The idea behind the picture is they are fighting each other for page time in Jamie's comic.
A quick background on Jamie was we worked together on the series "Pixel Pinkie" as character animators. Both of us really tried to push as much character as we could into our flash puppets. Pushing the models expressions and poses to the maximum of what we were allowed to do (mind you there was a hidden folder bigger than the entire series of what we weren't allowed to do). We did this partly to crack each other up but mostly because we believed that this was important to do for the show.
Working in animation is really hard with how technical and conservative it has become. It's less about the purpose, reason and feeling behind why something/someone moves and more doing it as simple and as cleanly as possible to make sure nothing is noticeable/that stands out, basically keeping it as normal and techincal as possible. I could write a whole book on my problems with this stuff but I'd like to keep working in animation.
Oh I shouldn't undersell the need to try and crack up the person next to you, a lot of people frown on this as it being an ego thing or not being professional but character animation is performance, you're performing for reactions. From my experience if you make people laugh it improves to moral of the entire studio and makes people actually like working in animation and try to make you laugh with their shots. I'm sure this leads to producing something greater.
Anyway it was a great experience working with Jamie, and my character animation imporved a hell of a lot with the feedback and ideas we'd throw back and forth at each other. You should check out Jamie's comic, he's been updating it for ages now. Every Monday and Friday without fail for the last 2(?) years. Great characters and quite the interesting story.
check the comic here
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