Wachtenheim/Marianetti LLC., current animators behind the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVES TV FUNHOUSE with Robert Smigel, is putting the finishing touches on a pilot, STROKER AND HOOP, set to premiere Aug. 1, 2004 at 11:30 pm during Cartoon Networks Adult Swim.
STROKER AND HOOP is about a wannabe detective named John Stroker, his naive gung-ho partner Hoop and their early model back-talking hatchback car named C.A.R.R. Stroker is willing to help anyone dumb enough to respond to his tiny ad in the yellow pages. Help is never more than a phone call away unless Stroker is really hungover or CARR gets them incredibly lost downtown. Stroker & Hoop don't always solve the case, but they do get to sleep late, drive fast and shoot guns for a living. STROKER AND HOOP will have its series premiere in 2005.
The pilot was written and created by Jeff Olsen and Chris Kelly, in-house creatives at Cartoon Network, who directors David Wachtenheim and Robert Marianetti have worked very closely with. The two directors were contacted by producer Evan Adler to come on board the project based on their sharp comedic timing and sensibilities that theyve shown over the last five seasons producing animation for SNL as well as Comedy Centrals cult hit also entitled TV FUNHOUSE.
Wachtenheim and Marianetti storyboarded and directed the STROKER AND HOOP pilot from Scarsdale, New York, while supervising animators over the Internet through Turner Studios, which provided all the animation, color and compositing. Besides the directing, W/M and a small crew of artists did all the character design and background designs, trying to create a style that would stand out from other shows already on the Adult Swim block.
We boarded and designed traditionally on paper, timed the rough animatic in Flash, then scanned our cleaned up board panels and sent them over to Turner Studios, said Wachtenheim. They imported them into Flash and animated the whole thing in Flash, which we would review almost daily over the Internet.
Wachtenheim/Marianetti LLC. (www.wmanimation.com) is getting ready to begin another season of SNLs TV FUNHOUSE with Robert Smigel. One of the animation duos recent SNL cartoons, a timely imagining of Iraqi childrens programming entitled Saddam and Osama, won first place for animation at the ASIFA-East Animated Film Festival and has just been accepted into competition for the Ottawa International Animation Festival. They also won second place for a cartoon they created for Sesame Workshop about a precocious duck entitled Q. They had created two shorts for SESAME STREETS 35th anniversary season and will provide them with more cartoons for next season as well.
