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ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 4.3 - JUNE 1999
Television
Cartoon Network Premieres I Am Weasel. Cartoon Network's I Am Weasel premiered on June 10 at 8 pm (ET/PT). This show is a spin-off from David Feiss' currently airing Cow And Chicken series. Creator, writer, and director David Feiss' series will follow the exploits of the internationally famous I.M. Weasel and his insanely jealous arch-nemesis I.R. Baboon. Each half-hour show will consist of three 7 minute shorts. 52 shorts that were originally shown as part of Cow And Chicken will be joined by 27 new shorts which have been created for the series.I Am Weasel is the sixth original half-hour Cartoon Network series, joining The Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Bravo, Dexter's Laboratory, Cow And Chicken, and Ed, Edd N Eddy.
Nick Sets SpongeBob Premiere. SpongeBob Squarepants, a new animated series which is being produced at the Burbank Nicktoons Studio, will premiere on Nickelodeon on July 17 at 10:00 am ET/PT in the USA, becoming Nickelodeon's first original Saturday morning cartoon. A preview of the cartoon appeared on Nickelodeon on May 1, and received a 6.3 rating and a 25 share when it was watched by 6.9 million viewers. The cartoon features the adventures of SpongeBob, a hopelessly optimistic and earnest sea sponge whose good intentions often lead to bad results in his underwater world. Creator and executive producer Steve Hillenburg (Rocko's Modern Life, The Green Beret, Wormholes) studied art and marine biology before earning a degree from Cal Arts in Experimental Animation. Soon you will be able to visit Nick.com for more information about the series.
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Family Guy. Courtesy of and
© Fox Broadcasting Company.
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Family Guy Moves To Thursday. Fox has announced their US Fall prime-time lineup and it includes some surprises. For one,Toon Tuesday is no more. The closest to it is Toon Sunday. Fox's confidence in Family Guy appears to be high, as it has been moved to Thursday night where it will stand out as the only animated series, sandwiched between two new live-action shows, Manchester Prep and Action, shows that seem to be geared to the male 18-49 demographic group.
The following schedule began airing on Sunday, June 20. New episodes will
begin airing in September for all of the shows except for The PJs which
will return with new episodes as a mid-season replacement.
Thursday
9:00 FAMILY GUY
9:30 THE PJs
Sunday
7:30 KING OF THE HILL
8:00 THE SIMPSONS
8:30 FUTURAMA
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Machi Tantillo.
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Kit Laybourne.
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Oxygen Announces Animation Series For Women. Oxygen Media, Geraldine Laybourne's media company founded to provide content for women, will undertake cable television's first original animated prime-time series specifically targeting women. Machi Tantillo will be Executive Producer. "Our goal is to create the first animated television series for women, exploring issues from a female point of view. We also wanted to build an outlet specifically for female animators, whose distinctive voices will help us develop a unique Oxygen animation style and outlook," said Geraldine Laybourne, Oxygen's Chair and CEO. Ms. Tantillo will report to Kit Laybourne, Oxygen's Head of Animation and Special Projects. Prior to joining Oxygen, Ms. Tantillo spent six years at MTV Networks, most recently as Director of MTV Animation, co-supervising the production of MTV's animated series, features, specials and shorts. Before that, Ms. Tantillo worked on the development, scheduling and launching of pilots and new series. While at MTV, Ms. Tantillo also directed and produced several episodes of Beavis And Butthead, MTV's animated series, and produced several other animated projects, including Cartoon Girl. She began her tenure at MTV as a Production Manager for Beavis And Butthead. Oxygen has already approved five pilots for inclusion in this animated prime-time series which is comprised of 13 half-hour episodes, each containing a mix of 3 to 7 minute segments. Details about three of the upcoming segments are currently available. Closet Case, by Theresa Duncan, a producer of CD-ROMs such as Zero Zero and Chop Suey, is done in a water color technique, enhanced by After Effects, and features actual women who reveal themselves in the course of telling stories about their favorite clothes. Female Trouble, by Amy Sohn and John Raspo of Curious Pictures, is about a young, intelligent woman searching for love in a big city, and combines 2D animation with live action and After Effects-enhanced visual effects. KnitWits, by Candy Kuegel, a comedy based on an 11-minute film by Kuegel, is about a group of five ethnically diverse women who are brought together by their passion for knitting. It combines cel animation with digital backgrounds. Plans call for the development of one or more of these segments into a spin-off show. A date for the launch of the cable network has been set for February 2, 2000, which is a play on the company's name, Oxygen, since, in science, the symbol for the oxygen element is O2. Hence, the launch date of 02/02/2000. In addition, Oxygen's Creative Director and Co-Creator Kit Laybourne is developing two current animation projects exclusively for the Internet that will soon be available on Oxygen's website at www.oxygen.com/lab. One is Our Stories which turns the real life experiences of Oxygen's online members into a weekly series. It is scheduled to be on-line in about three weeks. The other is an ongoing narrative about a woman detective. It is scheduled to appear on-line around mid-September. Mr. Laybourne was Creative Director and Co-Creator of Gullah Gullah Island, the Nickelodeon pre-school program which won the Parent's Choice Award, and Co-Executive Producer of Liquid Television, the MTV animation series. Mr. Laybourne is also the author of The Animation Book, a respected textbook for animation students; a special digital edition of the volume was released early this year by Three Rivers Press.
