The Autistic Animator's Desk

Hi, everybody!

I am back into a great, incredible journey to the world of blogging, for it’s been nearly three weeks since I have posted a topic on this blog.

I hope you guys are having a great and safe summer! My summer is still going very well. In case if you are wondering why I haven’t done so many blog posts for nearly three weeks, I have been very busy on working some of my projects. Two weeks ago, I was able to go back and re-working on one of my new animation tests.  It’s not yet done, I’m still working on the key drawings for each pose, but it looks much better than how I originally intended to work on, after having to restart over again and stopping it for a while. Then last week, I finally got to finish working on a watercolor painting for my dad, he loved it, and he’s looking forward to frame it, and next, I got to work on doing my own six fan art drawings that you are about to see here on this new topic. You might recognized this character.

It’s Mr. Burns from the hit animated TV show, The Simpsons!

“Excellent!” 😀

I love The Simpsons, I’m a huge fan of the show. As you may all know, The Simpsons is definitely named as one of the top best animated TV shows of all time, and it’s also the longest animated sitcoms in the history of television, over 30 years, ever created by Matt Groening. We have gotten so many iconic characters, such as Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie, and so many cast of characters, with many memorable settings and places taken place in Springfield, hilarious gags and jokes, and amazing animation. I don’t think I ever grew up watching the show, when I was very little, but I kinda remember witnessing my parents watching the show on TV, but the animation style was very memorable, because the art form is so iconic. However, I think the first time I’ve got to watch the show was during the same year when The Simpsons Movie came out in 2007, so I was still about 12 years old, but I got to see it in theaters, probably twice, and it was very funny and entertaining. The actors who did their voices of the characters, the main cast, are so amazing, and did such a great job on bringing their characters to life.

My favorite Simpsons characters are Moe Szylak, Lisa Simpson, Mr. Burns, and Reverend Lovejoy.

So on today’s fun topic, in which I’m super excited to talk about, I wanted to share you of my top 5 favorite Mr. Burns moments, and along with it are the fan art drawings that illustrates from each scenes in some of the episodes. But before I begin to share you of my top 5 favorite scenes with Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, let’s get some insights of this amazing, iconic character.

Who is Mr. Burns?

So who is Mr. Burns? What does he do? What roles does he served as? Who voiced him? What is his personality? What makes this character as one of the most memorable and funniest characters in The Simpsons?

The character of Mr. Burns (or Monty Burns) serves a role as one of the main antagonists in the show, he can play as the good guy and/or the bad guy. He works and owns the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, where Homer Simpson works as the safety health inspector. His voice actor is Harry Shearer, who also provided many voices for other characters, such as Waylon Smithers (Mr. Burns’ assistant), Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, Dr. Hibbert, Kent Brockman, Reverend Lovejoy, Otto, Lenny, Scratchy the cat (from Itchy and Scratchy Show segments), and many more. I love his voice for Mr. Burns, he makes it such appealing, but very sinister and sophisticated at the same time, making him as probably one of the most creepiest animated characters. He’s pretty scary with a personality of a poisonous spider, but sometimes there are a few moments, where Mr. Burns can have a change of heart. Harry Shearer is one of my favorite voice actors in the show, along with Hank Azaria, who voiced Moe, Apu, Chief Wiggums, Carl, Cletus, and more.

As I have mentioned to you on a list of my favorite Simpsons characters, Mr. Burns is one of them. The best thing about him, including for the other characters, is that he never failed to make me laugh. He’s just so funny, so witty, and so hilarious that no matter what he does, either it’s for business, scheming a plan, or teaming with Homer and Smithers to do something important, Mr. Burns just always makes me laugh. Any of his memorable moments in each episode is just as funny and iconic at the same time. I don’t know if you would agreed with me, but to me, I think he’s got a lot in common with a couple of evil animated characters, like Mr. Crocker from The Fairly OddParents, Charles Muntz from Pixar’s Up, and Yzma from Disney’s The Emperor’s New Groove.

During that week on working of my own fan art drawings, as an artist, it was really fun to draw Mr. Burns. Before working on the project, I had to start practicing to learn how to draw him. I have drawn him before, I think the first time I did was when I was probably a teenager, but it has been a long time since then. He’s pretty much simple to draw, just imagine drawing him as a stick figure, with a large circe for his head, two little circles for eyes, a triangular nose, overbite mouth with little teeth sticking out above his upper lip, a slender body, curvy, but thin arms and legs, and triangular feet. So, I hope you’ll enjoy looking at the drawings, as much as having fun reading this fun topic on my favorite Mr. Burns scenes.

