TV's Kyle Blogs In Front of Everybody

Mega Hopscotch Throw Down 2010 (yes I know it's 2011)

2011-04-14T22:27:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd do what I did last time and show off the super-neat cleanups one of our Helpertons did more close-up than you got to see in the comic. This time, we're jumping way back to 6/6/10! The cleanups for this one were done by W Lene Chavez. I... think he told me he's a doctor in Brazil. I'll buy that! You can see his work at http://bezerrobizarro.deviantart.com/

So, much like last week, here's the cleanups, then my original roughs. In addition, I tossed in John Berry's script. If you've never seen the original strip, you can check it out at http://dummcomics.com/?p=199 .

Back to Blogging/Chris Houghton's Inks

2011-04-07T22:23:00.000-07:00

Hi peoples! I'm gonna start using this again, mainly as a behind the scenes look at Frog Raccoon Strawberry stuff. For those who don't know, FRS is a webcomic I do along with John Berry on a site called Dumm Comics.

A couple of weeks back, we had a guest inker in the form of my co-worker Chris Houghton. He does a comic book with his brother called Reed Gunther that will soon be published by Image Comics. He did a really nice job inking my pencils, and I don't feel like I did them justice in the end. I thought it'd be nice to show them off here, so enjoy!

Here's what my roughs looked like:

In case you're reading this, but never saw the finished strip, it's right here!

Kee-Kee Koki and the Goth Fairy Cosplayer

2009-11-19T09:39:00.000-08:00

I used to work on a Puerto Rican comic strip called Kee-Kee Koki. It was an insane comic strip about an obnoxious yellow frog. It was so much fun. It's amazing I got paid for it. It was created by David Alvarez who's done lots of amazing pencils for DC's Looney Tunes comic book. He became too busy with other projects (including his other comic strip, Yenny) to keep doing Kee-Kee on his own, and so he contacted me to be the new character artist for the strip. At first he gave me strips to work from, but eventually, Dave got too busy to get them to me in time, so I just started drawing poses for him to cobble a strip together from. It ended up working much better, surprisingly and it became our regular process.

Here's one of the strips:

That character in the last panel is the Goth Fairy, one of the characters I created for the strip. This past weekend, Dave let me i on a little surprise over Facebook:

This cosplayer apparently showed up to a comic convention called Manga Criolla 2009. She entered the cosplay competition, and the host knew what character it was supposed to me. It's just about the most flattering thing ever to have someone dress as a character you created, especially someone you don't know. It's such a great feeling. She did an awesome job keeping it recognizable, yet adding her own flavor to it.

So, while I'm talking about Kee Kee, here's a character lineup I drew for TV pitching:

It remains one of my favorite things I've ever drawn. I wish I could always get into that zone. I don't know what magic power was happening that week that made me able to turn out all these drawings in a row that I'm happy with. Since the Mario post seemed to go well, I thought I might do another post with the individual characters of a lineup posted separately.

Here's Kee-Kee Koki. A tiny little frog with a giant voice. The more the strip went on, the more male and testosteroney he got. I liked the idea of a macho guy wearing a hat that stupid-looking. Dave gave me a batch of strips to "translate" at one point for syndication pitching, which was really me taking the visuals from our completed strips and writing completely new dialogue from scratch since I can't speak spanish. His dialogue came out sounding like Paul F Tompkins, who is the opposite of macho. I liked the contrast.

Since I was just talking about her, here's the Goth Fairy, one of the few characters I created for the strip. She's a fairy in-training, but an angry teenager, so she goes around granting wishes in ways that deliberately backfire.

This is Chickenduck, who Dave created a long time ago and had fallen out of disuse. He never showed up in the strip, but would've if we'd been able to keep going. We wanted to introduce him as a character for Kee Kee to be dumb and male with... and also smarter-than.

Panchon here is a pig in constant fear that someone is going to eat him.

The Chupacabra, who wanted to eat everyone. I always had trouble wrapping my mind around his head theory of Dave's original design, so I kept trying to find ways to stylize it to make it more comfortable for me. Lazy, but for this project, effective.

Nekko is the last of his race, and will likely remain that way because he's brutally mentally challenged. He was sorta the Bill the Cat of the series.

Kuzy the firefly. A "female voice of reason" archetype, plus the editor didn't really like how I drew her, so I didn't use her that much. That might've changed if we'd gotten to start using Kee Kee's girlfriend regularly. He would've needed someone to help him understand the female mind.

This is Paulina, who we used as a one-off character in the strip, but I really liked the idea of a tiny frog having a human girlfriend, so I wanted to bring her back as Kee-Kee's girlfriend. We could've had so much fun with her family and friends reacting to her new frog boyfriend. I don't dislike this design, but her face is pretty generic looking back at her. I should develop that more if we ever get to use her again.

El Pollo Loco was another character I created for the strip. The idea was that he used common everyday pranks, but thought that made him an evil mastermind.

Norbert was a character I didn't care for at first, but I got to like him as we went on. A bird that wouldn't shut up. It was great for weeks I didn't feel like thinking much because I could just get away with doing one or two drawings of Norbert and the rest could just be Kee Kee thinking of ways to get rid of him.

Finally, here's Spongejack Circlepants. Dave's idea, my design. A washed-up cartoon star who tries to freeload at Kee-Kee's house. I'd occasionally wedge him in as someone who attempts and fails to have common guy-talk with Kee Kee. They're just not on the same page.

Here are a few more Kee Kee related drawings done at around the same time:

EDIT: More of the cosplayer!

Super Mario Bros

2009-11-11T15:57:00.001-08:00

I did a big Super Mario Bros pic that went over pretty well on Deviantart and Newgrounds. I'd posted Daisy as a preview pic and that got a nice reaction as well, so I thought I'd post the rest of the individual drawings here on the blog.

I included some characters that people wouldn't necessarily expect, apparently. I thought SMB2 had the best bosses. Also, Toadette is my favorite to race as in Mario Kart Wii. She reminds me of my girlfriend, Lindsay.

Some people told me that Waluigi's legs should've been longer. They're probably right.

I like old Donkey Kong better than the Rare redesign, but I do like the tie and wanted him to stay recognizable to modern Mario fans, so I combined the two.

I think Daisy is generally portrayed as having a little more curve than Peach, but I was a little less subtle about it.

I drew this Wart for another piece, but it looked right for this piece, so I reused it.

Vivian is my favorite Mario character.

I think this is the first time I've ever drawn a proper Bowser. I used to draw Super Mario Bros Super Show lizardy Bowser when I was a kid.

The Ladies rough comic (NSFW-ish)

2009-10-03T11:00:00.000-07:00

A year or so ago I caught wind of a comic book "pilot" contest that American manga localizer Tokyopop was running. I thought it was a good chance for me to finally do something with "The Ladies". Before this (and earlier in this blog), it had been simply about a guy who finds himself in a stereotypical herem anime setup (Love Hina, Tenchi Muyo, Happy Lesson, etc) and has fun living the dream while being self-aware. When I sat down to develop it more for this contest, I realized the potential in having our lead Jay eventually grow tired of the formula and start doing the things he always wished that wimpy anime guys would do. I decided that my sample chapter would be that turning point chapter where he starts tampering with the plot.

Unfortunately, the whole Tokyopop thing was revealed to be something of a scam and I never finished making, or even scripting the sample chapter. I found my script pages while moving recently and I liked them better than I'd remembered, so I thought I'd share them here.

So, for a quick setup: Jay Smithsonian is a college student who was rooming with his controlling girlfriend. When they break up and she kicks him out, he finds an ad on the bulletin board searching for a roommate in Elm Blossom Place, a giant boarding house. When he gets there, he discovers it's an all-girl boarding house. After hearing the sad story of Jay’s breakup, the ladies of Elm Blossom decide they feel sorry for him and let him live there anyway. Since Jay is a huge anime geek, he eventually realizes he's living in a harem anime. At first, he plays along like he's being tortured even though he's having the time of his life. He endures the impossible violence and over-the-top unfair situations and, for a while, stays “in-character” and plays along. Despite her disagreeable nature and my-way-or-the-highway attitude, Yomama, the “leader” of the Elm Blossom girls seems to think she’s the love interest and creates lots of clearly-manufactured sexual tension."

Here's a quick shot of the lineup so you know what everyone looks like when they're not drawn super-fast and rough:

And here's my script. I typed in the dialogue so it could actually be read.

