Skunk Fu! gives props to Chinese mythology, but adds a Western twist. Instead of being a force for good, the bitter Dragon wants to take over the Valley.

Enter the Dragon
For a comedic show, Skunk Fu! gives perhaps surprising props to Chinese mythology, but it also adds a Western twist. "There's a dragon because the show needed a nemesis. In the backstory we showed in our trailer at the Forum, Panda and Dragon were once friends. In Chinese folklore dragons are a force for good -- but we've flipped it over to make him bad. In our version, Dragon tried to save the animals from a drought by making it rain," an act of hubris beyond his Heaven-assigned duties.

"Heaven punished him by taking away his power over fire. Now he has to stay inside an icy [extinct] volcano. He's become bitter with Panda and the rest of the animals as a result, and wants to take over the Valley.

"The rest of the backstory was that the shortsighted Stork accidentally delivered Skunk to Panda because both are black-and-white. Since he's a North American animal, he's your fish-out-of-water growing up in a Zen background; the comedy comes from Panda being calm and collected while Skunk is an overexcited character. It's a clash of cultures: the Zen master trying to keep cool while his student is getting himself into trouble because he's not following instructions."

As Pepe Le Pew would tell you, you can't have a cartoon skunk without his scent, an intrinsic part of the show's humor. And in an age where no cartoon seems complete without at least one fart joke, Skunk Fu! takes the gag a step or two farther. "Because he's not surrounded by other skunks, he doesn't quite understand or control his 'stink power.' It only happens when he's surprised, and then it's very effective -- but he can't force himself to do it.

"We also realized early on that we couldn't have him use it all the time because it's extremely potent. Sometimes the other animals use it to get themselves out of a sticky situation and deliberately surprise him. When he does use it, he can knock out a whole forest of ninja monkeys [the countless evil minions of Baboon, the Dragon's henchmonkey], but everyone else is knocked out too. It's a last resort -- the nuclear option. For the most part though, Skunk resolves things by normal kung fu or by outwitting the ninja monkeys, who aren't very clever."

Invasion of the Martial Arts Mammals
Skunk Fu!'s band of beasts aren't the only critters martial-artsing it up in an imaginary China this summer. DreamWorks' high-profile (and skunk-free) Kung Fu Panda is days away from opening, a coincidence Young chalks up to simple synchronicity. "We found out a while ago. I suppose these things happen; we didn't know whether to be worried, scared, or excited.

Cartoon Saloon's next project, Brendan and the Secret of Kells, is pure 2D and headed for the big screen. © Cartoon Saloon, Les Armateurs and Vivi Film.

"I'd guess Kung Fu Panda may have been in development just as long as Skunk Fu!, but entirely independently of our show. We're obviously over here in Ireland and have no connection with anybody involved with the film or with DreamWorks. It's one of those cases where two ideas come out of the blue at the same time. We went public with Skunk Fu! at the Cartoon Forum in 2003 and we'd already spent about a year and a half on and off working on the concept. I think we'd already gone on the air before we heard news of Kung Fu Panda coming out."

With their first series an international success, Young and the rest of Cartoon Saloon are looking ahead to a second Skunk Fu! season while developing a trio of new shows they hope to bring to the market later this year. They've also set their sights on the big screen with the feature film version of that long-ago promo/pitch summer project from the then-new Cartoon Saloon, Brendan and the Secret of Kells. "It's a mixture of Irish mythology and actual history, based on a thousand-year-old illuminated manuscript, The Book of Kells."

Directed by Tomm Moore, the film "is a co-production with the people who did The Triplets of Belleville and it's nearly finished. It'll be in theaters here in January, distributed by Disney. It's going to be one of the only pure 2D features coming out and it's an amazing film, animated on paper and with painted backgrounds. We're currently in negotiation with U.S. distributors."

It's probably another case of synchronicity, but even as DreamWorks develops a spin-off Kung Fu Panda TV series for Nickelodeon, Cartoon Saloon is brainstorming a feature-length Skunk Fu! movie. "It would deal with Dragon actually coming out of his mountain and Skunk somehow being the key to defeating him. We can't do that in the series because Dragon would be able to easily annihilate everyone. In the same way, we wouldn't have much of a series if Skunk were able to control his stink power and knock everybody out by just farting. The show would be finished early on."

Joe Strike is a regular contributor to AWN. His animation articles also appear in the NY Daily News and the New York Press.