Just a Tad

Rescue Rangers Comic

I can't vouch for the story because I haven't read it but I am very impressed with this artwork.  On model but more importantly, full of life and energy!   Fantastic work by  Leonel Castellini.

Color me impressed. -- Tad

Why Aren't Cartoons Good Anymore?

Here are two most common complaints I hear about the various American cable channels that carry animation:

1)  They need to take off those crappy teen shows and put back on cartoons.

2)  Why can't they show the good cartoon shows instead of all this new crap?

Okay, when TV execs are faced with the first complaint, they hear: "You need to take off your incredibly successful and popular shows and replace it with played out animated shows."  Maybe you can see how they might not be open to that plan.  And for those of you who have a problem with Cartoon Network showing live action programs because of the name of the network -- those shows will go away if they're not popular.  If they are, then see above.  Meanwhile you'll probably see more "CN" branding.

Remember, they're in the business of delivering an audience of a certain demographic and they can't afford to draw artificial lines between types of entertainment.   Would a puppet show be okay?  CG? A show that combines animation and live action?  It's not like they aren't developing new animated shows.  I'm developing one.  Warners has a bunch.  Let's hope they're all good ones.

The funny thing about the second complaint, the one about the "good" cartoons, is that it really means the cartoons that you grew up with.   At a recent panel about Disney TV Animation, a fan expressed her love of the show, "Recess."   That's heresy to the Disney Afternoon lovers.  Animation of the 1980's  is so popular that it's been turned into live action movie blockbusters.  Yet for others it's POWERPUFF GIRLS and DEXTER'S LABORATORY.  And of course, those who appreciate the classics of prime time FLINTSTONES, HUCKLEBERRY HOUND, CRUSADER RABBIT and RUFF AND READY think you're all crazy.

Fans assume I want to return to my old stuff.  If I did, I would hope that it has something new to offer: a feature length story, a CG version or just better overall animation.  If not, why go back?  Well, aside from boatloads of cash.  I much rather work on a new project, preferably a creation of my own.

I wouldn't hesitate to return to HELLBOY because we never had the chance to really get it right.  I shouldn't say that.  I tend to concentrate on the disappointments of my work.  In fact, friends of mine kidded me that they thought BLOOD AND IRON was a great movie until they listened to the commentary track explain how crappy it is.  But I now know what worked best and what to avoid.  I know how I want to tweak the art direction and what is needed in terms of background design.  Most of all, there are tons of stories to be told that I haven't seen on TV.

In general, I think there are plenty of awesome cartoons being done.  There are plenty I could point to and say, "I'd like to be a part of that."  If you don't enjoy them, consider that they might not be aimed at you.  They're aimed at the younger you that doesn't exist anymore.   Maybe it's your little brother, cousin or nephew that is glued to the new stuff.  Maybe your it's your niece, sister or daughter that is transfixed by those Disney Tween Queens.

I will say that I don't see shows with the same mix of comedy and adventure that was a staple of the Disney Afternoon and shows like Sonic the Hedgehog or TMNT that isn't out there right now.  Actually, the new Scooby-Doo show, MYSTERY INC does it.   ADVENTURE TIME also does it in its own way.  So maybe I'm wrong.

Certainly not the first time.  -- Tad

 

 

Happy Halloween

I've always enjoyed stories of the supernatural so most of the shows I've produced have at least one episode that deals with magic or the paranormal.  In CHIP N' DALE'S RESCUE RANGERS we introduced the furry favorite, Foxglove, a bat who was the familiar of a witch.  The episode, "Ghost of a Chance" was loosely based on The Canterville Ghost or at least the movie version with Robert Young.

Morgana McCawber and her Addam's Family styled world became a running element in DARKWING DUCK.  And of course we dealt with sci-fi horror with mind controlling hats and vampire potatoes.  But we never played it straight.  It wasn't the nature of the show.

Of course, Disney's ALADDIN TV series is full of the supernatural.  It's built into the premise.  One of my favorite episodes was one of the darkest, "The Lost Ones," which told the story of how children were spirited away every seven years to be turned into monsters.  

I pitched HELLBOY at Disney but got no interest.  Luckily.  I'm sure the project would've been cleaned up to the point of disaster.  In fact, although the principals changed, that story was played out in TEAM ATLANTIS.  We sold it as an action adventure series based on the feature but the decision was made to put it on 1Saturday Morning.