That's all I bothered scripting, so here's the outline for the rest:

-Upon returning home, Yomama finds everyone in their upset states in the living room. She finds Jay in his room, calls him a pervert, and punches him through the roof and into the stratosphere. In mid air, Jay screams back that she uses “pervert” as a verbal crutch.

-Enraged, Yomama runs to the spot Jay will land. While in the air, Jay thinks to himself “This has been the greatest day of my life”.

-As Jay is about to land, Yomama launches him again while screaming “Pervert, pervert, pervert, pervert, pervert!!” Mid air Jay remarks “You’re only proving my point!”

-As Jay lands back at Elm Blossom Place, Yomama hands him to Breena. “He’s got the brain worms. Fix him.”

-The final panel: In Breena’s dungeon/laboratory, Jay is strapped down with a giant device pointed at his head. Breena’s about to hit a button when Jay remarks “This is nothing more than basic electrocution, isn’t it?” Breena replies, “Basic?”

Is really too bad that whole Tokyopop thing was a bust. The Ladies is such a strange idea that it's hard to even find places to pitch it. It'd probably play well on G4. Syfy has the right audience, but there's no science fiction element. Oh well, maybe someday this idea will have a home (even if I have to make one up).

Ralph and Bichael a few years later

2009-09-26T20:36:00.000-07:00

Geez, Bichael's hand looks horrible in that pic!

Since I last wrote about Ralph and Bichael in this blog, something interesting happened. I few years ago, I saw an ad on TV for an AtomFilms/Comedy Central animated short contest. Or was it a general short film project? I forget. Either way, I made a super-short Ralph and Bichael cartoon, "Ralphy Panda and the Half-Baked Ditz" and submitted it. It didn't win, but it won something else called the Showdown over at AtomFilms. As a result (most of) the short aired on Atom TV, an Atomfilms showcase that airs late Tuesday nights on Comedy Central! It actually managed to air before MooBeard! Imagine that! My little indie thing I whipped out in a handful of days beats my already-completed commercial studio project to air!

Check out the short here:

This short seems to be popular enough whenever I post it anywhere. It's one of my most popular pieces on Deviantart, and on YouTube, it's inspired 7 YouTube poops... that I'm aware of. People keep responding with quotes from it, which is weird, but highly complimentary.

That said, I hear far more from people about Weird Eddie, MooBeard, and Strawberry than I ever hear about the Pandas.
Look at this DA poll: http://tvskyle.deviantart.com/journal/poll/544742/ They're dead last!

(Geez, I'm glad I started painting backgrounds. Look at that mess.)

I don't think I've ever actually pitched this show anywhere. It's hard to know where to do so. I like having it in a slightly-adult place, but not full-on Adult Swim strength stuff. Like early Simpsons. I don't have to, though, it can be a kids' show. I don't know if you're allowed to have chauvinistic characters or let anyone be a skirt-chaser anymore. You could do that as recently as Johnny Bravo, and Yakko and Wakko sure used to do it a lot without offending anyone, but you never see that now.

In fact, it seems like you see no male characters chasing girls (which used to be a cartoon mainstay) and instead effeminate characters! Don't get me wrong, I get a good laugh out of how... flouncey Flapjack can be, but I don't see any blatant displays of heterosexuality anymore. Is it allowed?

Also, I've been nervous that no network's gonna want this thing without a permanent setting. I came up with one called "Treasure Pandas" in which they're escaped zoo animals living in an apartment who go on treasure hunting expeditions for cash. You know, because no one will hire a red panda.

Although, come to think of it, I could do a lot worse than to leave them in that Hogwarts-like school. It's possible that that's the missing element that gets people interested in the short moreso than when I usually talk about these guys.

The third panda's Ralph's cousin Arnie, by the way.

So, thoughts anyone?

Not Much Consensus on Strawberry...

2009-08-23T17:16:00.000-07:00

I'll talk about Bronson Jeopardous later. I wanna make a post here, but I wanna talk Strawberry for a sec...

I think I'm about 90% done caring what people say about the strip. There seems to be little to no consensus about what's good or bad about the strip. It was never intended to be a Pixar movie where it's accessible to absolutely everyone, but I didn't anticipate getting opinions across the board that contradict each other so much.

Let me copypasta something I just said to E D Thweatt on a Deviantart poll:

"It's tough finding a balance. It's tough figuring out how weird we can be without losing everyone, but at the same time, I don't want to be explainy. Every reader's coming from a different vantage point when it comes to absurdist humor. It's really become a lost art in this era of political humor and 'it's funny 'cause it's true' or nostalgic humor. I don't have a problem with any of those kinds of comedy, but we're at a point where doing something weird will get a label of "random" or "childish". You don't need an explanation, but apparently others do. It's hard to pick and choose when to care about the audience and when to just do whatever makes John and I laugh."

...And so, I think I'm gonna try the latter, mainly. We'll still try to aim for punch lines more often than when the strip started, but other than that, we're gonna be as weird as we want it to be, we'll make references to whatever we want, and we'll be self-referential when we want, as long as it's what makes us laugh. I have projects where "accessible" works just fine, but Strawberry can't be one of them. The comic doesn't seem to be struggling for readership right now, so I might as well have fun, right?

Anyway, here's some art:

Here's one of John's scripts based on a story session we had:

Darkblade Upgrade

2009-07-31T11:47:00.000-07:00

The whole job thing might be looking up a bit. I'll keep you posted on that.

Picking up where I left off, I wanted to make the new MooBeard main character images you see in the previous entry. I really busted my hump on those. I had done a Kee-Kee Koki lineup a few months prior, and I was really proud of it. I didn't want to let up until I could match that quality.

After finishing the Moo Crew, I want on to the other characters. There really weren't that many other characters for me to draw since I want to avoid having a PPG-esque "Villain of the Week" show. I like shows like that when they're done well, but there are too many of them and MooBeard just isn't about heroism. So, I got to the main villain, Dark Blade of Fire...

...and I found myself bored with the direction he was going in. He was presented in the Random short as kind of an arch-villain who isn't quite good at it yet-- sort of in an in-the-middle place between schoolyard bully and actual threat. That's interesting, I suppose, but I had come up with alternate Dark Blade that I was considering pitching as a brand new project called "Darkblade the Wanderer"

The concept of this show was that Darkblade was a very capable, but lazy ninja who was sent by his sensei, Master Omai on a quest for some abstract nonsense. The show would always be about Darkblade, forcibly paired with Ungus the Unpleasant, investigating some possible lead or the other for this abstract knowledge, and of course turn up short. I still want to do this show someday, but I'd really rather do it as a followup to MooBeard.

The thing is, I really like who Darkblade became as I developed this. There were some nifty surface things that I added, like his blacklight saber that I think my friend Aron suggested and a new ability to turn into a squeak-toy duck that my roommate Arica brilliantly came up with. But moreso than that, I liked him better as a jackass hero than I did a villainous figure.

I always have Dave (Gruber) Allen in the back of my mind when I write for Darkblade. That's him on the right with me in the middle and Andy Paley who did the score and theme song for MooBeard on my left. You might know him from his role as Mr Rosso the guidance counselor from Freaks and Geeks or perhaps as the Naked Trucker from the Naked Trucker and T-Bones show on Comedy Central. Anyway, Gruber's a really laid-back, super-nice guy, and also, particularly on stage, has a great wiseassy side. I wanted Darkblade the Wanderer to be more like Gruber, and once I got back to Dark Blade of Fire in MooBeard, it just didn't feel right without the new personality. Or the new less-generic look.

Plus, the more I thought about it, the less MooBeard and Dark Blade had reason to be flat-out villains. After all, what else were they than treasure hunters? It's not like MooBeard had any better reason to want a particular treasure than Dark Blade. The only reason it worked at all in the short is because I set up Dark Blade as a huge, map-stealing jerk. I decided I liked the idea of Darkblade as more of a rival than anything clearly villainous. Plus, he and MooBeard are so evenly matched, that I could present Darkblade as one of the few things that actually cheeses MooBeard off. MooBeard's a guy who can fight using any weapon that comes to mind, but he can't take anything seriously. Darkblade is a master swordsman with ninja abilities, but he's lazy and always tries to find the easy way out of things. Pitting the two against each other as rivals rather than the old, played-out good vs evil is more compelling to me.

