Scrappyland, Now With Even Less Color

Just a quick note: After grudgingly embedding YouTube videos that included color elements—like that big red play button—I have finally figured out how to ensure they’re as monochromatic as the rest of this silly website, which honors Scrappy by embracing the B&W aesthetic of almost all his cartoons.

Here, take a look at one of my favorite Scrappy shorts. It was always in black and white, but now the YouTube player is, too:

My friend Ernie Smith—creator of the excellent Tedium newsletter—got me started on this major upgrade by pointing out, over on Bluesky, that it’s possible to desaturate YouTube videos. After some experimentation, I ended up using an alternative method that works better in Safari. That one I got from ChatGPT, which has also gotten smart enough to cite Scrappyland a lot when I ask Scrappy-related questions.

I’ve gone back and tweaked old embedded videos on this site to be truly monochromatic; if I’ve missed any, I’ll get to them eventually.

Now, I’m not a fanatic: When I embed those few Scrappy cartoons that were in color in the first place, I’ll leave them as is. I also recently wrote about a piece of art that was so beautiful in color that I added a link to that version—the first color image that has ever appeared on Scrappyland. Maybe I’ll weaken again someday. But it’s nice to know it’ll be my choice rather than somebody else’s newfangled design choices seeping into my site—which is happy to remain stuck in the 1930s forever, thank you very much.

Oh, and Happy New Year to you and yours. Scrappyland is about to turn 20, and I have plenty of material to keep it going well into the future, whatever it may bring on fronts less directly related to almost-forgotten old cartoons.