Cartoonstitute Shorts Online

Yes, you read that correctly. Cartoon Network has uploaded every single short from their cancelled shorts program, Cartoonstitute. I couldn't possibly wait to share it with you all. Here's a link to the glorious page: Cartoonstitute on Youtube. Also, the highest hated short will be greenlighted to become an animated series. Loving it!

EDIT: The account was closed the next day.

I'm still alive...

Until I get my act together, enjoy this little "Haruhi-Chan" cartoon and drop by your local library and withdrawal Dan Nadel's "Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries, 1900-1969." "Art Out of Time" is a good read in a way. It's not so much a book as it is a collection of comic strips from which you are supposed to study from and improve your own drawings. Basically, it's like John Kricfalusi's blog, but less in-depth about it all. Still worth to check out, since the book includes the works of Milt Gross and Gene Deitch.

Assorted Animation News

• The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack will have a third season of 20 episodes, bringing it to a total of 60 half-hours.
• Chowder will end at three seasons, with 49 episodes. Fans will get a grand finale by the name of "Chowder Grows Up," which showcases him as an adult now running his own catering company.
• George Krstic, co-creator of Megas XLR, will be attending DragonCon to talk about the current status of the show and release never-before-seen footage.
• A Looney Tunes revival is currently in production at Warner Bros. Animation. Known as Laff Riot, the series is likely to air on Cartoon Network. The amount of episodes being made is currently unknown.
• Adventure Time with Finn & Jake will premiere in the Winter of 2010. Generator Rex, Sym-Bionic Titan, and Scooby-Doo: Mystery Inc. will also premiere around this time.

*EDIT: Season Three of Flapjack appears to have only 6 episodes...

Cartoon Review: The Awesome Chronicles of Manny and Khan

As many of you should know, Cartoon Network's Cartoonstitute was cancelled a few months back, with only 14 shorts completed out of the targeted 39 (check this out for the list of shorts and creators). This is just one of the 14 that were made, and at the time of writing, none of the others have been leaked so far. Also, the leaked Manny and Khan short doesn't even have the ending. . .

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Name: The Awesome Chronicles of Manny and Khan

Creator(s): Josh Lieberman & Joey Giardina

Running Time: 7-to-8 minutes

Network: Cartoon Network

Leaked: July 18th, 2009

Rating: B

Created by two inexperienced animators, Manny and Khan started out slightly different from the final product. It started out as "Bigfoot & Gnome," and was pitched on June 5th 2007 to Craig McCracken and Rob Renzetti. They both liked the idea, but wanted the characters to be more unique in appearence. Gnome, after a lot of revisions became Khan (a dwarf wearing a leprechaun costume). Bigfoot, after a lot more thought, ended up as Manny (a man-o-puss: half-man, half-platypus). With McCracken and Renzetti both accepting these versions of the characters, the short when into production. So now that we have the backstory, let's begin the review.

The plot of this short was simple and basic: two friends play with a ball. The short starts with Khan refusing to play with Manny, insisting that he has important work to do. To quiet his friend, Khan throws the ball down and helps Manny get down to the ground and retrieve the ball. However, he discovers that he has been tricked by the Man-o-Puss, since he can't get back up the tree without his friend's help. When Khan finally decides to play, seeing no other option, the real fun begins. With both of them pretending that the grass surrounding the ball is lava, they conjure numerous plans to retrieve the ball.

To be honest, the cartoon gave me a warm feeling while watching it. It reminded me of one of my favorite episodes of Spongbob Squarepants: "The Idiot Box." In that episode, the characters of Spongebob and Patrick spent the majority of the 11 minutes using their imagination to have fun. The same is done here: an ordinary idea such as fetching a ball is utterly boring on its own. However, when they imagine that the stuff surrounding it is actually lava, it suddenly becomes an adventure. The duo must come up with with some pretty creative ideas to get that red rubber ball back. I won't spoil the methods used to get the ball, but I will say that they were nice to watch.

It would be foolish to say that John Kricfalusi's animated series Ren and Stimpy didn't have an effect on the short. The show pretty much redefined animated series (at least for a child audience) when it hit the airwaves back in 1991. In fact, near the beginning, when Manny was asking Khan to play with him, the character sounded EXACTLY like Stimpy. And the way these characters interacted also seemed a bit like Ren and Stimpy. But the only reason why I won't call them R&S knock-offs is for the simple fact that we barely know the characters. In Josh Lieberman's own words:

I believe both Joey and myself know a lot more about these characters than is presented in the cartoon. It is hard to know everything about a person from a single seven minute conversation, heck, you probably won't know anything about that person realistically. He or she will be categorized within the larger compartments of your brain as a general archetype until further information is gathered.

The backgrounds for this short were nothing short of perfect for it. It really did feel like a dense forest, gave off a nice Little Golden Book feel, and the characters never seemed to be out of place in this world. The fact that the character's live inside a tree with a huge hole in it is pretty absurd, but no stranger than a pineapple underneath the sea. The voice-acting was also pretty great, and felt like they truly belonged to the characters. Thus, they truly came to life above my eyes.

So why did I give this series a "B," despite loving a lot of the material? Some jokes, like the "magic carpet" (darn, gave away one of their methods) fell flat, due to their predictability. The short is also home to a good amount of screaming, something that I don't think the animation world needs anymore of. The Awesome Chronicles of Manny and Khan: a good try by two animation rookies, and I always find myself watching it over and over again.