Using the newer version of Darkblade seemed to bother a lot of folks on Deviantart. I have to wonder if they either didn't get why I was doing it or simply have an aversion to change. Either way, maybe this journal entry cleared some things up.

Next: Bronson Jeopardous (but first, probably some more Strawberry roughs)

Misconceptions/MooBeard

2009-07-29T11:16:00.000-07:00

So, there's something I want to quickly address: Some people are under the misconception that because I once made a short for Nickelodeon, that I'm somehow permenantly employed by them. I'm not. In fact, I work at a hospital. It's not fun. If anyone reading who has the capacity to hire anyone digs my stuff, I'm very available to work for you.

So, anyway I do intend to keep talking about developing stuff here. I've mostly lost my interest in pitching to networks. I want to try two more and then focus my efforts entirely on the internet.

One of those is MooBeard. For those who don't know, I made a MooBeard short at Nickelodeon for Random! Cartoons (thanks to the good folks at Frederator). You can watch it here:

I did a full pitch bible, but didn't get anywhere with it. You can read the whole thing at http://www.moobeard.com So, I'm trying to spiff it up, make things funnier, play with the character dynamics a bit more...

I'll get into some specifics in the next one. I'm sleepy.

Back to Blogging

2009-07-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

So I've decided to get back to blogging. Some folks are intimidated by the whole DeviantArt thing, and I want to get more in-depth on stuff than I feel like I can on their journals, so I'm gonna supplement DA and the other stuff I do with some bloggery. The focus here won't be pitching anymore since I'm almost entirely fed up with it now. I have maybe two more pitches I want to try down the road, and I'll post about those as I work on them, but I have lots more to talk about than that.

So, for those who don't know, I've been doing Frog Raccoon Strawberry as a web comic over at http://www.dummcomics.com every weekend. The comment box gets some unusual comments, both positive and hate-filled, but lots of people read it and I'm having fun, so I've got nothing to complain about! The strip is a bit of an experiment as Strawberry's something I wanted to do a lot of strange things with, so it's only natural. I thought it might be cool to post the roughs here so you can see what the drawings look like pre-cleanup.

This is what our "scripts" look like. I say "our" because I do the strip with John Berry, the amazingly talented creator of Evil Josh and Billy. eviljoshandbilly.keentoons.com/ We usually brainstorm the strips together via Skype or Gmail chat and then one of us draws up a script in the form of a rough layout. I did the one above. I'll show you one of John's sometime.

Here are the roughs. I draw these by hand, scan them, and send them over to John. John then cleans them up in flash, and sends them back to me. I take those, paint some backgrounds (usually very quickly) in ArtRage Deluxe 2 and put it all together in Photoshop. If you guys like seeing this stuff, let me know and I'll keep posting this kind of thing.

6th Grade Fashion Police

2007-02-10T20:43:00.000-08:00

I haven't been updating this blog as pitch season seems to have passed. As such, I haven't been putting together new pitch packages. However, I do have some less-developed ideas I'm going to post about a little here. To start, here's "6th Grade Fashion Police".

The 6th Grade Fashion Police are three preteen girls who think they've got beauty all figured out. Now, they take it upon themselves to push their skewed concept of good fashion upon their classmates and fellow citizens.

The three girls are:

Michelle- is the founder of the 6th Grade Fashion Police, and she won't let you forget it. After years of being picked on and ridiculed, she's come to the decision that everyone else is wrong and she simply knows something they don't. Pushy and stubborn, she rules the girls with an iron fist and crusades with determination to beautify anyone within grabbing distance with her personal sense of style. Unfortunately for those within said grabbing distance, Michelle's sense of style is completely bizarre and contains such arbitrary rules as "Patches are the new awesome." and " If you can't cuff it, I won't wear it".

Janey- While also a product of a picked-on early childhood, Janey would rather hide in a corner and attempt to disappear completely rather than be proactive about it. However, she's Michelle's second-in-command to be supportive to her longtime friend. Whine as she might (and whine she DOES), she does find that the job brings out her inner Martha Stewart, and she enjoys being handy. Sometimes, Michelle and Janey's respective unusual fashion senses clash, often causing Michelle to belittle her.

Hunoz- Michelle couldn't be more proud of herself for discovering this specimen. Hunoz, while of only slightly below-average intelligence, never speaks a word of English, opting instead for a series of grunts. The real workhorse of the trio, Hunoz does her best to follow Michelle's (numerous) orders. However, being a little... different in the head, Hunoz often botches the tasks at hand in bizarre ways. Sometimes "Get the door." sounds like "Play in traffic." to Hunoz.

Frog Raccoon Strawberry part 3: Animatic!

2006-07-11T23:34:00.000-07:00

Ok, folks, here's a chance to see one of these crazy ideas in semi-action! Here is an animatic for a proposed pilot episode, Trainiac. It's all the brilliant handiwork of John Berry! If you like this, check out his awesome cartoon, "Evil Josh & Billy" at http://eviljoshandbilly.keentoons.com/ !

In case you don't see anything below, check out http://www.moobeard.com/strawberry.swf
codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0"
WIDTH="550" HEIGHT="400" id="strawberry" ALIGN="">
TYPE="application/x-shockwave-flash" PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer">

Frog Raccoon Strawberry part 2: Stories

2006-07-10T18:22:00.000-07:00

Here are some stories that John Berry and I came up with over the phone. We got very in-depth, so there's more to read than usual, but I hope you'll all enjoy it!

We Do Meteor Right- Strawberry and Marissa are out enjoying parsnip smoothes until Marissa suddenly warns of a comet hurdling toward their town.
Strawberry- "Oooooh! Did you use your amazing otherworldly mental powers to sense that?"
Marissa- "No. It's right there." *Points toward obvious comet in the sky*
Strawberry decides to stop the comet because a comet once slapped her uncle. After summoning her leaping powers, she climbs to the top of the comet where she realizes she can steer it. She briefly considers driving it into the US Mint (visiting town for one day only!) since a penny angered her earlier that day, but she instead steers it into the world's largest marshmallow chicky (visiting town for one day only!) so it would land softly. Instead of splattering all over, the meteorite brings the chicky alive into a giant marshmallow monster. It tries to eat people, but they just fall through it's body and come out all goopy. Strawberry sticks it's foot in a car that's been basking in the heat all day. Despite the fact that only it's foot is inside, the chicky monster melts very slowly do it's doom screaming loudly and annoying the townspeople for days.

Pop Idle- Strawberry's frog suit is being dry-cleaned, so she has to wear her moose suit in this episode. Pippi Possum challenges Strawberry to a singing competition. Strawberry agrees because it sounds like fun, but she insists on going out for an ice cream sandwich first. At this point, there's a very long drawn-out scene (all one shot) of Strawberry eating an ice cream sandwich very slowly in the foreground while Pippi, in the background, gets progressively angrier... followed up by a slightly shorter scene of Strawberry eating the wrapper while Pippi bonks her head repeatedly into the wall. Strawberry, Marissa, and Pippi all converge at the local self-contained auditorium (visiting town for one day only!) Oddly, other competitors just kinda showed up. Judging the competition are Washed-Up 80s Singer, Way-Too-Nice Lady, and Marissa with a moustache and a top hat (which is enough to fool Pippi). When Pippi gets on stage and performs, she hits a very peculiar sour note. Marissa warns Strawberry that there's an avalanche nearby.
Strawberry- "Oooh! Did you use your uncanny alien avalanche-sense?"
Marissa- "No. Pippi hit an avalanche note."
Strawberry runs off to the local avalanche, much to Pippi's immediate protest. She runs after and gets in Strawberry's way, but Marissa discreetly uses her telekinetic power to move out of harm's way. Strawberry tries to summon her inner-frog, but since she's wearing a moose suit, she can only summon her inner-moose and she uses her hyper-antlers to contain the falling debris.

RoboTot- In his giant playpen lair, Slippery Weasel is watching his windup TV thingee that plays music (anyone know what you call those things?) when it shows (somehow) a commercial for "Baby's First Mecha". Slippery calls to order it on his baby phone (It says "Haw Haw! Numbers are fun!" when you dial it, but it actually works). When it arrives, the first thing he does is bring it to Strawberry's house to gloat about all the stuff he's gonna wreck with it. Horrified, Strawberry runs to Marissa's house to ask if she can borrow a mecha. Marissa acts offended at first that Strawberry would assume that she'd have one just because she's an alien, but then her parents yell at her in their native alien language and make her lend Strawberry one of the mechas they keep in their garage. There's a green frog-looking one, but Marissa warns that it's stuck on the all-60s-protest-singer radio station. Strawberry chooses it anyway. She starts really enjoying the music and dances around in mid mecha-battle causing Slippery to get the upper-hand. Just when he's about to destroy her, a Baby's First Mecha representative arrives and takes Slippery's robot away. Since he's under 18, he's not allowed to order things over the phone.