  

But all the shows on at the time, DOUG, PEPPER ANN, RECESS, and the like were very "educational friendly."  The shows were great and often inventive but not the perfect match for a show featuring monsters, mysterious ancient artifacts and jeopardy with a capital "J."  We were pretty much doomed from day one.

But we dove in and tried to make the stories actually suspenseful and scary or at least eerie.  You can get a taste of what we wanted to do in the Disney DVD, ATLANTIS II: MILO'S RETURN.  Even then I had to remove the original, creepy ending to one of the stories and include it only as a DVD extra.  Definitely worth checking out.   When the feature came out to disappointing returns we were crossed off the schedule.  I had to lay off the entire crew, about 85 people, on Friday the 13th.

The story I was saddest to lose was an original take on the Loch Ness monster.  It would've been the next show to ship and Mike Mignola had designed a fantastic creature.  I hope Mike finds a story to use it in.  Sadder still, I don't have a copy of the script, nor does the writer, Henry Gilroy.  

Of course, years later I finally got to do HELLBOY in animation with no compromises other than the schedule.  HELLBOY: SWORD OF STORMS has some great sequences in it.  It's almost a collection of short stories.  HELLBOY: BLOOD AND IRON had a stronger overall story, I just wish we had more time to work on the art direction.   A third movie was written but unproduced when the studio switched hands.  Film Roman Studios has been purchased again.  Maybe there's a chance to resurrect the series.

These random thoughts about animating the supernatural have been brought to you by an overdose of candy corn and the approaching holiday.   Enjoy your tricks and treats.  -- Tad

   

 

 

Duck Doodles

With all the interest in Darkwing Duck lately I thought I'd try sketching some ducks and potential new villains.  I have to say it'd be fun diving back into that world now that pop culture has taken a hard left into the geek.

The color stuff was done in Manga Studio 4.  I haven't played with it seriously but this was a start.  It seems that each color has to be on a separate layer.  The black and white sketches were done in Storyboard Pro.  Storyboard Pro 2 actually added a variety of tools to make it more of a general illustration program but this shows not of it.

Other than that, I've got nothing to go on about.

Rearranging Your Brain

 


Maybe I covered this, but for those who came in late:  I thought of the summer of my junior year in college as my last break before "real life."  I wanted to go into cartooning of some kind but animation seemed all but dead outside of Disney and that studio still employed the guys who started the place with Walt.  (I didn't know that they were just starting a training program for new talent.)

Anyway, I decided to forego another stint as a camp counselor for the Woodcraft Rangers and spend eight hours a day trying to sell gag cartoons .  Back then there were still magazines that carried single panel cartoons.  By summer's end I had collected a wall full of rejection letters which I wish I still had. The closest I came to success was when The Saturday Evening Post kept one of my gags for further review before rejecting it.  Also, McCall's published a cartoon that was the same as one I doodled in a letter to my girlfriend.  I took that as a sign that I was thinking along the right lines.  School started and I laid it all aside (when I should have continued in my spare time says Mr. Hindsight)

But all that work paid off later in my career when I moved into story on The Fox and the Hound.  Don't waste your time searching the credits.  I'm not there, I was beaten out by a worm.  Disney animated features didn't use a script then, just a story outline that was developed visually.  A story artist ( I believe Pete Young and possibly Vance Gerry in this case) would be assigned a sequence of a fox and hound first meeting and playing together like kids.  He would draw gags of the animals playing various games, swimming, getting into trouble, whatever.   The directors and directing animators would pick what they liked.   The story artist would then expand on the ideas with more visuals and begin piecing together a continuity and maybe suggesting a little dialogue.  Repeat until it's shipped downstairs to be animated.

So it was a variation of the same, single panel gag process.  I repurposed some Chief animation and storyboarded the Hunter laying out his bear traps with Copper.  The method is the same whether it's comedy or drama.  Years later, when I began writing scripts for TV animation, I'd go through much of the same process but without doing the drawings.  That kept my shows visually oriented or at least I hope it did.

But before that summer in college, the idea of coming up with gags from nowhere, and doing it every day, seemed impossible.  But once I got started, it got easier.  I didn't send one gag to each magazine to earn my rejection slip; each publication got eight to ten.

I learned to think in a different way.  I began doing a sort of mental improvisation.  Let's try an experiment.  I promise not to cheat.  I also do NOT promise to end up with a gag.  I'm going to record my mental process.  Let's say I doodle a drawing of a lizard and want to do a gag.  I start thinking in visuals and will worry about punchlines later.

