The original animated Fat Albert series were a staple of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

“Eric Goldberg was gracious enough to animate several key scenes in Fat Albert. Whenever he brought a scene in, the rest of the animators would study his scenes a frame at a time,” Bert recalls. “Eric is, in my opinion, the greatest animation genius of our generation and his scenes raised the bar for the rest of us.”

The animation also includes a handful of CG shots, mainly in and around the Cosby kids’ junkyard hangout. The CG crew consisted of Thomas Dickens, Jennifer Hachigian Jerrard, Paul Runyan and Dave Williams. Cosby (who’s apparently a big believer in cartoons, considering the fact that he’s also the exec producer of both Nick Jr.’s Little Bill and Nick At Nite’s Fatherhood animated series) was adamant regarding the employment of the latest advances in computerized animation. (Fortunately, these scenes support the crew’s hand-drawn animation rather than upstage it.) Bert comments on Cosby’s involvement, “He did receive copies of what we were doing and gave notes. We were always pleased when word got back that he was happy with what we were doing.”

The animated sequences’ color designer was Alan (Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas) Bodner, whose artistic mentor was Irv Kaplan, the supervisor of backgrounds on Filmation’s original Fat Albert series) and Susan Goldberg, with backgrounds painted by Dennis Venizelos. They succeeded in evoking — and far surpassing — the color palette of the backgrounds of the original Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.

Chris (Kim Possible) Bailey served as an exec consultant for Fox. Says Bert, “Our crew at Warner Bros. owed a great deal for giving us his support. It was key to selling the style of animation we wanted to do with the Fox executives as he was our liaison to Fox.”

Director Klein, who cites the great animator Freddie Moore as one of his primary influences, has been making his own animated films since he was 13. He began his animation career as a high school intern at Film Roman in the early 1990s. But long before then, Bert was a big fan of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids: “I loved the show as a kid. I found it strangely compelling to watch, but I couldn’t say why. I liked Dumb Donald best because of that crazy hat.”

Since then, he’s worked on such notable (and diversely so) animated projects as Disney’s The Lion King and Fantasia 2000’s “Rhapsody In Blue” sequence, FOX’s The Simpsons, Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes: Back in Action and even Peter Jackson’s live-action The Return of the King. Bert also recently co-directed (with his friend Teddy Newton), Boys’ Night Out, a short cartoon. He is currently handling layout and animation duties on the “Donald Duck” sequence of a new Disney anniversary special directed by Renegade Animation’s Darrell Van Citters.

This new Fat Albert may not be your father’s version of the character, but what th’ hey, hey, hey? Cartoonist Floyd Norman — who was present at the creation of the original Hey! Hey! Hey! It’s Fat Albert TV special 35 years ago — says, “No matter how the movie turns out, it’s nice to know that a bunch of truly talented artists had the opportunity to do some really great work on the film.” In animated form (at least) — thanks to Bert and his crew — the resuscitated Fat Albert is guaranteed to be even bigger and better than ever!

Scott Shaw! is an award-winning writer/cartoonist who’s recently worked on Krypto The Superdog and What’s New, Scooby-Doo? for Warner Bros., KatBot for Funny Garbage, Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas, Mulan 2 and American Dragon: Jake Long for Disney and The Adventures of Scooter McDoogal for Education Comics. Scott!’s work has also appeared in Bongo’s Simpsons Comics No. 100 and Bart Simpson Comics No. 20, and he’s recently illustrated “The Dozens” and new “Garbage Pail Kids” collector cards for Topps, Inc., package art for Post Pebbles cereal and print ads for Islands restaurants. Additionally, Scott! writes Oddball Comics, a weekly Internet column about “the craziest comicbooks ever published” for Comic Book Resources at www.comicbookresources.com You can also visit Scott!’s own Website at www.shawcartoons.com.