Big Fat Pain in the Future- Strawberry wants to test some theories she has. She combines weight gain powder with slim fast and, as she theorized, they cancelled each other out and disappeared. She tries this with several other things (pasta and antipasto, creamy and chunky peanut butter, accordions and bagpipes, nooks and crannies) and they all do the same, but the reaction has left a giant vortex in Strawberry's kitchen. A giant, robotlike version of Strawberry comes out of it. It claims that it's Strawberry Extreme: the one who will take over the reigns as Frog Raccoon Strawberry in the distant future. Despite having a deep, gravelly voice, it insists that it's a woman. They try to watch TV together, but Extreme wants to watch only rubbish and makes dumb future-centric commentaries.
Extreme: "In the future, the hamburger eats YOU! HAAAAAHAHAHAHA!"
In an attempt to get Extreme to leave, Strawberry tells her that she's tired and that the noisy vortex is going to keep her awake. Extreme simply presses a button and eliminates the vortex. Since she can't get rid of Extreme, Strawberry lets her rent a room upstairs.

There's one more story idea, "Trainiac", but rather than summarize it here, I'm going to make another post later with John's hilarious animatic for it!

Frog Raccoon Strawberry part 1

2006-07-09T19:18:00.000-07:00

Ok, some of you may know I wasn't planning to make a pitch for this one for a while because I didn't know how to explain it. Well, things started getting a little clearer a few months back when John Berry (http://jeibi.deviantart.com), creator of the world's awesomest internet cartoon series, "Evil Josh & Billy" (http://eviljoshandbilly.keentoons.com/) surprised me with a short Strawberry animatic that played just as I imagined the show should go. I was overjoyed! Still, I had put the show on the backburner since I didn't want to pitch it without finishing a pilot with John. Well, this week, I'm going to have a chance to pitch it to a studio (which I'm not naming on purpose) who I think will really like this idea, so today I called John and we did some more development over the phone.

FROG RACCOON STRAWBERRY: Strawberry Fields is a raccoon girl in a frog suit living in a human world. A bit touched in the head, Strawberry uses her supposed "inner-frog" abilities to stop disasters and protect herself and her home turf from her enemies.

Strawberry Fields- Strawberry is a raccoon, but she truly believes she's a frog trapped in a raccoon's body, so she always wears a frog costume. Strawberry, as you can imagine, is a very rediculous individual and enjoys unusual activities like sipping parsnip smoothies and reading the newspaper aloud in pig latin, but she often finds a sense of duty within herself when events in her (often recent) past motivate her to get involved. "A comet hurdling toward the town?! A comet once slapped my uncle!" In the face of adversity, Strawberry calls upon her "inner frog" powers that she only assumes she has. In fact, it often seems like she's making up powers frogs wouldn't even have.

Marissa Leepthrokk- While her parents are aliens, Marissa was born here on Earth. She's an Alien-American. Marissa is a very low-key person and wants to stick out from the crowd as little as possible. She has some superhuman abilities and futuristic technology around her house, but she tries to keep all that a secret. She hangs around Strawberry for a few reasons: For one, anyone seems normal next to Strawberry. Secondly, Strawberry has such strange interests, being her friend naturally means interesting new experiences.

Pippi Possum- Pippi is an obnoxious young possum who's determined to be Strawberry's arch rival. Pippi periodically challenges Strawberry to competitions in an attempt to show her up, though Strawberry, being mindlessly cheerful, is completely undeterred. Pippi secretly finds Strawberry's antics fascinating and sometimes makes up lame reasons to tag along.

Slippery Weasel- Few people know this, but babies with facial hair have special powers. In Slippery's case, he can teleport from place to place and levitate at will. Slippery is a very evil baby, but since he has no friends, he brags to Strawberry about his plans. In the end, though, he IS a baby. He lives in a giant playpen lair filled with items that look and act like toys, but are functional.

Let me know what you think! Stories coming very soon!

Ralph & Bichael part 2; Stories

2006-07-02T11:11:00.000-07:00

Soooo... I changed the name of the show to Ralph and Bichael since apparently "Bikey" is deragatory British slang. Anyway, here are some story concepts.

Hike & Save- Ralph and Bichael go to the grocery store. Ralph asks Bichael to get a jar of Pickled Atechoke Lungs that's very high on the supermarket shelf. Ralph hands Bichael a grappling hook and he climbs up. It's so high up that the top of the shelf is covered with snow and Bichael gets attacked by shelf goats.

Clone Alone- A local hippie/mad scientist accidentally drops his new cloning ray out of his apartment window and duplicates Ralph. Suddenly there are two Ralphs ordering Bichael around and they're giving him conflicting demands. Eventually, the Ralphs have a power struggle and fight each other.

OctoPanda- Ralph and Bichael are secret agents on a rescue mission. The Bond girl they save sees how Ralph orders Bichael around and confronts them about their friendship. That leaves the three having a deep discussion while dodging ninjas.

Random P. I.- Ralph and Bichael are the new assistants to Brick Duckbill, a detective platypus. Brick has watched too many old detective movies and narrates his every move aloud and everyone can hear him. Despite having the proper gruff demeanor, Brick is an awful detective and can't deduce his way out of a paper bag. Bichael eventually finds a crucial clue while doing his errand boy work and Ralph convinces the guilty party to confess with his powers of persuasion.

(Hey Arica, I used your froggerton photo. I don't think you'll mind, but let me know if it's a problem!)

Ralphy Panda and the Half-Baked Ditz- Ralph and Bichael are students at a wizarding school. Ralph found a neat new spell written in the margins of his textbook and he uses Bichael as his guinea pig. When it turns Bichael's head into a frog, Ralph struggles to guess the spell that will turn him back to normal changing him into various strange things in the process.

PandaRangers: Lightweight Rescue- Ralph and Bichael are Panda Rangers.They start bickering inside their giant robot leading it to beat itself up.

Ralph and Bikey part 1

2006-06-28T14:01:00.000-07:00

I made a pitch to a studio the other day (I'm keeping it anonymous on purpose, so please don't ask, ok?) and while I had brought everything with me, the only show I ended up pitching was Riley Raccoon because they were looking for creature comedies only. I realized, OOPS! I ran out of creature comedies! I'm saving Caffeine and Johnny for later, I don't want to pitch Frog Raccoon Strawberry without John Berry, and I don't really know what to do with Brick Duckbill yet. So, I decided to take a Red Panda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Panda) character that I'd been sketching and quickly develop it into a show.

The show is called Ralph and Bikey! Ralph and Bikey is about the off-kilter adventures of two red pandas: Ralph, the charismatic and persuasive one, and Bikey, the gullible and naïve one. They live in a super-cartoony animal universe and have strange experiences ranging from a cloning experiment gone awry to exploring alien civilzations, and scaling massive supermarket shelves like a mountain.

***
That's really as concept-y as it gets! Said network wants something VERY character driven, so I'm going to let them drive it completely without any recurring plot or even setting so the boys can take it wherever they want. Here's some more about them:

Ralph R. Panda- Red Pandas by nature are animals who specialize in laziness. Ralph is no exception and he likes to use his cool demeanor and fast tongue to convince others to do everything for him, especially Bikey. Ralph is kind of like that older kid you knew when you were in school who would try to snow you all the time because you were young and dumb. Ralph likes Bikey a lot and they've been friends since they were both kids, but that doesn't stop him from making him do the dirty work.

Bichael Firefox- Despite being an only child and currently a young adult, Bikey was born to be a little brother. He's often confused, and as such, easily lead by Ralph's fast talk. Bikey often takes on whatever task Ralph wants him to do, until he inevitably fails and they have to work as a team.

What do you think, folks? Do you guys like this kind of show? Leave me lots of comments! Story ideas coming real soon!

Dunbar and Opie part 2: Stories

2006-06-15T22:41:00.000-07:00

Here are some Dunbar and Opie story ideas Shannon and I have come up with.