Lizard in a desert.  Desert is hot.  Lizard trying to stay cool.  Lizard on two legs with ice cube tied on his head.  Brain freeze?  AZ desert = dry heat.  T shirts with skeletons in desert talking to each other, "Yeah, but it's a dry heat."  Lizard in lounge chair under cattle skull.   Human skull?  Geico lizard.  Geico roadkill.  Lizard dead in jaws of buzzard, holding little Geico attache case.  "I'm guessing they don't cover this."

Okay, that was something.  I went from lizard to environment.  Jumped to Geico lizard and putting him into a nature environment instead of an office building.  I could have focused on the lizard, the idea that they grow back tails.  What if the tail grew another lizard?  Lizard having scaly, dry skin using lotion.  Sight gag of an overly moisturized lizard talking to friends?  Lizard talking to snake, a lizard with no legs.  Lizard diet?  Eating bugs?  Trying to eat something it thought was a bug.  Stuck on the exhaust pipe of a VW bug?

At the end of that summer, I was thinking in a different way.  Evidently I had etched new grooves into my brain.  Now I find myself doing the same thing and finding it harder.

Most of the shows I did for Disney were mini versions of what they do in features: comedy/adventure or adventure with tons of comedy.  Whether it was Chip 'n Dale's Rescue Rangers or Aladdin, we hung our gags on some sort of story with a character arc and a strong mystery, science fiction or adventure plot.  What I have ahead of me doesn't have that sort of genre crutch.

These days my brain is split.  By day I storyboard on BOB'S BURGERS which, for all it's extreme designs, is treated very realistically.   I'm not a writer on the show but as a storyboard artist I look for ways of adding entertainment without adding time.  It's more like an actor interpreting a script.  In fact, it's exactly like that.  There are few dynamic camera moves, very little exaggeration of action and almost no ability to open a track to insert a gag.   And the result is hilarious.   The scripts are funny, the actors are fantastic improvisers, and that attention to reality gives the show a unique tone when set between the worlds of The Simpsons and Family Guy.   Watch for it in January of 2011.

Then by night, I work on my development for Cartoon Network.  My idea is a comedy.  Not a science fiction adventure comedy or a supernatural spoof comedy or detective dogs buddy comedy.  It's four kids doing amazing, exaggerated things.  Just as in BOB'S BURGERS, the tone of the show is very important.  And the tone of this show is about 179 degrees away from our favorite burger slinger.  It's a bizarre world filled with extremely bizarre people.

I'd say I'm about 75 to 80 percent down the road to where I want to be.  Which is scary because everything depends on the pilot and that better be at 100% when I'm through with it.  My character designs are getting closer to the spirit of what I want.  The goal will be to find a designer that takes those as a starting point and pushes them to really capture the personalities in a single image.  Voices?  I know EXACTLY what I want... for two characters.   Secondary characters.   Characters who won't even be in every episode.  But, hey, it's a start.   I'll certainly be able to describe everyone in the show and what I'm looking for.

But the bulk of that missing percentage that I'm looking for has to come from new brain cells, or at least rearranged brain cells.   When the CN execs gave me permission to go even crazier than what I had pitched, I was overjoyed.  What got worrisome was that when I handed in the first draft script they encouraged me to push things even more.  Why worry?  It meant I hadn't pushed things enough.  I wasn't thinking wacky enough.  Then one of the execs pitched a gag I loved, not right for the pilot but a great example of the kind of wacky they were talking about.   I worried, "Can I get there from here?"

Doug Langdale, currently working on a Kung Fu Panda series, is one of the funniest writers I know.  I believe his first animation script was on Darkwing Duck working for Story Editor, Kevin Hopps.  Nobody could write Megavolt like Doug.  Perhaps he played with electric sockets as a kid.  Only Doug would realize that if Megavolt robbed a jewelry store he would only steal the light bulbs from the display case in order to "set them free."   Of course, when he lets them loose, the bulbs just shatter on the sidewalk.  That was one of my, "Can I get there from here?" moments.   Could I come up with gags like that.  Zany yet perfect expressions of a character's personality.

The same happened with Disney's Winnie the Pooh TV series.  I'm sure I could have developed a WtP TV series of some sort, but Karl Geurs and Mark Zaslove created a whimsical world that felt 100% in keeping with what Disney had done before.  Karl pushed, bent and broke the budget to get the quality into that show that he felt the property deserved.   And in doing so, he gave the character new life and started him on the path toward surpassing Mickey Mouse in merchandising which I take as a fair estimation of a character's popularity.  That was the first time I stated, "There's no way I could get there from here."

