Hornswiggle

At our last OH YEAH “Town Hall” meeting it was suggested we register a domain name for our character. Good idea! I have now done so.

HORNSWIGGLE is being prepped for production. The timing and track reading is in progress.

I’m also preparing the official HORNSWIGGLE publicity postcard.

Speaking of which, if you haven’t seen the previous 100+plus Oh Yeah/Frederator postcards - buy this book:

Original Cartoons: The Frederator Studio Postcards 1998-2005 edited by Eric Homan & Fred Seibert.

Hornswiggle is being voiced by veteran actor Rene Auberjonis.

Rene came in to audition for BIRDSDORF, but while we had him in the recording booth we had him try out for HORNSWIGGLE as well. His take was original and impressive - totally off the cuff and hilarious.

You may know Rene from his various roles - as Odo on STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE or from Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H, or his current role on BOSTON LEGAL.

Or you may know his voice from various cartoon series - such as Xiaolin Showdown, Justice League - or animated features such as THE LITTLE MERMAID (as Chef Louie), CATS DON’T DANCE and LITTLE NEMO.

His unique vocals on HORNSWIGGLE are nothing like any of those. In fact, in my humble opinion, this may be the greatest performance ever given by an actor — as a rhino.

By the way, his last name is pronounced o-ber-jen-waah.

The photo above was taken at the Annual Asifa Hollywood ANNIE AWARDS event I believe two or three years ago. The fellow at left is Leonard Maltin, the guy without a tux at right is yours truly. The guy in the middle is Earl Kress.

I enlisted Earl to write HORNSWIGGLE because I needed the script to have a classic cartoon feel - and no one is better suited to this task than he. I had written the original story with my pal Bill Vallely, but Earl wrote and re-wrote (several times) the final draft, strengthening the concept (and adding much to the humor) with each successive rewrite.

In case you haven’t heard of Earl Kress, let me point out a few of his many many credits. Earl started out at Disney Feature Animation, working on THE FOX AND THE HOUND and other material during those choatic days pre-Michael Eisner. He became [Read more…]

An encounter with Hornswiggle could be hazardous to your health - and this one ends up in a hospital.

When my friend Cheryl Chase asked me if there were any parts for women in my short Hornswiggle I told her that their weren’t. But I had forgotten we had a super-small part for a Nurse at the end of the film.

So I called Cheryl back and offered her the part of the Nurse without an audition. No need to. Cheryl has been one of my best friends for 17 years and she’s best known as the voice of “Angelica” on Nickelodeon’s RUGRATS.

I met Cheryl in 1988 when I was casting for voices for the original English dub of Miyazaki’s MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (I was a producer of the dub). Cheryl got the part of Mai, and we’ve been buddies ever since. After TOTORO, I introduced Cheryl to John K. when [Read more…]

Friday was a blast - and splat! - and a howl - and a scream (multiple screams in fact) and it had nothing to do with Halloween.

Friday we recorded Jeff Bennett’s lines for Zan-Tar, our ego-centric jungle man, who meets his match in Hornswiggle.

We record on Wednesday, so Team Hornswiggle is preparing the script, tightenting the dialogue, addressing network notes.

So who’s who in our cast? We have parts for four voices. Today I’ll tell you about two of them:

Maurice LaMarche is Birdsdorf - you know him best as “The Brain” on PINKY & THE BRAIN, but Maurice is a man of a million voices and has had major parts in literally hundreds of cartoons.

Jeff Glen Bennett is Zan-Tar- best known for his voice of “Johnny Bravo”, this guy is another vocal chameleon - his Zan-Tar is just what I wanted.

Two down, two to go. Next post I’ll give you the rest.

We record next week! We are going over the boards and making a dialogue script for the actors. We are looking for everyplace to add vocal effects - we may not need ‘em, but it’s better to over-record in case we need a sound rather than call the cast back for pick-ups.

Above, Hornswiggle is looking for some cough lozenges.

I couldn’t help showing off this image in color.

(Yes, I know… I’ll try to post larger images… )

That’s Hornswiggle dressed up like his hero Zan-Tar.

Not ready to announce our cast yet - but I think we’ve found our voice actors among the auditions we held yesterday.

Nickelodeon has a nice little recording studio on premises. I’d never been in it before yesterday. It had free candy and fruit. That’s all I seem to recall - other than the great talent that came in to read for the various parts.

Oh, Pen Ward (”Adventure Time”) came by to watch at the very end.

Spent the afternoon with G7 (Rich Arons, Tom T. and Tom Sito) brainstorming ideas on what the main title card would look like. Ten seconds on screen, but a very important ten seconds.