Botherly Love - It's the first day of school and Opie's first day of High School! Dunbar has been asked to give the student body a tour of the school. In the process, he manages to embarrass Opie with stories of his youth, though he doesn’t mean any harm. Opie attempts to get his revenge by telling the entire school horrible things about Dunbar over the loudspeaker, but since everybody already knows Dunbar is a huge dork, it’s to no particular avail. Still, Dunbar gets the hint and tries to make it up to Opie by getting Diane to introduce him to her spooky little sister, Lady Dunsinane. Meanwhile, Leon goes to his first day of the second grade. Leon is under the impression that he is a Space Ranger and is not at school, but on the planet Tettenbaum. He makes it his mission to exterminate Ralph Orglesnirtion, a particularly bratty, stuck-up fellow student. Leon believes that Ralph is a spy from the planet Torgon.

Nevermind the Babies- Momula and Superdad want to go out for the evening, and don’t want to leave the kids home alone. Since Dunbar is ridiculous, Momula hires Diane to babysit, despite the fact that she’s Dunbar’s age. Dunbar tries to make the best of it and score with Diane, but she takes her job seriously and he follows all of Momula's orders. Opie gets sick of this rule-following stupidity and duct tapes everyone to the wall. Meanwhile, Superdad and Momula enjoy a romantic evening at the mud baths and reminisce about how they first met.

Spooky Girl – Raven spots Dunbar playing Bust-A-Booty (Disco Polka Edition) at the local arcade and is instantly smitten. He’s scared to death at the first sight of her and runs away. The next day, she spots him at school and chases him all over the campus. Dunbar tries to distract her by getting her interested in Opie, but she couldn’t care less. After school, Opie gives in and plays baseball with his friends. Opie, by now driven to distraction by Raven’s beauty, tries to get her attention when she chases Dunbar outside. When she sees him in a dirty baseball uniform, she’s convinced he’s a jock and she’s even less interested. Meanwhile, Momula sends Superdad out to do some errands so he won't catch her stalking hapless victims.

Merry Sunshine- Opie starts talking to Lady Dunsinane about how he needs a real woman in his life. She takes it as an insult, so out of revenge. She sets Opie up on a blind date with the extremely cheerful Brittany. It's torture for Opie, just as she hoped, but she also gained new competition for Opie’s affection. Meanwhile, Raven takes Leon and her little sister, Gina to Aloyisius Ground Beef's (a Chuck E. Cheese-like taco restaurant) in an attempt to find out all she can about Dunbar. All she learns is that Leon is insane.

Trip Over the Fantastic Lights- Dunbar volunteers himself and Opie to decorate for the school dance. While the boys hang streamers, Lady Dunsinane and Brittany each plan ways to get Opie all to themselves. Similarly, Raven’s plans a Dunbar trap for the dance. Momula and Superdad chaperone the dance... and several of the kids leave without their blood. Opie plays a song for Raven, but Dunbar thinks it sounds too empty, so he tries to "help" with his accordion. Finally, the villainous Cyberlad tries to bomb the dance, but is defeated by Superdad in a smash-up battle that wrecks the gym.

Working For the Weak End- It's Bring-Your-Son-To-Work Day! Opie goes out vampiring with Momula and Dunbar goes out superheroing with Superdad. Meanwhile, Leon is smitten with a classmate named Gina. He seems to think that she's a Torgonian slave girl. Ralph and Gina get put together in some sort of group assignment and Leon thinks he has to save her from his clutches. Leon is teamed up with Elbert, the son of a psychiatrist. He finds Leon absolutely fascinating.

Exquisite Dead Guy- Opie says something to make Lady Dunsinane angry again, so she takes a walk through the graveyard to clear her head. A ghost follows her out. At first, she's thrilled, but as soon as the ghost starts to speak and she sees what a timid soft-spoken spirit he is, she's disappointed and irritated. She refuses to listen to him even though he needs her help and her help alone in order to move on to the afterlife. Meanwhile, Dunbar and Opie buy a hamster and Opie tries to train as his minion of the night.

Defeat Man: Empty Warrior- The makers of “Space Ranger Magazine” decided to publish an article explaining how to make a time portal as a gag. They didn’t think in a million years any kid would actually try to make one. Leon builds one and pulls Defeat Man from certain doom in his own dimension to Earth. Leon drags his new, depressed friend all over town to thwart imaginary dangers. The family doesn’t want to accept him at first, until they each figure out ways they can find him useful.

Dunbar and Opie part 1

2006-06-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

I need to give The Ladies a rest for a while. I'll come back to it later. In the meantime, here's a new one: Dunbar and Opie!

Dunbar and Opie, created by Kyle A Carrozza and Shannon Tagliareni (some of you know her best as Develynia).

Über-geek Dunbar and his evil brother Opie are teenagers growing up in a suburban town that looks normal on the outside, but is really filled with oddities. Adolesence ain't easy when your parents are a superhero and a vampire.

Dunbar Joifle - Dunbar is geek supreme. He's a fine student with a yen for accordion playing, Dragons and More Dragons, and all matter of technical goodies. Dunbar is also a social moron. Due to his years of study and awkward appearance, he doesn't know the first thing about how to act around people. He has no concept of personal space and he's also pretty loud. When startled or frightened, Dunbar cries out "WOAHGUL!" He doesn't do ANYTHING with an iota of subtlety. Dunbar has difficulty with his awkward teenage body as well. He's always tripping over his huge feet and getting tangled up in his own long legs. He's so cheerful, he laughs at inappropriate times. He loves his family very much, but he has some concerns about his little brother Opie. Opie's evil doesn't faze him. Dunbar's worried because he rarely appears happy. He tries to include Opie in activities he enjoys, but that usually just makes his dark brother more miserable.

Opie Joifle- Opie is milking this “Mom is a vampire” thing for all it’s worth. He’s declared himself evil. He wants the world to view him as such, but he’s so scrawny and non-threatening that nobody seems to care. Despite his goal to be a villainous overlord or whatever, Opie finds himself at odds with his own humanity. No matter how unpleasant he tries to be, he has a deep internal desire to make conversation and be a normal teenage boy. He tries to keep it suppressed, but he slips from time to time. Sometimes when his school chums ask him if he wants to play baseball, he can’t help but say yes. Also of note, he has a limited power to summon lightning. He wants to get better at it, so he practices it at every opportunity, though he doesn’t improve much. It’s like watching a novice skateboarder try that one dumb trick over and over again.

Leon Joifle- Having a vampire and a superhero for parents has made escapism tough for young Leon. In fact, it’s made him completely bonkers. He thinks he’s a space ranger and talks to everyone around them as if they’re characters in a sci-fi show. Most notably, Leon thinks the school brat is an evil emperor and that a cute girl he likes is a space princess in distress.

Superdad- Once about twenty years ago, Superbachelor battled Pamula, the evil vampire girl. In mid-battle they caught a glimpse of each other and started dating, and later married and had kids, thus making him Superdad. Superdad is a stone-faced superhero like Batman. Unlike Batman, he's not very good at hiding his identity. He doesn't change his outfit at all between fighting crime and reading the paper at home. Heck, he flies around the house spouting (unsolicited), "I'm not a superhero". He loves his wife, Momula, very dearly. Their relationship is as strong now as when they got married. All three of his sons know his "secret". Dunbar thinks his father is great and wishes to be more like him. Leon thinks he's a friendly ambassador from planet Neezbak. Opie thinks he's a goody-goody and a fool. They exchange intense stares and awkward moments upon crossing each other's paths.

Momula- Momula would be a standard 1950s throwback happy homemaker if not for the undeniable fact that she’s a vampire. Most of the time the family sees her, she’s flying around the house, gleefully cooking and cleaning, but when nobody’s around, she goes out to suck the blood of hapless victims.

Diane Roberts- Diane has been a close friend to Dunbar since they were very young. She is the newest cheerleader on the squad right now, so she has a reputation to build. A big part of being a model cheerleader is maintaining a certain amount of snottiness. That includes not being seen among people below a certain popularity level. Dunbar, as you can imagine is faaaaaaaaar below that popularity level. Diane remains friends with Dunbar, but only in private. If they want to go out and do anything, they have to go to another town where they won't be caught by anyone. Diane's feelings for Dunbar are entirely platonic. Dunbar, however, has it for Diane real bad. He tries to keep it under control since he knows how she feels, but he puts her on a pedestal sometimes. She can't have sugar at all. One taste of sugar will set off an incredible allergic reaction: she blows up like a gas balloon. Lady Dunsinane is Diane's little sister. They try not to acknowledge each other's existence.

