Bronk & Bongo

The summer tour continues in Istanbul! This mosque is just outside the walls of Topkapi Palace. Throw a Turkish lira and you hit a mosque around this joint. Which is why we don’t let B & B handle the money. In Turkey, we gave the hotel clerk an assignment: Try and find Perry’s and Lily’s Turkish babysitter from nearly 8 years ago when she lived in NY. Lily was just a baby, Perry just 3, but we have deep connections to this woman. Sadly, we had only her name. A day later we arrived at the hotel and she was waiting in the lobby! A wonderful reunion. She is now a partner in an advertising agency and told Alan a book he turned her onto, “Positioning,” created her carrer. Even B & B were moved to tears by the whole event. Their parts are falling off from moisture. . . [Read more…]

I recently stumbled upon a internet poll regarding RANDOM CARTOONS. It basically asked diehard cartoon fans what they thought of the up coming season of OH YEAH! now officially titled RANDOM cartoons. And 90% of the posts were completely apathetic about it. And some were downright belligerent.

The idea that these are 39 shorts that are created by true animators who are fans of the medium is just flat out amazing. I know that I feel blessed to have this opportunity. I thank Fred for believing in me and my ideas and all of the other creators as well.

As an insider I have seen shows get produced for all the wrong reasons or worse, good ideas mangled into horrendous ones by focus groups and corporate lapdogs. In fact it’s a wonder a good cartoon can even be made today. There are so many demographics, business goals and political and [Read more…]

So I after making my last few tweaks I am proud to say I have finally finished doing the turnarounds for all the characters appearing in the short and I have to say thanks to ERIK CHICHESTER for his help in fleshing out my designs and being the voice of reason and getting me to stop when the characters were done. Thanks bud! If not for Erik I would still be maniacally re-drawing my first pass. One of the characters, ANGRY ERIK (see below) was designed in his honor. Anyway, as you all may know, turnarounds are what helps the animators and board artists know what your character looks like from all angles.

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…you’ve got to rearrange, who your characters are and what they’re going to be. So as I mentioned yesterday, after the voice record I realized I had to go back and revisit certain characters that I had already designed because the voice actors brought out certain new aspects that the visuals didn’t reflect.

Biggest change came to a character I named GARY GEEZER, after our handsome, talented and stoic director GARY CONRAD. I had designed him as a somewhat old character but JEFF BENNETT played him a little older, crotchety and mummified than I had expected. So it was back to the drawing board for me.

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So I just realized we didn’t finish talking about our trip out to LA. Well the day after the VO we took all the raw audio into the editing room to composite our final audio take. We blew through this in about 3 hours and turned our rough cut of 11 minutes into our final take clocking in around 5 minutes and 36 seconds.

Now since the actors vocal performances helped better define the characters and some of the actions in my original board weren’t all blocked out and the fact that we wrote new lines the morning of the record we now needed to go back to the drawing board, literally.

Next step, the whole cartoon is re-boarded to the final audio. Meanwhile I’m going back and revisiting some of the character designs as the actors VO performance brought out certain characteristics that should be reflected in the visuals.

Special thanks [Read more…]

Overlooking the crystal clear waters of the Aegean. Incidentally, that’s Lily and Perry, Bronk & Bongo’s first fans, who laughed and laughed at the first storyboard — then gave us notes! Future network execs? Bloggingly yours, Manny and Alan

The ferry from Pereus to Lesvos takes all night. You can eat dinner, fell the salt air, hang at the bar, watch soccer on TV. There is always soccer on TV here. Three or four channels of it. But they’ve never heard of Spongebob!!! And they call themselves cultured! Bloggingly yours, Manny and Alan

Since blogging is considered a form of promotion, apparently all costs of my vacation with the family are deductible as a business promotional expense. So says my tax accountant, Yorgo Nagetit. At least, I think that’s what he says. His faxes from prison are sometimes hard to read. Anywho – Here are the kids outside our Athens hotel, where you see the walls of the Acropolis directly next to Bongo’s nose. Within the walls, the legendary Parthenon and the Theatre of Dionysus, where the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes were performed – the birthplace of drama! How far we’ve come theatrically from the Greeks to the geeks. Bloggingly yours, Manny and Alan.

You know over the years I’ve worked on hundreds of animated spots here at NICKELODEON. Written, animated and directed more spots than I can shake a stick at…and I’ve been known to be quite a voracious stick shaker in my day. “Here comes that assh*le Stick shaker!” people would say. Then I’d come over and wave a stick in their face vigorously until they would cringe their face all up like they didn’t like it all, sometimes playfully punching me in the face for encouragement.

For the most part most of the spots I work on make it to air. But there is a small archive of spots that for one reason or another have been singled out and indefinitely shelved. Never to be seen by the likes of human eyes. Not fit for consumption by the eager masses. Doomed to rot a lonely, unobserved death. Killed in their prime. Jettisoned [Read more…]

After looking over some of the board artist samples Gary had presented us with we started butting heads over the final choice of whom would have the honor of illustrating the final board for Bronk and Bongo. It seemed like we had hit an impasse.

With neither side refusing to budge I knew I would have to resort to using my feminine wiles to get him to see things my way.
Suddenly, Gary saw things our way. At least that’s what it sounded like he said. It was hard to make out through the screaming and sobbing. Sure it may seem like cheating, but sometimes you just have to resort to your god given charms to get your way.

Remember boys and girls, with great power comes great responsibility.

Bloggingly yours, Alan and Manny