Only just to make you laugh….LOL! 😀

#1: See My Vest song (“Two Dozen and One Greyhounds”)

Probably one of the most memorable Mr. Burns moments that everyone would quite remember most of all is where he sings his hit song, “See My Vest”, taken from Season 6, in episode, “Two Dozen and One Greyhounds”, a hilarious Disney crossover parody between One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Beauty and the Beast, with the song “Be Our Guest.” Mr. Burns goes through of his wardrobe, as he plans to make a nice tuxedo out of the 25 greyhound puppies he stole from the Simpsons family, and Bart and Lisa sneak in to attempt to rescue the dogs.

I really love this scene and the song, it’s just so funny, very hilarious, but also charming at the same time, and it’s hard for me not to crack up laughing, when it comes to watching it. I can say that the “See My Vest” song is one of my favorite Simpsons songs, along with “The Monorail Song”, from the episode “Marge vs. the Monorail.”

Even though I said that this song really funny, but the one thing that I like about it is the animation, the way it was presented and the choreography, so Mr. Burns can dance like he’s in a Broadway musical. As a self-practicing animator, I can see how he would probably be lots of fun to animate in this scene, the way he can sing and dance, both very clever and funny., but has to handle very carefully. I think any animator would have a lot of fun animating Mr. Burns singing and dancing in the “See My Vest” number, or any song that he would sing in any of the episodes from The Simpsons.

“I really like the vest!” 😀

#2: Alien Burns (“The Springfield Files”)

Another great moment out of the series, as also naming as one of my top favorite episodes, is Mr. Burns coming out as a glowing alien, taken from Season 8, episode, “The Springfield Files.”

A crossover parody of the live-action show, The X-Files, which features the main actors David Duchnovy and Gillian Anderson doing the voices of their characters, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully,  in The X-Files, along with the late Leonard Nimoy voicing himself, we see Homer having his first encounter with an alien emerging from the woods on a Friday night. Later on, as the townspeople finally came face-to-face with the strange alien, Lisa reveals that the alien is actually Mr. Burns, disoriented and wandering after having receiving medical treatments to cheat death every Friday evening, explained by his personal assistant, Smithers.

I can say that I love this episode, it’s so funny, and at the same time it’s really creepy! I personally like Mr. Burns’ alien design: big eyes with big pupils, small head, slender body, with claw-like fingers, and green light glowing around him. It does make him look cute, calm, witty, and funny, but it makes him so creepy, especially when you hear his voice, going up high-pitched, saying “I bring you peace and love.” Very creepy! :O

Another really cool about this episode is that it got me interested in watching the actual show, The X-Files, which was also done by 20th Century Fox Television, at that time. Although I haven’t watch the show nor finishing the rest of it, probably for a long time, but it did got me interested it watching it. I used to watch it on my kindle fire and it was on Amazon Prime. I know I’ve watched episodes from Seasons 1, 2, little bit of 3 (I think), and I don’t remember watching it from Seasons 4 and 5, because I kinda stopped for a while. It was amazing thing that how this episode from the hit animated sitcom got me interested in watching The X-Files.

#3: Fruit-Batman (“Dark Knight Court”)

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a bat! No, it’s Fruit-Batman!!

I have to say, another greatest and the most funniest moment with Mr. Burns, in which it never failed to make me laugh out loud, is Mr. Burns as Fruit-Batman. I’ll admit, I’m not really a huge fan of Batman, even though he’s one of the iconic superheroes in history, but from watching this episode from Season 25, titled, “Dark Knight Court”, this is one of my favorite Mr. Burns moments.

Being inspired by the superhero comics, Mr. Burns decides to take a role as Springfield’s newest superhero to fight crime and saving the day. For Mr. Smithers, however, despite for feeling that his boss has a lack of nonsense, he pretends to let Mr. Burns play a hero by faking any crime scene, and offering any person a dough of money to play along as villains. Lisa sees and notices that Fruit-Batman is, in fact, Mr. Burns, she asks him for help to unframed her brother, Bart, after he was accused for pulling a prank at the town on Easter Sunday. He refuses, and Smithers reveals that all the fighting crimes were nothing but fakes, leaving the old man out of shame. Later on, Marge and Lisa discovered that it was Groundskeeper Willie was the one who pulled the prank, framing Bart, and up comes Fruit-Batman, “the pointed-ears of justice”, to stop Willie, and saving the day.