Lady Dunsinane- Lady Dunsinane is bored and disenchanted with most things and makes no secret of it. She hangs around Opie because he’s the opposite of her overly-nice surroundings. She almost finds him alluring, but he has a tendency to be insensitive and somewhat chauvinistic, so she can get annoyed by him at the drop of a hat. She’s tired of the banality of her existence (I guess she hasn’t noticed all the weird stuff going on around her), and fantasizes that something spooky and interesting to happen to her someday. Everytime something comes close, it’s a disappointment.

Raven Littlegirl- Raven is very cheerful for a goth. She's a very frightening kind of cheerful... almost as if there is something evil making her happy. But, alas, it's just not true. She may dress it and act it, but she's not into dark, nasty things. In fact, she's attracted to Mr. Nice Guy himself, Dunbar Joifle. She's so drawn to him, that she literally throws herself at him. The combination of her creepiness and her forward nature scares the daylights out of Dunbar. He hides from her and refers to her as "that spooky girl".

Brittany Jolli- Brittany is ridiculously cheery and and has a fascination of all things cute. Especially hamsters. Thing is, she doesn't like to spend time with cheery people. No, she is a firm believer of "opposites attract". She likes talking to people like Lady Dunsinane and she has a big crush on Opie. They can't stand her. She's irritated that Opie is attracted to Raven and not to her. After all, Raven IS cheerful too. No fair!

Defeat Man- Defeat Man was once a cocky fighting robot in another dimension. He became obsolete after a while and went into hiding as another android warrior replaced him. He got very depressed. One day, Leon brought him to Earth as we know it using an interdimensional portal he built out of common household items. Defeat Man is now Leon’s playmate, though he doesn’t say much and always looks miserable. When Leon’s at school, he often acts as Momula’s helper to earn his keep. Lady Dunsinane sometimes acts very affectionate to Defeat Man in an attempt to make Opie jealous.

Tom- Tom is a British ghost who started following Lady Dunsinane around one day. He has something very important to tell her, but nobody knows what it is because she won’t listen to him. Because he’s so soft-spoken and not-at-all scary, Lady Dunsinane has no respect for him. She considers him just another one of those things in her life that just wasn’t spooky enough to be romantic and exciting. Besides Lady Dunsinane, nobody seems to be able to see him except Dunbar. Sometimes Tom possesses people so he can have a physical body to be in and use, but if the body sneezes, he goes flying out.

The Ladies part 2: Story sketches

2006-06-01T10:50:00.000-07:00

The above is an early Yomama sketch drawn by me and colored by Zoë Moss.

No full story post just yet. I still need to sit down with Arica and maybe Zoë and hack that all out. Still the other day, I sat down with the lovely Lindsay Smith and threw down some story concept sketches.

I wanted to sketch up how Jay interacts with the various Elm Blossom Place girls. Here he is with Doomimi. Here, he's apparently part of one of her "art projects".

Here's Jay stuck in Breena's dungeon/basement lab thingee.

Yomama got most of the development this time. Here she is at the computer typing awful things about her friends.

By Lindsay!
Fee doesn't take to it well. I figure this exchange would play out like this:
Fee- (under her breath) Bitch.
Yomama- Excuse me?
Fee- Oh, I said I have an itch.
Yomama- Oh.
Fee- (under her breath) ...in your tender skull, you harpee.

Another by Lindsay. We thought it'd be funny if Yomama was constantly reinventing herself in a Madonna-like fashion. However, I thought the punchline above would work better if Yomama was wearing a different costume:

Leave me lotsa feedback! We can do better than 8 replies, can't we?

The Ladies part 1

2006-05-19T11:22:00.000-07:00

Here's a pitch for an adult show! It's about Jay, a college student who until recently was rooming with his girlfriend. When they break up and she kicks him out, he finds an ad on the bulletin board searching for a roommate in Elm Blossom Place, a giant boarding house. When he gets there, it's an all-girl boarding house, but the crazy girls who live there decide they feel sorry for him and let him live there anyway. Jay, a huge anime geek, realzes he's living a harem anime and plays along like he's being tortured even though he's having the time of his life.

CHARACTERS:

Jay Smithsonian-
Jay is a young man making up for lost time. He had a severe mopey-ass emo period in high school and he's come to the realization that he cheated himself out of a lot of fun. As a result, he doesn't take any crap from people who want to make him miserable, and also, he'll do just about anything for a good time. He's having the absolute time of his life living with five beautiiful, insane women. He likes to react in different ways to their behavior to see how they'll react.

Yomama-
Yomama, with her big personality and pushy demeanor, is the defacto leader of the girls. She has very strong opinions and takes it as a personal insult if anyone disagrees with her. In fact, she'll sometimes hold a grudge for months. She's actively nice every once in a while, but she's so easily set off, it never lasts long. It's really her way or the highway. Half the time, she's in love with Jay, but the other half, she's publicly cursing his name, making angry blog posts about him calling him an egomaniachal idiot (her favorite insult), and beating him senselss.

Fee-
Fee is a tiny, shy little thing... or so we think. Whenever we get to hear Fee's thoughts, she's thinking about some tawdry s&m thing she wants to do to Jay. Whenever she gets close to Jay, however, Yomama slaps him silly and tells him to leave "innocent little Fee" alone.

Breena-
Breena is an experiment-happy mad scientist in training. The thing is, she's constantly doing insane experiments and everyone's pretty sure there's no hypothesis she's trying to prove. She's just doing things to other things. She loves experimenting on Jay. Breena tends to use big words to say very average things. She's not all that smart, actually. She just has a big vocabulary and likes to poke at nature.

Skeena-
Skeena is a cosplayer. For those of you not familiar, cosplaying is a Japanese subculture centered on dressing as characters from manga, anime, and video games. Skeena considers herself the ultimate cosplayer because she doesn't stop there. She takes it a step farther and dresses as things like trees and stop signs. All of her costumes seem to fall a little short though, mainly because she never takes off that silly hat. Skeena is very hyperactive and rediculous. Jay's pretty sure she's trying to be and that she's not really like that at all. She often hangs around Breena.

Doomimi-
Doomimi is a mopey doom & gloom chick. She loves it, though. It's just that her love looks like most people's hate. Don't call ger a goth, though. She thinks that most goths are fools because they conform to their own herd. She doesn't understand how anyone claiming to be countercultural can form their own culture. She's constantly exploring new and different ways to be new and different. Also of note, she has an endless supply of skulls of varying shapes and sizes. Nobody knows where they came from or whose heads they used to belong to.

Chadford Wood-
Chadford is Jay's college pal. He often goes to Chad to gloat after a day of hanging around with the beautiful ladies of Elm Blossom Place. Chadford was a big ladies man in high school and walks around with the confidence of one, but now that he's in college, he's finding that all the campus cuties have outgrown his type. He's extremely frustrated and wants a piece of Jay's action. He eventually loses it and tries to break into the house.

That's it for now! Stay tuned for stories later!

Hatz and Pug part 3: Stories

2006-05-01T21:15:00.000-07:00

Ok, time to tell y'all about some Hatz and Pug stories. Arica and I came up with them at a brainstorming session at Panera's. Breadbowls = Good cartoons.

Head Games- Pug has had a terrible day. First, he got trashed yet again by Butch Beck, his own personal bully, then he met the lovely new girl, Sally Harrison, but all that would come out of his mouth when he tried to talk to her was "gwabndsfjkhfuu". While visiting his uncle's hat shop after school, he suddenly finds one of the hats talking to him. Rather than make a scene, Pug asks his uncle if he can have the hat and leaves with it atop his head. Hatz falls asleep before Pug can get much information out of him. The next day, Pug wears Hatz to school. Things start off poorly with Hatz talking back to Butch, leading to more violence, plus he screams out a date proposal when Pug won't do it. Thankfully, she agrees to it! That night, Pug goes to the movies with Sally, but things threaten to get ugly when Butch shows up. Suddenly Sally saves Pug with her... POWERFUL ROBOTIC ARMS??!

