of the group is fox, who was really cool.
Fox protected the animals in their group, but was shown killing and eating other small animals and the show treated this as a completely reasonable act.
Probably the best character was Adder.
Adder was an A-Moral reptile with a killer instinct. She was very murderous, very dangerous and often only seemed to be paying lip service to the oath.
However, her sneaky snake ways and lethal killing skills made her extremely useful to the team.
Having such a morally ambiguous character was really fascinating to me as a child.
Farthing Wood was a show with edge.
Dark characters, seemingly arbitrary deaths and an over arching story made it really gripping.
It had the talking animals and adventure kids like, but it wasn't sugar coated.
Honestly, I think most people remember the show way more bloody than it was. As kids used to no one getting hurt, the show felt like a constantly meat grinder, and the deaths that did happen left you afraid for the remaining characters.
But eventually our heroes reached white deer park at the end of the first series.
So everything was okay after that, right?
Or maybe not!
This blue bastard is Scarface, a rival fox who doesn't want any new arrivals and sets out to drive them off.
Season 2 arguably got even darker.
Some animals die of old age (yes, really!) and new animals are born.
Fox becomes estranged from his son bold who leaves the park and by the time he comes back hes so injured he dies at the boundary to it (though his pregnant girl friend he met out in the world goes to live in the park.)
The rivalry between fox clans claims lives on both sides, including Scarface murdering one of fox's kids!
Eventually Scarface is assassinated by Adder who bites him on the leg, bringing the conflict to an end.
Fuck off Scarface, I'm glad you're dead!
Fox is kind of a flawed hero, and his actions get questioned a lot. His relationship with Bold is very fraught and they only reconcile as Bold is dying.
The show only had a kids show budget, so sometimes the animation or art would be a bit janky.
But the overall character designs were very appealing to me.
If you look at Vixen there behind Fox, you can kind of see the influence in the way Scatterpod looks.
That wasn't deliberate on my part and I only reflected on it as an influence recently.
The look of this show was definitely something that affected the way everyone looks in Harkovast.
Vixen was bad ass. One time she bit another chicks ear off!
Don't mess with her!
I loved this show, so much so that I read one of the books to see what was coming in the future.
The one I read was the last one, where the animals battle an invading horde of rats that start takign over the park.
As you can imagine I was excited to see these events played out on the show, so I was looking forward to the next series....
And the series...was balls.
Seriously, it was terrible!
It was more cartoony, more silly, the threat was reduced and there was far less death.
The evil rats looked like this-
What the fuck are these? Did they wander in from another show?
What the hell?
These guys are played totally for laughs. They have silly voices, look ridiculous and are utterly none threatening.
I dunno if someone complained and the had to tone things down for the new series?
In the books, the rats leader bully is finally killed by vixen who bites him and then flings his body out of the park, casting him out and symbolically casting out his influence.
Very cool, don't fuck with Vixen.
In the show one of the weasels kids sneaks up on him when he is laughing, bites his tail off (with no blood and seemingly little pain) causing him to be mocked by the other rats and decide to go back to the sewers, so all the rats just leave.
Yeah, it was shit!
So the show went out on the low, but the first two series were great.
The harsh adn violent world of talking animals really spoke to me as a kid, and I guess still does!