So I dove back into my script.  Much of what I did has been talked about in the previous post.  But the point wasn't to add random wackiness.  Like Megavolt playing "Born Free" with light bulbs, the wackiness must come from and help define the characters.  Things got better, funnier.  My limitations were set more by page count that concept.  I need some wacky input so I'll be watching comedies, cartoons, anything funny... not as a blueprint but just to mix up the lobes in my head.  It's true that I'm not where I need to be yet.

But I've got a compass and some charts, and I'm on my way. -- Tad

What Part's the Baby, What Part's Bathwater?

I think I've mentioned before that what I wanted to do with this blog was to track the development of my various creative projects and that the goal faded because I couldn't publish anything about projects that belong to others.  

I redrew the examples included in one of my earliest posts about storyboarding just so that I could blog it.   Now it can be told that the original panels were from MYSTERY INC., the new Scooby Doo series on Cartoon Network.  Just image it reset at a Renaissance Fair instead of at a comic convention and see if you can spot it on the air.

So once again I will attempt to talk about my current development at Cartoon Network without talking about it.  My the gods of coherent writing smile upon both of us.

What I pitched to CN was a comedy involving four main characters.  I'll go so far as to say that they're kids.  Each kid had a broad personality with a major quirk to it.  Each kid had to be very distinct but complement the other three since they work as a team.

Okay, here's where I need to make things up.

Let's say their names are Timmy, Tommy, Tubby and Teresa.  Timmy is the neighborhood con man and leader of the group.  He's always coming up with a new scam that the others help with.  It's OCEANS 11 for the middle school set.  Teresa is the beauty with the right cross.  She loves boxing, wrestling, karate and martial arts she makes up and names on the fly.  The one thing they have in common is they all hurt.  In a con, you may sense she's pulling something but it won't be her punches.

Tommy is terrified at being caught by the authorities whether it be the police or Mrs. Antigua the Librarian Barbarian.  He's  part of the crew because Timmy has his Boo Bear plush toy at an unknown locationa and will not hesitate to injure it to get Tommy's cooperation.  Finally Tubby is the forger who can duplicate any teacher's note, parent's signature or report card. 

What they liked about my idea (the real one) is that the kids were having big adventures in a suburban setting that any viewer would want to be a part of.  Their notes were all about pushing the humor, making it more extreme -- not less tasteful but in random, unexpected ways.  I loved that note.  Some of my favorite episodes of my shows were the ones that played with reality. Too often, exec worries about logic would tone down gags in my various shows.  It's weird to think that when I started Darkwing Duck, there were huge discussions about whether he should ever address the camera (this was before Aladdin where Robin William's genie not only broke the fourth wall but demolished it, crawled through the screen and sat in the seat next to you).

The next step was to pitch premises.  I practically wrote full outlines because there's a difference between writing a paragraph about a character and using it in a story.  I used the premise process to discover my characters and find the tone of the show.  Obviously, I had direction but so far it was all generalities.  Time to make it all concrete.

 As I wrote these "premlines" I quickly learned what quirks suggested story ideas, gags or defined characters and which were funny one or two times and then wore out their welcome.  When you put characters in story situations you think about how they bounce off each other.  Who makes a good team within the team.  Do I have to have Timmy threaten Tommy's teddy every episode?  How many variations on a death threat are there?  And how likable will these characters be? 

 The show will be a half hour (22 minutes plus commercials) but divided into two, eleven minute stories.  The pilot is only one story so you look for the premise that gives the best overall sense of the series.  You have to keep in mind that it will be screened for kids who can only react to what they're presented.  Sure, there'll be a presenter to set up the show before showing the pilot but that's just "trombone talk" from the Peanuts cartoons.  It's the pilot that will make the impact. So you have to be as entertaining as hell while giving a sense of the unseen stories to come.  

Let's say our junior conmen have three main adversaries: the librarian, the principal and the rich kids.  Each of those adversaries may give you a certain kind of story or dynamic between protagonist and antagonist.  Each of the three helps tell a different kind of story.  But if you write a pilot about the kids selling books online, books pilfered from the library, the kids in the focus groups may think of the series as "That Library Show."  So maybe you work in the rich kids as targets of the scam and a cameo of the principal that ups the tension in the climax of the story.  Downside, you have less time to showcase characters, upside, the pilot is a better example of your series.