Freak Magnet- Pug has a lot of social problems at his school because there's a strict class system that has fallen into place, and he doesn't seem to fit into any group. He's too strange for the normal group. The geek group doesn't want him. Not geeky enough! Sally really likes Pug, though, and wants to keep him close. She thinks that having a talking hat might just be his ticket into the freak group to which she belongs. Amanda, a girl with wings and one of the freak group leaders doesn't think he's freaky enough. Sally wants to fight that decision, but then overdramatic Principal Hunter intervenes. He forbids Sally to try to get Pug into the freak group. The school caste system is the ticket to his complete power over his students and faculty. He thinks that one transgression like this will ruin everything.

Your Hat is Under Arrest- Pug and Sally are enjoying an afternoon together in town, but little do they know, they're being tailed by Haarco and Fuzzball: Intergalactic Police. They're trying to capture Hatz without being seen by any Earthlings, but once Hatz notices them, they give chase. During the chase, Hatz admits to Pug that he's an alien fugitive.

Auction Disfunction- While at an auction, Hatz sees something stupid and expensive and cries out "Dat's the ugliest 'ting I've ever seen in my life!", thus winning the item. Now the boys need to come up with $5000 within two weeks!

Overdoing Undercover- In an attempt to get Hatz without being recognized as aliens, Haarco and Fuzzball don human costumes. Stupid, weird-looking, unconvincing human costumes. They go out in public to test their costumes and creep out the locals.

Act Haturally- The drama teacher is concerned about Pug and tries to convince him to be in the school play, even forcing him to audition. Pug was going through the motions flatly and quietly reading the script alout when suddenly Hatz belts out an unbelievable performance. Hatz loves to act and he just couldn't help himself. Hatz keeps Pug awake night and day practicing the lines. The plan is for Pug to lipsynch while Hatz talks, but when Hatz disappears during the play, Pug has to call upon improv skills he didn't know he had.

Legendary Warriors for Hire part 2: Stories!

2006-04-19T11:28:00.000-07:00

Here are some Legenday Warriors story ideas Arica and I came up with:

Dragon Along- The Warriors are hired to defeat a large dragon. Thinking he’d be smaller, they don’t have a plan, so they fail miserably. They each try to make a plan, but each one is so egocentric that nobody can agree on one. They get annoyed with each other and all try to defeat the dragon alone. When Vambre looks like she’s about to be eaten by the dragon, the group uses teamwork techniques to save her.

Pest Control- A villager hires Zange to make a flu relief potion, but due to the tomfoolery going on within the Legendary Warriors headquarters, extra ingredients fall into the mix and release a very annoying gremlin who pops from place to place giving people wedgies, wet willies, noogies and the like. Since they can’t catch him (not even Phil), they ask their friend The Brainsmith for help. He tells them the only way to get rid of him and it involves all four of them putting on stupid outfits and doing a dopey choreographed chant. They refuse to do it until the villagers form a lynch mob.

Always Dignity- There’s a dry spell in peril and the Legendary Warriors are going broke. Zange’s family offers to hire them to do yard work, but they don’t want to lower themselves to that, so they attempt to put on a ridiculous show-offy stage show. It’s awful, especially Phil’s puppet show, “Flog & Molly”. They give up and do the yard work and unearth some giant monster worms which the kingdom pays them to defeat.

Lord Skullbood- The Warriors travel to the neighboring Kotassium kingdom to take care of some common forest pest monsters. Afterwards, Phil gets very hungry and swipes and eats a talking muffin that sounds like Gary Owens. Unfortunately, the muffin was Lord Skullblood who the kingdom worshipped. The very large villagers declare war on the West Rhyboflaven kingdom. The Warriors flee home to practice their desperation moves, but they fear that it won’t be enough to conquer such a big group. Phil, feeling guilty, has Zange bake him a muffin costume so he can pose as Lord Skullblood and stop the war. When he gets back to Kotassium, the villagers laugh hysterically at his terrible costume and poor impression. By the time he got there, it didn’t matter anymore anyway. They realized they were so much better off being able to think freely without the constant orders of Skullblood.

Justifying the Means- The Warriors are hired to fight a giant land squid. While they do defeat it, they do it with their usual general tomfoolery rather than the serious and skillful manner that Vambre demands. The gets very angry with the rest of the group and raises their level of training to abusive levels. When they plead for mercy, she realizes how badly she’s been mistreating them and leaves to find herself. She gets special training from The Wise Dingus, a guru who shows her that effective jackassery is ok.

All You Need Is Brains- Prohias starts dating Koko, a girl who takes up all his time and builds him up so much that starts to think he’s such a genius that he doesn’t need the rest of the Warriors. He and Koko start making unreasonable demands and he leaves the group. By the time he realizes the terrible mistake he’s made, she Warriors have already replaced him. Prohias runs away with the circus, but the Warriors seek him out after the new hire gets annoying.

Weird Eddie part 2: STORIES!

2006-04-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

Here are some Weird Eddie story ideas I cooked up with Arica!

School House Shock- One night, an informer of his calls Eddie and tells
him that he spotted a ghost in Slushmore Academy. Eddie had a date scheduled that night, so he calls Ashley-Mary to postpone it. She meets him at Slushmore, insisting on tagging along. She knows how oblivious Eddie can be, so she wants to stick around to keep him alert, plus try to move the operation along so they can get to their date. Once inside the school, they meet the ghost, an unimpressive little guy named Spacky. Due to Eddie’s overenthusiasm, Spacky thinks that Eddie’s trying to harm him, but really all Eddie wants to do is study him. Eddie chases Spacky all around the school trying to get information until Spacky gets fed up and grows into a giant, frightening beast. When Eddie becomes even
more fascinated by this, Ashley-Mary gets fed up and storms off, leaving Eddie with the tough choice between the love of his life, and his lifelong intillectual persuits.

Nobody Here But Us Giant Radioactive Chickens- Eddie reads about a nuclear explosion that nearly destroyed a local farming village. He wants to investigate reeeeal bad, but Ashley-Mary just KNOWS he's gonna get himself killed. They send Spacky to investigate the area since he's already dead and can't be hurt. When he arrives, he finds lots of harmless mutant animals... and a giant radioactive chicken with tentacles that leaves a trail of slime. Spacky races home and tells Eddie and Ashley-Mary what he saw. Eddie isn't deterred at all, but Ashley-Mary insists on putting him through some alertness training exercises before they go.

Odd Ferdy- A Slushmore Academy student, Ferdy McAllester appears in the local paper for discovering a sentient mushroom. Eddie, thinking they may have something in common, introduces himself and congratulates Ferdie. They become friends and start to enjoy pooling their resources and studies for a while until Ferdy starts to become jealous of Eddie's accomplishments. He also starts to look more and more like a low-rent Eddie, dying his hair dark blue, dressing in purple and black, and calling himself Odd Ferdy, and eventually, painting his skin grey. Ferdy asks Eddie's opinion about another of his fungal investigations, and Eddie suggests that he should consider expanding his horizons. Ferdy becomes very angry and tries to launch an anti-Eddie campaign at Slushmore Academy.

Disembodied Ed- Eddie, Ashley-Mary, and Spacky investigate a mystery spot just outside of Slushmore where things just aren't quite right. Gravity seems a bit off, their voices start changing, and Spacky seems a little too manly. They get creeped out and escape, but somewhere in the shuffle, Eddie loses his head. Literally. Ashley-Mary and Spacky are left with a headless (and stupid) Eddie body and they have to find his head. After some searching, they find it being worshipped by some intelligent and angry pigeons.

President Evil- Eddie wants to get school funding for his Extrordinary Goings-On Investigation club, but the snotty school president always vetoes it. Since the school elections are coming up, Eddie decides to run. Ferdie offers to run along side him for vice president, but Eddie turns him down 'cause he's wicked-creepy. Ferdy becomes a spy for the other side... the other side being Dan Traditional, a fratboyish dope with a lot of money behind him. While they try to raise money with Ashley-Mary's surprisingly popular kissing booth and Spacky's "Be Stared-At By a Ghost" booth. Eddie does well in the debates, but things go downhill when Ferdy releases a video of Eddie picking his "nose".

Camp and Circumstance- Ashley-Mary is tired of always doing only what Eddie wants to do all the time, and she has a point. He agrees to go with her on her Female Scouts camping trip. It ends up being girlier than Eddie can stand, plus all the girls think he's the cutest thing and try to dress him up in a Female Scout uniform and put make-up on him while he's asleep. To make matters worse, there's a one-eyed squirrel hanging around the campsite that Eddie's just dying to study, but he doesn't want to upset Ashley-Mary by breaking away from the group.

