Tripping the Rift: The New Bad Boy in Animation
Smut and sleaze in animation are hardly new, but where Comedy Central’s South Park made schoolboy humor even less of an art form that it already was, the latest crop of young-adult cartoons are reaching lows even the potty-mouthed Stan Marsh and Eric Cartman couldn’t have predicted. In the last several months everyone from MTV to Spike TV has jumped on the adult ’toon bandwagon, and now the Sci Fi Channel is getting in on the act with its first ever original animated show.
Airing on Thursday nights at 10:30/9:30C, the 3D animated Tripping the Rift is an irreverent and lusty send-up of space adventure that revolves around five misfits who inhabit the starship Jupiter 42. The ship is controlled by a neurotic A.I. known as Spaceship Bob and captained by a sarcastic purple blob named Chode. Then there’s a verbally abusive three-breasted pilot called T’Nuk, Gus, the depressive robotic chief engineer, teen slacker Whip, busty android sex symbol Six and various alien characters bent on dominating the universe.
The show started out as a short that was aired on Level 13, an Internet site operated by Simpsons/King of the Hill stable Film Roman, before being chosen by Sci Fi Channel for its weekly short-film showcase, Exposure. Canada’s CinéGroupe, an animation house better known for its family entertainment, also picked up the buzz.
“We noticed it, and when we started talking to Film Roman about working with them, we said we’d be interested in developing it,” says Ken Katsumoto, CinéGroupe’s evp and head of U.S. Entertainment.
That was almost two years ago, during which time the cartoon has evolved into a full 13-episode series, jointly developed by Film Roman, Sci Fi Channel and CinéGroupe.
“We had never done primetime before, or targeted a show to the 18–34 crowd, so Tripping was a real departure for us,” adds Katsumoto. “It knew its audience and went directly to that, and was exactly the type of individualized target entertainment we had set as our goal.”
Sci Fi Channel’s svp Thomas Vitale notes that the original short has turned into a much more evolved show, with characters developed further and various stereotypes turned on their heads. The show’s creators, Chuck Austen and Chris Moeller, are no longer involved.
“After the original creators left, different writers were brought in, and finally we found the right rhythm and flavor of the show with Terry Sweeney and Lanier Laney, from Fox’s Mad TV,” says Vitale.
Printer-friendly version
Post new comment