A premise was picked and because of its detail, we skipped the outline step and I got a go ahead to script.  And because I had  submitted three detailed stories, they had a good idea of the tone I was going for and gave notes accordingly.  In the first draft I was sure to include moments describe as running gags or opportunities for audience interaction.  Darkwing Duck said, "Let's Get Dangerous," in every episode to not only sell it as a trademark but to be a hook for a kid who is pretending to be DW.

(BTW, forgive all the references to one of my earliest shows.  It just happens to be on my mind because of the BOOM! Kids comic series and a "Disney TV Animation Reunion" panel that I attended the other night. )

So an example of this in the Con Kids series would be the way they signal to each other.  In the great movie, "The Sting," Robert Redford and Paul Newman signal the con is on by touching a finger to the side of the nose.  The Con Kids would constantly change their signals and be a hundred times more wacky and elaborate as they do it.  

I also put in as many punching, fighting gags with Teresa as I could think of, holding Tommy in a hammerlock as they talked, punching a cabinet to open it and every violent action used to perform a mundane action possible.

Notes came back.  They wanted to make sure the kids were likable since in real life these types would be losers, victims or mental patients.  The execs encouraged me to push the humor more.  Their most important notes were about characters.  They didn't want the secondary characters to come off as sitcom stereotypes.  Worse, they felt they only had a clear understanding of one character main character, Tommy, the kid who did everything under duress. (Again, not the real character but you can see how it would be easy to write him in every scene since a "loved one" is being threatened and he's working against his will.)  The rests weren't clear.

My initial reactions were positive because they liked so much in the script.  And now when they talked about how they wanted to see the humor pushed they could use examples from my script.  As to the secondary characters, there was one that they felt really hit the mark (I felt the same) and another that had all the traits they wanted but wasn't in the script much.  But the most serious note was the lack of definition in my main characters because the whole series depends on that.

The main enemy of accomplishing all this is time.  Not how much time I have for a rewrite but the length of the episode.  A normal episode would only feature the Librarian as an adversary but my pilot had to include the Principal, the rich kids and a sense of student population that would define the universe the series.  And it's only eleven minutes.  I already felt the script was long so what could I cut to make time?

That's when I took at all those running gags from the pitch.  They helped sell the show but they weren't as funny as the stuff around them.  That "con is on" signal would completely rely on the storyboard artist and the final animation.  Even if the writer could act it out, it would require lots of effort to make happen with uneven payoffs.  Out it went. I realized it wasn't baby.  It was bath water.

All the "Let's Get Dangerous" moments, out.  If there were "housekeeping lines," dialogue that's meant to smooth transitions between scenes, the had to be made funny or be cut.  I worked on the secondary characters and improved them but ended up cutting some of those gags to make room for the main characters.

I looked at Teresa who was little more than collection of physical gags.  They were funny and easier to invent and execute than the random con signals but would they continue to be funny after a couple of episodes?  More importantly, the story can't stop for those gags, they have to be a part of it.  But con stories are about criminals who use their brains, not brawn. I had cleverly designed a character who slowed down the pace with increasingly unfunny bits that didn't fit my overall premise.

So even though her fighting skills were the key quirk of Teresa's personality and about a quarter of the original pitch, much of Teresa turned into bath water.  She needed more baby.  The humor of the character was always the mismatch of beautiful girl and master fighter.  I switched things around to make her con role be her beauty and the fighting skills be the surprise.  They would be showcased at key moments when the action got craziest.  It also defined her as a character: she looks like a bimbo but is the most confident person in the room.  In fact, her self confidence can be exaggerated for humor and over confidence can slide into big ego, both traits rich comedy territory to mine.  Since it was such a major change, I ran it past CN and they thought it was a good call.  They now felt they knew what kind of  person Teresa was and where the comedy would come from.

As Joe Sichta was telling me, "There's a difference between writing a character and characteristics.  You need to choose the characteristics that define the character."   Actually he was quoting a famous director or writer or writer/director but I've forgotten who so Joe gets the credit.

As you develop a project, be flexible.  Don't hang onto something just because it was an early idea that helped you sell your show.  Put it to the test and make sure it works and will continue to work 12 stories down the line.  A show made of bath water will quickly go down the drain.

 

 

Was that too much?  Too punny?  Couldn't resist.   -- Tad