Protozoa Will Produce A New Real-Time 3D Animation Series. Protozoa, a leading real-time 3D character animation studio, is producing BBC Choice's new breakthrough kids series, The Dog & Dinosaur Show. In production now, Protozoa, which did the real-time motion-capture animation for live TV show guest appearances by M&M's Crispy character (Will Vinton Studios created and animates the CGI character in the live-action commercial campaign), will produce 26 segments of the show using its proprietary performance animation software, ALIVE. Asked why he chose performance animation as opposed to traditional animation or other CG formats, BBC Choice Producer Jeremy Daldry said, "We're trying to build an animation presence on a channel that doesn't have one. Performance animation allows that because it is amazingly inexpensive. We have produced in one day what normally takes one month." The Dog & Dinosaur show features real-time animated hosts, Dog and Dinosaur, who interview celebrity guests from the world of pop music, television and entertainment. The interviews are combined with film and music reviews.
For an in-depth look at both Protozoa's amazing work, and their successful philosophy, read "Puppetology: Science or Cult?" by Brad deGraf and Emre Yilmaz in the February 1999 issue of Animation World Magazine.
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Ripley's Believe It or Not! © Fox
Family Channel. All Rights Reserved.
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Alphanim Announces New Productions. French production company Alphanim's Ripley's Believe It Or Not, a series, co-produced with Cinar, about a group of three friends who travel the world seeking out paranormal phenomena, will begin airing on the Fox Family Channel on Wednesday, July 14, 1999. Alphanim, which was created in 1997 by Christian Davin, has also announced a number of new television series that are in production or development.
In production:
Spaced Out is a family sitcom created by P. Colin-Thibert and J.C. Islert, and designed by J. Van Rijsselberge. It is about the Martin family living on a space station far out in space. It is scheduled to air on English language Cartoon Networks in late 2000. X-Duckx/Canards A L'extreme is a comedy co-produced with Cinar, created and designed by J. Van Rijsselberge, developed by N. Gallet and T. Barnes in collaboration with Malibu, California-based Main Brain. It is about two ducks, the hip Geextah and the slack Slax, who engage in extreme sports such as skyboarding off the Eiffel Tower, mountain-biking down the Grand Canyon, and extreme snackin' from the concession stand. Poe - Lite/Les Histoires Extraordinaires D'edgar Allan Poe. This is a spine-tingling, yet amusing series about the young Edgar Allen Poe and his friend Roger, a talking Raven, who live in a Gothic 18th century city.
In development:
Delta State, co-produced with Sunshine, is a half-hour animated sci-fi action series about four slacker anti-super heroes in their early twenties living in New York City. They use their supernatural powers against the Rift, a mysterious force that seeks control of the collective unconscious, and with it our minds. G-Shifters is an action-sci-fi series created by Sean Catherine Derek, Douglas Gayeton, and designed by Liberatore. It takes place in 2099, a time when genetic testing has created scores of previously unimaginable animal and plant hybrids that threaten life as we know it. That's Life/C'est La Vie (provisional title) is an educational series created by V. Dumont and J.L. Horwitz with L.D. Rabby and J. Boyle, and designed by H. Gittard. It follows the adventures of a group of kids who are trying to find answers and solve problems in their own unique way - with sometimes bizarre results.
Alphanim's founder and President of the SPFA, a French Animation Producers Union, Christian Davin, reviews Annecy's MIFA in this issue of Animation World Magazine.
Film Roman Announces New Shows. Film Roman Inc. has entered into an agreement with Howard Stern Productions and writer/producer Tracy Torme to create the animated sci-fi/comedy series Doomsday. While the concept was created by Torme, Howard Stern will play an integral role in the development of the script and in the production of the series, as well as provide the voice for one of the characters. Stern will invite a number of his celebrity friends to appear as special guest voices on the show. Doomsday tells the story of the Bradley family who travel in a motor-home across a post-apocalyptic United States in search of a new home and traditional family values. The Bradleys face a world turned upside down, where danger and stupidity lurk behind the remains of a civilization destroyed by a cataclysmic burst of radiation. Peabody Award-winning writer/producer Tracy Torme began his career as a staff writer at SCTV and Saturday Night Live and has since gone on to write and produce for a variety of television series including Sliders and Star Trek: The Next Generation, which he also created and executive-produced for three seasons. He has also written and produced the feature films Spellbinder, Fire In The Sky and Midnight Sky. Torme currently operates his own production company, Cheyenne 7 Productions. Howard Stern is host of The Howard Stern Show, a daily syndicated radio talk show.
