Two creative kingpins — TV producer Tom Lynch and musician André “3000” Benjamin have joined forces to collaborate on genre-stretching project Class of 3000. All Class of 3000 images © & ™ 2006 Cartoon Ne

When the number one name in “tween” TV joins forces with a multitalented musician/performer in a field neither one has experience in, it’s hard to predict the results — or fathom the reason for the effort in the first place. Is it an ego trip for all involved, a serious commitment to a new medium, or a use-my-name-and-collect-the-check exercise in dilettantism?

All indications are that Class of 3000, the new animated series premiering Nov. 3, 2006, on Cartoon Network is the real deal: two creative kingpins — TV producer Tom Lynch and musician André “3000” Benjamin — collaborating on a genre-stretching project that’s taking them and the medium they’ve chosen in new directions.

With a 20-year record as the king of ‘tween programming, Lynch was looking for a new world or two to conquer. Beginning with Kids Incorporated in 1984, Lynch is responsible for some of the most successful live-action shows aimed at the 9-12 age group, including Nickelodeon’s The Secret World of Alex Mack. It was on a trip to Atlanta to pitch some projects at Turner when Lynch sat down with an old friend — Adult Swim’s Mike Lazzo.

As Lynch recounts the conversation, “Mike asked me what I wanted to do next. I told him I really wanted to do an animated show, and I want to have some music in it. He said, ‘great, you have a pilot with us — do what you want to do.’

“We started talking about artists we liked — he was talking about animators, I was talking about musicians. It was the kind of conversation you have with people you’ve known a long time about what’s moving you artistically.”

Music-wise, the two men discovered they shared an enthusiasm for the hip-hop duo Outkast, and the half of it known as André “3000” Benjamin in particular. After various people called other peoples’ people, Benjamin met with Lynch and Lazzo for a three-way, three-hour get together. As a Grammy-winning musician (Speakerboxxx/The Love Below), film actor (Idlewild), painter and clothing designer, Benjamin obviously had an excess of "free time" on his hands. The meeting ended with Benjamin signing on to the project with the suggestion that the show be set in Atlanta, his (and Cartoon Network’s) hometown.

It was the beginning of a two-and a-half-year development process, the first year of which consisted of Lynch and Benjamin brainstorming ideas and considering different visual styles. The project quickly outgrew its original Adult Swim conception. “I always wanted to do a show about a kids’ point of view of the denizens of the night around them,” Lynch recalls. “Street people always had a great fascination for me. It was originally rougher and harder, but as we talked it evolved into more of a regular type of show.” It was Michael Ouweleen [Cartoon Network’s svp/creative director] who said, ‘Guys, we’re going to get a much bigger audience if you do this in primetime.’ André said ‘Okay, but it has to be the most edgy show in primetime.’”

After Benjamin signed on to do the show, he and Lynch embarked on a two-and a-half-year development process. The project quickly outgrew its original Adult Swim conception and became a primetime show.

While several earlier Lynch shows (including Alex Mack, Galidor and The Journey of Alan Strange) featured CGI effects, Class of 3000 would be his first animated 2D effort. “I really had a lot to learn,” Lynch admits. “Cartoon Network gave me Joe Horne who had an incredible résumé, including Teamo Supremo and The Boondocks, and going back to Pee-Wee’s Playhouse — a really great, eclectic collection of shows. I told him ‘you’re going to have to teach André and me. This is a new area for us.’

Horne became the project’s production supervisor and director. Nonetheless, Lynch confesses to “making every mistake anybody could make, and adding some new ones” on his road to creating a 2D series. “I think my worst one was when the cut came back [from overseas animation]. I looked at it and said, ‘Okay, I have some rewrites.’ They said, ‘Uhhh, you get some retakes… ’ I had thought retakes meant whole scenes, but it was only moments or close-ups. That was an education right there, because in live-action I rewrite all the way through post-production, I change everything all the time.”

While not an animation “playa,” Benjamin had some definite ideas about the look he wanted. “We didn’t know a lot about animation, but not knowing gave us a kind of innocence. We were familiar with the shows that were on Cartoon Network already, and they had a certain style of their own — really boxy and squarey, like Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi. We wanted a different kind of flow; we wanted our show to look different. I think that gave us the original spark of “let’s have a flowy kind of look.”

Creating that “flowy” look fell to character designer David Colman and art director Valerio Ventura. Eighteen different designers tried their hand at the show’s characters before Colman (who worked on The Polar Express and Open Season) came along. Lynch admits that “André and I are very focused on what we want, but we didn’t have their language. They had to interpret what we were asking for. André wanted it to be cool and original looking; my notes were that it had to have a lyricism, a movement and body style almost like musical notes.”