***
What do you think, everyone? Would you want to watch these cartoons? Leave me lots of feedback!

Also, Ben "Pixen" Forbes has started his own pitch blog, which you should totally check out: http://benfotoons.blogspot.com/

Weird Eddie: Part 1

2006-04-15T04:07:00.000-07:00

Another thing I'll be pitching soon: WEIRD EDDIE.

The above image drawn by me and colored beautifully by Verna Jääskinen.

Meet Eddie Cardigan, the strangest kid in Slushmore Academy. Eddie is fascinated by the world's most useless oddities and phenomena and is convinced they're of the utmost importance. He's joined by his nervous, deadpan girlfriend Ashley-Mary and a remarkably ordinary ghost named Spacky who try to keep Eddie from getting himself killed by those oddities.

Eddie Cardigan: Eddie is a student of the strange. He knows the world is full of bizarre things that need to be explained. He has an insatiable thirst for knowledge and will stop at nothing to obtain it. As a result, he often rushes head-first into dangerous situations without think about the consequences first. Eddie is an enthusiastic, unapologetically geeky young man. This, combined with his spooky fashion sense and lack of a discernable nose has made him a very unpopular figure amonsgst his Slushmore Academy classmates, not that he's noticed. He's very much in love with his creepy little girlfriend, Ashley-Mary. In fact, it seems like the creepier she acts, the more attracted he is.

Ashley-Mary: Ashley-Mary loves Eddie very much, and since Eddie seeks out the world's oddest things, there's a lot of things to be afraid of. All the radioactive chickens, giant mummies, and multi-eyed monsters have scared her so much, her hair has turned permenantly white. Since they're always around, Ashley-Mary's gotten used to being scared, so she doesn't get all excited about it anymore and she just comes off as kinda deadpan. While she'd rather not be around such horrors, she frequently accompanies Eddie on his misadventures because she knows how oblivious he can be and wants to keep an eye on him. Ashley-Mary is amazingly short for her age and people often trip over her in crowds.

Spacky: Spacky is a ghost who lives in Slushmore Academy. He's not interested in haunting it or scaring anyone. He just doesn't want to live in the graveyard with all the weirdos who can't let go. While he can use a little spirit energy to make a pair of gloves levitate and act as hands or grow when he's angry, he's really very mild-mannered and generally unimpressive. People naturally expect more from the supernatural and , for the most part, he lacks impact. Spacky gets really bored being dead, so he follows Eddie around for a bit of excitement. Ashley-Mary occasionally sends Spacky to scout out potentially dangerous situations since he can't really be hurt.

Ferdy McAllaster- Like Eddie, Ferdy is interested in the world's oddities. He's also a little too interested in Eddie. He finds Eddie so fascinating that he's begun to dress like him and constantly seeks Eddie's approval. Eddie tried to be friends with him at first, but eventually things got too uncomfortable and now Eddie wants nothing to do with him.

Next time: Weird Eddie stories!

Keep the comments coming, group! Thanks for sticking with me!

Legendary Warriors for Hire part 1

2006-04-11T10:28:00.000-07:00

Thanks for your input everybody! Keep it coming⁄! It helps a lot!

Another show I'm preparing to pitch is called Legendary Warriors for Hire.

The kingdom of West Rhyboflaven is overrun with thieves, dragons, and various magic-based perils. When the denizens find themselves stuck with one of these problems, they hire the Legendary Warriors! They're a team of dragon-slaying fighters with amazing abilities... and very eccentric personalities. While they each possess amazing skills, they're so different from each other that team play is often a struggle and a learning experience.

Vambre- Vambre is the most serious and disciplined member of the team. She's usually very level-headed and is often the mediator in the team's arguments. She's an unrivaled swordswoman, but she's also a perfectionist. Even if the job gets done, she's not fully satisfied unless it was done flawlessly.

Prohias- Prohias is a handome, daring young man. The problem is, he's well aware of that. He's a magic expert but his show-offy glory-hog nature gets in the way of being a team player at times. He fancies himself a ladies man in general, but he has a special place in his heart for Zange. He's incapable of properly expressing it, though, and often acts like a bratty older sibling figure towards her.

Phil- Phil is a physically a very tiny person. As a result he can run around quickly without being seen and snatch valuable items from baddies' hands without being detected. Because of his skill, Phil is all about speed in all aspects of his life, including talking. He often cracks wise so fast, the person he's talking to has no idea that they've just been insulted.

Zange- Zange's family was once very rich, but recently they've fallen on hard times and they made her go get a job. Because of her upbringing, Zange is rather spoiled. She wears a crown and insists on being called "princess" because she has always wanted to be one when she grew up and nobody ever told her "no". The more time she spends with the team the more humility she learns and the more respect she learns to give the others. She has some telekinetic ability and is an excellent healer.

Hatz and Pug: Characters

2006-04-10T11:32:00.000-07:00

Ok, so now that you have the general idea of what the show is about and who the stars are, here's more info about the supporting characters.

Butch Beck: Butch is one of the school's many bullies. There's really a well-established clique of bullies in the school, of which Butch is a member, though not a notable one. In fact, as one of the younger members, he's one of the whipping boys of the bully league... but Pug doesn't know any of that. All he knows is that a seemingly average, white-trashy bully kid hates him for being different and loves to humiliate him publicly. Pug gets more crap from Butch than other "underlings" because he has no place in the school's clique-based society. Hatz, being a thrillseeker likes to bait Butch by shouting out insults.

Sally Harrison: Sally is a delightful, cheerful young lady. Pug developed a crush on her shortly after meeting her-- because really, be nice to a guy that gets picked on a lot, and that's what'll happen. Hatz, having a general disdain for secret crushes outs Pug's desire to go on a date with her... loudly. Thinking Pug said it, she gladly accepts, much to his surprise. She genuinely likes Pug and can sympathize with his outcast status because of her robotic arms. Yeah, robotic arms. Pug didn't know about those until the date not that they bother him. She belongs to the school's freak clique and after learning about Hatz, she tries to bring him into the group so he can end his lonely cliqueless status, but she doesn't run unopposed...

Amanda Skye: Amanda is amongst the heirarchy of the freaks clique. She has a sour temperment brought about by gaining society's general disdain with her unusual wings. Honestly, it's not as bad as she makes it out to be and she just has a terrible attitude about it. She's very particular about who should be allowed into the group and who shouldn't, and she's vehemently against allowing Pug in. She doesn't consider owning a talking hat to be freaky enough to belong. She's very hostile towards Pug and she and Sally bicker about it often.

Earl Blanc: Earl is another member of the freak clique. He's friendly, if a bit spacey, and happy to have Pug around. Because of his mechanical eye, he can often be found staring seemingly into nothingness as he observes something distant with incredible detail.

Haarco and Fuzzball: Officers Haarco and Fuzzball are intergalactic police officers. Despite how silly they look to us Earthlings, they're very serious and determined in their persuit of the intergalactic space criminal Hatz. Unfortunately for them, there's a law that states that they can't risking the safety of any Earth creature even a little. As such, as long as Hatz sit upon Pug's head, there's little they can do.

Principal Hunter: Principal Hunter treats his position as a dictatorship. He's well aware of the student body's caste system and thinks that keeping it alive is integral to retaining the complete control he enjoys. He's a very overdramatic person and his every appearance is completely over the top with what seems like terrible acting.

What do you think folks?

Hatz and Pug: Fixing Pug

2006-04-09T00:58:00.000-07:00

Well, welcome to my pitch blog. I'm going to document the progress of my pitches for animated shows here as I work on them. One of the pitches I'm working on right now is called Hatz and Pug.

The guys in the corner are Hatz and Pug, an ugly, insecure kid and his talking hat, an alien fugitive. Hatz has a very big mouth and gets tired of Pug's constant inability and fear to express himself properly and speak up when he wants something, so he often yells things out to get things moving along, for better or worse. The folks after them are school bully Butch Beck, space police Haarco and Fuzzball, and chick with wings Amanda, but more of all of them later.

A day ago, I posted this before and after image comparing an old drawing of Hatz and Pug from 1998 to one of the images I was going to use to pitch.

One person mentioned that pug looked like Montana Max from Tiny Toon Adventures, and... the more I looked at it, the more correct I realized they were. Also, some folks didn't understand Pug's bowling shirt and mistook it for a corset or something. Others missed his old fang.

I took those criticisms into consideration and came up with this. What do you folks think of this as opposed to the old one?