I really like how they take this character, one of the most sinister antagonists in the series, turning him into a hilarious version of old Batman, and making him as the hero at the end of the episode. It was also really fun doing a fan art drawing of Mr. Burns as Fruit-Batman, and it was a great time to get a chance to work on this drawing. He may be a bad guy at times, but you can’t help it but cheering for ol’ Monty Burns.

#4: Burns singing ‘Let’s All Go to the Lobby’ scene (“Burns’ Heir”)

Here’s another funny scene that features Mr. Burns singing and dancing, probably before the “See My Vest” song, is where he comes in and sings along the iconic song, “Let’s All Go to the Lobby”, taken directly from the episode, “Burns’ Heir”, in Season 5.

After having to realize that he has no one else to take over his nuclear power plant, his money, nor his mansion whenever he dies, Mr. Burns decides to find the rightful heir. In the movie theater scene, before the movie plays, he is seen on the big screen to announce that he will be holding an audition for a new heir. Just as he was about to end his announcement with the feature presentation about to begin, Mr. Burns hears someone whispering in the background, disappointedly has to perform the “Let’s All Go to the Lobby” song at the end of his on-screen appearance, dancing along with the movie snacks mascots.

Who doesn’t love watching Mr. Burns singing and dancing? Even though most all of the Simpsons fans love seeing Mr. Burns singing “See My Vest”, but I also find him singing “Let’s All Go to the Lobby” very funny and also very cute and sweet. As far as I can see it, it’s a very fun scene to watch with Mr. Burns dancing along with the dancers all dressed up as movie snacks. There were four dancers dancing with Mr. Burns in that scene, but whenever I was about to work on this fan art drawing, I realized it was going to be a lot of hard work to draw four dancers, so I end up doing two, which was easier for me to do.

#5: Reuniting with Bobo (“Rosebud”)

Here’s the last out of the top 5 favorite scenes with Mr. Burns is him reuniting his long-lost teddy bear, Bobo, from another episode in Season 5, “Rosebud”.

In the beginning of the episode, we see Burns having a flashback to his childhood, in which he once had a teddy bear named Bobo, but end up losing it after having to decide to go live with a rich man than staying with his family. Disappointed with all of his birthday gifts given by the town, as well as seeing Homer’s bottom joke to embarrassed him, Mr. Burns starts missing his bear, regretting for losing his important childhood toy, and begins to search for his long-lost teddy bear. Of course, baby Maggie becomes attached to Burns’ bear, and with Homer refusing to give it back, Burns tries to sneak in to get Bobo back. Whenever he comes face-to-face with Maggie, no matter how much he tried to get his bear back, he was about to let his childhood bear go, advising Maggie to hold on to the bear, and never make a same mistake as he did. However, Maggie decides to give Burns bear back, and he is reuniting with Bobo, at last.

This episode, even though it has all of its funny gags, is very heartwarming, because it shows how much Mr. Burns loved his teddy bear so much, and how much regret he put it for losing it as a young kid. Bobo is the symbol of the most important part of Mr. Burns’ happy childhood, and at the end of the episode, we see Burns having a change of heart. I like how there is heartwarming lesson on how do you hold on to your important piece of your childhood, and never lose it, or else there’s a regret inside of ourselves as we grow up. This is one of the most important lessons we learn in history of animation. That’s like with Jesse with her relationship with her previous owner, but that’s way before Toy Story 2. It’s very sweet, it really is.

And that’s the wrap! I really hope you have enjoyed reading of my top 5 favorite Mr. Burns moments. I love this character, he’s one of my favorite characters, and one of my favorite animated villains. Being fan of The Simpsons, it was also very fun and pleasure to do my own fan art drawings to show you how much of a fan I am, for both the show and the character.

What are your favorite Mr. Burns moments? What are your favorite Mr. Burns quotes? Please share them by leaving comments down below.

Thanks a lot, see you next time! 🙂

Mr. Burns Fan Art Gallery: