Sidekick Premieres on CARTOON NETWORK - June 13, 2011

Well, It's official!

CN Premieres - June 2011 (new series Sidekick - weekdays @ 3:30pm starting 6/13)

Hey everyone outside of Canada!!!

Be sure to catch my NEW series SIDEKICK premiering on CARTOON NETWORK!

**I posted the schedule below so that you don't miss any of the SIDEKICKINGNESS ;)

Mon Jun 13 - 3:30pm - 101 - Maxum Man Mark 2 / To Party Perchance to Party - (series premiere)
Tue Jun 14 - 3:30pm - 102 - Gone Gaga / Like Supervillain, Like Son
Wed Jun 15 - 3:30pm - 103 - A Monster Headache / Days of Golly
Thu Jun 16 - 3:30pm - 104 - No Party Like a Maxum Brain Party / Hello Dolly
Fri Jun 17 - 3:30pm - 105 - Amazing Super Chores / Maxum Mom
Mon Jun 20 - 3:30pm - 106 - Moustachesquatch / Endless Summer
Tue Jun 21 - 3:30pm - 107 - Identity Crisis / Fart of Darkness
Wed Jun 22 - 3:30pm - 108 - The Bogey Man / Crudburger
Thu Jun 23 - 3:30pm - 109 - The Henchman Challenge / Family Fun Day
Fri Jun 24 - 3:30pm - 110 - Slime Spree / The Short List
Mon Jun 27 - 3:30pm - 111 - This Hour Has 22 Million Minutes / Haloweenie
Tue Jun 28 - 3:30pm - 112 - Eric Squared / Sqwuak
Wed Jun 29 - 3:30pm - 113 - Internal Affairs / Virtual Mayhem
Thu Jun 30 - 3:30pm - 114 - The Maxum Switch-eroo / Sleepless in Splittsboro
Fri Jul 1 - 3:30pm - 115 - Everybody is Side-Fu Fighting / Comic Book Zombies

MORE AWESOME BG'S...

Please visit CHRIS BORGES to see more of his awesome work!

MCH Hallway Concept...

 Concept design by Cauê Zunchini - visit his blog - you'll be happy you did.

FAN EXPO...

Signed Vinyl Crush and mini standee Harry's at Toronto's Fan Expo 2010.

THANK YOU!!!

A big thanks to everyone who helped us reach and surpass our goal on INDIEGOGO. Your donation are much appreciated and will help us to put together our pilot 'animatic'!

The MonstroCity High blog is now public - so please enjoy all the MCH development since it's inception in 2005 - from the making of the vinyl figures to concept art to test animation, interviews and sad attempts at me trying to write the theme song.

Although we DID reach our funding goal it is still at an early stage and we will hopefully have a NEW revised page at INDIEGOGO with a NEW goal and a load of NEW vip perks and opportunities for fans to get involved. So stay tuned and once again...

THANK YOU!

 

THEME SONG...

So the theme song is being worked on right now and I was asked to write the lyrics for it. What can I say? I don't know anything about music and I've never writtin lyrics for a song before so... here it goes.

Mom's and Pop's should warn their kids,
 about weird junk that shouldn't mix.

Like cats and dogs and flies and frogs

And monster-human cliquey clicks.

The earth has torn, it's open wide,

it swallows the petty rivals inside.

Their two worlds are in these halls,

trapped inside these stitched up walls.

Do or die in MostroCity High,

and after all be ready to

Try and fight in MostroCity High,

to make it work and live as one

inside a school that might be fun.

I know, I know - STINK. 

But If you can do better - or have any ideas to help my lyrics...let me know. It would be greatly appreciated.

Ummm yeah...

So in the process of transferring all these post to this NEW blogspot...I sorta messed up. Now some of the images have magically vanished - and not in a really cool David Blayne sorta way but more of a sucky, oh crap sorta way.

I will be fixing them - but it's gunna take some time. SORRY.

**UPDATE**

Well...I guess it didn't take as long as
I thought.

MCH PLAYA...

Poses...

Getting your character comps into a new pose is relatively easy. I start by dropping my comps onto the stage and size them according to the scenes specs.

I then take a look to see what parts of the characters need to be reposed and break those elements down and roughly position them into the desired pose in the storyboard.

Then I draw the revisions with the comps underneath as a guide. This ensures that the models will stay roughly to scale.

Then I clean up the rough line in Flash, making sure that the new clean line is consistent to the original comps clean line.

And last, I color and make each new element a symbol. Once the symbols are created I go in and add a shadow layer. Now my new poses are ready to be animated in the scene.

3D Help?

