Kabouter Wesley

Kabouter Wesley (English: Gnome Wesley) is a series of comics and short animated cartoons about a grumpy and violent kabouter (gnome), made by Jonas Geirnaert. Both the drawing style and the content are purposely made naive and amateuristic and the situations are surreal and violent. There is also a lot of insulting and toilet humour in the series.

History
Geirnaert invented Wesley the Gnome while creating his short animation film Flatlife (winner of the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival) in 2004. As this film required him to be very perfectionistic and thorough, he drew Wesley the Gnome as a side project and intentionally spent no time on good graphics, interesting plotlines or other recurring characters. In 2008 the comics appeared in the magazine HUMO. After 27 episodes, Geirnaert decided to quit the series and Wesley since then only rarely appeared in the magazine.

During autumn 2009, Wesley the Gnome was granted new life through an animated short series in the programme Man Bijt Hond. Geirnaert himself does Wesley's voice (after a warming up-session aimed at roughing up his vocal cords through shouting), Jelle De Beule does all the other voices. All the animated episodes are based upon the cartoons that appeared earlier in the magazine and are animated at the Volstok Telefunken studios. However, as the television series plans 37 episodes of Man Bijt Hond, it is assumed that 10 new episodes of Wesley the Gnome will be created.

The comics and especially the animations, have become extremely popular in Belgium and the Netherlands which shows in the ratings on YouTube. As a result, Geirnaert has appeared in several media to discuss the success, in both countries.

The music used in the animations is that of Klaus Wunderlich playing the Hammond organ. The numbers used include La Felicidad from the album The Golden Sound of Hammond (aka Hammond Für Millionen), Hasta La Vista, from the album Hammond Pops 10 and the single Tico Tico.