Film Roman is also teaming-up with television writer/producer Norman Lear to develop Til The Fat Lady Sings, an animated prime-time comedy series. According to Norman Lear, the series will take an irreverent look at infirmity and old age, but also celebrate life and living. The show revolves around characters who gather at a senior citizen's recreation facility and who cope with the challenges of old age with hope, courage, and lots of humor. Roy A. Smith (former Supervising Director of Family Guy), is designing the show and is slated to be the Supervising Director. Emmy Award-winning television pioneer Norman Lear's credits include the live-action sitcoms All In The Family, One Day At A Time, Maude, Good Times and Sanford And Son.
The Cabbisons takes a hard look at today's society through the eyes of a 1970's sitcom family who are typically American--except for living in a cab. The Cabbisons travel through the world in their cab, picking up fictional characters and celebrity fares along the way. Film Roman joins forces with creators Jimmy Kimmel (Win Ben Stein's Money) and Adam Carolla (radio's Love Lines), whose The Man Show is about to debut on Comedy Central. The Cabbisons' first incarnation was on the Kevin & Bean radio show on KROQ-FM in Los Angeles. Dumont's Doublewide is an animated half-hour comedy series about a Midwest family living in a trailer park populated by eccentrics. The Dumonts muddle through with small town wisdom, talk show solutions and loving family dysfunctionalism.
Film Roman is currently producing The Simpsons and King Of The Hill for 20th Century Fox Television, The Downtowners for Warner Bros. Network, and is in post-production on Johnny Tsunami, a live-action movie for The Disney Channel currently scheduled to air in July. Additionally, Film Roman has a number of live-action and animated feature films and television programs in active development.
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"Phred," a character created by Data
Motion Arts for the Noggin Network. Courtesy of Data Motion Arts.
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DMA Designs Noggin Host Character. Data Motion Arts (DMA) has created the host character "Phred" for the new Noggin network. DMA's creative director Tony Caio was asked to create a character who is interactive, works on TV and on-line, and appeals to 6-to-12 year-olds. The result is a 2D character that appears tattooed on your forehead of different live-action faces. The Phred On Your Head show debuted on Nickelodeon on June 6th at 12:00 pm. You can view Phred on-line at www.noggin.com/build. Noggin is an educational TV channel and website, developed as a joint venture of Nickelodeon and Children's Television Workshop. DMA is a New York-based independent animation studio specializing in short-form programming with a focus on character creation.
PBS Adds Noddy To Daily Schedule. Beginning September 6, 1999,
Noddy will air Monday through Friday on PBS stations in the US as part
of PBS's "Ready to Learn" service. Noddy debuted in the US
in the fall of 1998. The program's success has led to the production of 25
new episodes, bringing the total number of episodes to 65. The new episodes
will begin airing in the fall of 1999. Based on the world-renowned children's
books by Enid Blyton, Noddy , a show for children ages three to seven,
is co-produced by BBC Worldwide, The Enid Blyton Company and Toronto-based
Catalyst Entertainment, Inc. Noddy is currently viewed on more than
200 PBS stations throughout the US, and in Canada on the Canadian Broadcasting
Company and TVOntario. Noted British author Enid Blyton first created the
classic Noddy stories about a little boy who lives in Toyland almost
50 years ago, which have since sold more than 200 million books worldwide.
In 1991, an animated series, based on Blyton's books, was created by the BBC
and aired in the United Kingdom. To create the current Noddy series,
Rick Siggelkow wove the pre-existing animation into an original live action
format, with new puppet characters, special effects, original songs and a
cast of adult and child actors. Noddy is set in an old-fashioned novelty
shop called Notions, Oddities, Doodads & Delights of Yesterday, or NODDY's,
owned by the retired sea captain, Noah Tomten. Every day after school, his
grandchildren, Kate and Truman, and their friend D.J. gather at the shop to
play and wait for their parents to finish work. As the children discover antique
toys, books and other treasures in the shop, their imaginations are sparked
and they begin to make up stories. The storytelling segues into the animated
adventures of Noddy the mischievous wooden boy who lives in Toyland.
Note: Readers may contact any Animation World Magazine contributor by sending an e-mail to editor@awn.com.
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