Here's a great scooter that was started for the project. If anyone out there knows how to 'toon render' this puppy, I'd love your help.

Direction Notes...

So scenes have started to come in. I asked alot of you to do 'custom' posing for your scenes and I hope that isn't causing too many headaches - but I do think it's important to 'draw' the characters, or their parts when need be.

Here's a scene that I made some design notes on. So, no worries if your drawings aren't perfectly on model - I will help get you there.

W.I.P

~CLICK~

The scene is shaping up but still a work in progress.

MCH - SEQ. 06 (W.I.P)

Still posing out the characters for the scene.

Later in the series, Crush transforms his beater car into a hotrod to race Chaz. I posted these before but felt it was relevent to post them again.

Here's a simple parking lot BG. I typically color in flash, then take the image into photoshop and adjust the colors till i'm happy. I then bring it back into the vector based flash program and eye dropper the new colors onto the image. I find I can keep the image free from aliasing this way.

~CLICK~

Above is a small sc. within this seq. staring Pit, Cherri Berry's 'not so twin' twin sister with a rough car guide for ref.

This sequence is a bit bigger and will take longer to do, so I'll post it up a little at a time so the old blog doesn't sit idle.

Above: I've pieced together some of the board panels to get a full shot of the layout. This will be the rough guide I'll need for the background art.

Storyboard panels: Ted Collyer

MCH - Test Sc.05

~CLICK~

I had alot of fun posing out this scene. Not the best animation in the world...but I never claimed to be an animator, so get off my back man!

Voice of Kent: Sean Cookson

Kent Design: Steve Lambe

MCH - Test Scene 04

~CLICK~

Another sequence for MonstroCity High.

Still waiting to hear back from the network... Either way, I'm having tons of fun animating these little test scenes.

Voices: Chaz - Christian Potenza, Cherri - Deanna Marsigliese.

MCH - Test Sc. 03

~CLICK~

Voice: Super Intendant Ackerman - Ricardo Durante

Another MCH Test Sc...

~CLICK~

Here's another test sc. for MonstroCity High. I've been choosing simple scenes to start cuz there relatively easy to get through. Next I'd like to tackle a scene with a bit more action in it.

We'll be talking with a network later today about going to series with this, so....cross yer fingers for us.

Voices: Harry - Mark Ackland, Crush - Ted Collyer

MCH ANIM TEST...

~CLICK TO VIEW~

Here's a quick test sc. for Monstrocity I did last week. I'm not much of an animator but I think this turned out pretty cool.

Thanks to Ted Collyer (Clone High Director) who voiced Crush and Deanna Marsigliese (Author, illustrator of The Art of Deanna Marsigliese) who is the voice of Cherri. Great job guys.

Poses...

BAT BOYS...

BIG FOOT...

Turns out his feet aren't so BIG after all.

A BIG THX...

I wanted to give a huge shout out to Lisa Jones, Curtis Lelash and Khaki Jones over at Cartoon Network. These are the 3 amazing exects who were championing our show for the past 6 months.

Mark and I just wanted to make sure you knew how much we appreciated the (very) short time we worked together while developing Monstrocity High. The supportive collaboration we got from the team at Cartoon Network is something we don't experience too often.

It was very refreshing to have discussions with people who "get it", and who choose to encourage and support creators rather than micro-manage them and force ideas of what their show "should be".

Thank you for believing in our show and us as creators with a unique vision.

Better News...

Well, things are looking up. Got a call from an awesome US network interested in MCH!!!

and they called us - what the?!?! that's a first for me ;)

Anyway - they say they'll get in touch after they view all the materials. hoping for the best.

CRAP...

Back in September Monstrocity High was optioned by Cartoon Network and for the past 6 months we've been developing the project with much anticipation from both sides. Unfortunately, due to the economy, CN had to pass on the series and now we find ourselves with a killer show and no where to show it.

We plan to keep developing and pitching in hopes of finding a NEW home for Monstrocity High.

Any producers interested can contact me for bible, script, storyboard and designs.

3D Hot Rod...

WIP - Jeff Size models Crush's car.

SOLD...

Well it's been a long time coming but we finally sold our price jewel. It looks as though (if all goes according to plan) that MonstroCity High will be an animated series on an AMAZING network - to be announced at a later date ;)

We just finished boarding the pilot episode and with some luck the powers that be will love it as much as we do and it'll be fast tracked into production for this years block.

Cross yer fingers.

MONSTER MASH...

Re-designing...AGAIN

MCH Development...

Off To Modeling...

Crush's Hot-Rod before and after the EXTREME MAKEOVER.