Bloo's Gang was the first professional cartoon Harry and I ever
did. In 1996 a man named Fred
Seibert began working at Hanna-Barbera
where he started a new trend in animation, bringing control
back to the animator. Dubbed WHAT
A CARTOON, artists flocked from all corners of
the world to be a part of this amazing new endeavor.
Where
the 80's had brought on a time where the writers clearly controlled
the cartoon medium, the onset of Ren and Stimpy and ultimately
Cartoon Network
put some of the control back into the hands of the animator.
They called these creator driven cartoons and they have produced
some amazing results. Dexter's Lab, Cow and Chicken. Powerpuff
Girls, Johnny Bravo, Kids Next Door and many others were
all oringinally What-A-Cartoon
shorts.
From this one simple cartoon we learned how to storyboard, design,
direct, draw backgrounds and even how to time a cartoon. I owe
most of my career to the selling of this cartoon and so does
Harry. Bloo's Gang followeed the escapades
of three dogs. Bloo, Scully and Simon.
Bloo
was a Blue Labrador (a very rare breed).He was a boisterous
loudmouth with a passion for adventure and a nose for causing
trouble. Simon the sheepdog was laid back and mellow. He always
went with the flow and did what Bloo asked him to. No questions
asked. Simon was a nutjob. He liked pain and actually laughed
when you clocked him in the head. His googly eyes made it hard
for him to see so he was always walking into things. Scully
was gung-ho for anything Bloo could throw at him!
In
this film I key-animated, storyboarded, designed, directed and
even voiced Bloo and Scully/ It's interesting to note that if
you watch the pencil test you'll see that Bloo's voice is different.
the network wanted us to go back to the original voice even
after it was entirely animated and I had to ADR the whole film.
In other words I had to lip-sync it all as it played live and
they recorded me doing it. Sound hard? You're not kidding! I'll
bet you can't tell if I didn't tell you though!
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