*You can see the short yourself at the Big Star Animation Studios website. Go to clips, and click on the picture of "Manny and Khan."

Do The Bartman

Written by the now-deceased Micheal Jackson, Do the Bartman ended up becoming one of the most popular songs in several countries. In fact, in became #1 in five countries in 1991. Hey, I needed something animated that had something to do with the dude.

Cartoon Review: Total Drama Action

Total Drama Island was one of Cartoon Network's most popular series last year. It broke several records, with the finale getting the best ratings that the channel has gotten since 2002. It was due to this success that Cartoon Network picked up the second season (Total Drama Action), got total merchandising rights for the series in North America, and a third season is being produced. Some people are puzzled why a reality series spoof is doing so well, while others aren't so surprised...

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Name: Total Drama Action

Creator(s): Jennifer Pertsch and Tom McGillis

Running Time: 22 minutes

Network: Teletoon (Canada) and Cartoon Network (United States)

Premiere: January 11, 2009 (Canada) and June 11, 2009 (United States)

Rating: C-

Total Drama has a simple concept: a bunch of teens competing in a reality show to win cash. It's a pretty simple idea that has been done and proven to work many times. But what makes Total Drama different from all the others, and why is it so popular? Is it the fact that its animated? The fact that it mocks the common conventions of reality shows? What ever is the secret behind the show's success, it extends to the second season (which premiered to the network's best ratings this year). The story behind TDA is that, after losing the chance for a million dollars, 14 contestants from the previous season are back to reclaim it. Leaving Camp Wawanakwa for an abandoned film set, the new season has the campers competing in challenges based on movie genres: from horror to science-fiction to crime. It took me over a month to actually find humor within TDI, so how good of a start did TDA have? Just like TDI: not the greatest beginning ever.

Total Drama Action is just another season of Total Drama Island, so if you don't know anything about these characters, then no worries: the writers happily break the the characters down to their core, and briefly explain the events of the last season to bring everyone up to speed. That's great if you missed the first season, and hope you can jump into the next one. But if you've already watched the TDI several times, and are such a fan that you are even getting the DVD, then it's just useless information that could have been replaced with more interesting stuff. Another critique was the length of the entire thing. After showing you around the set for 10 minutes, you only really get 8 minutes worth of the actual challenge (running away from a monster). I hoped that the season premiere would be an hour-long: more than enough time to add more substance to the plot than "teens-bricker-and-run-from-monster." While the first season's premiere went slowly, taking its time to show you all the numerous characters and their world, the Season Two premiere went by in a flash. When the episode ended, I was surprised a half-hour had already passed. At this point, there is nothing left to say: the only reason TDA has managed to get a C- from me is simple. The first season didn't really get me when it started, and then became pretty funny. I'm hoping the same time for Total Drama Action, because at this point, Cartoon Network's reality series "The Othersiders" is funnier...and it is not meant to be.

PVoA: Cartoon Network Rant #1

I'm sorry to say that I don't know how to start this. Cartoon Network has been a very important part of my life. The channel introduced me to all kinds of animation: old and new. Sure, it has (and is currently doing) a few live-action projects, but it has never bothered me. That was because I never believed it would have a major impact on the animated side of the network. Heck, Rob Sorcher, the person that is currently the Chief Content Officer of Cartoon Network said that it will not effect the channel's animation output. And I believed that, since when the Stuart Synder regime came to the network, things were looking up. We saw the premiere of several successful animated series, the greenlight for a What A Cartoon!-esque short program (The Cartoonstitute), and the pickup of a new Genndy Tartakovsky series (Sym-Bionic Titan). They even canceled Out of Jimmy's Head. These people seemed to be genuine animation fans who knew what to do with the network and how to make it succeed.

But of course, things change. Someone at the network went ahead and decided that they should produce reality programming, and everybody went ahead with it. And on June 17th and June 20th, CN Real will premiere. Four reality shows, with two more coming by the end of the year. "Great!," is what I though at the time. I thought this would be a good thing to gain ratings for the channel and to finance the animated series. But then Cartoon Network started focusing all their energy into promoting them. Advertisements for new Batman: The Brave and the Bold and The Secret Saturdays are clumped together into a single ad for the entire block. Same for Chowder and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. But, being the optimist I am, I didn't really see this so much as a bad thing. Then, the creator of Chowder (C.H. Greenblatt) started getting worried (and later came to the conclusion) that his show will get cancelled. But I refused to believe this. But then Greenblatt said that Flapjack could also be in danger of cancellation, of which Thurop Van Orman has said nothing about. I refused to believe this either, since Flapjack didn't even premiere its second season yet, so the network had to see how it did in Season 2 before making the final decision. But then Jay Stephens (creator of TSS) came to Toon Zone with some troubling news: Cartoon Network Studios has closed its doors to comedy.

Yes, you read that right. Cartoon Network Studios, whose most popular animated series WERE comedies, have closed their doors to anymore animated comedy pitches and any comedy series in development (not production, so Adventure Time with Finn and Jake is safe). For the foreseeable future, Cartoon Network is now going to focus solely on action/adventure series. Sure, Jay has told us that the entertainment world changes all the time: that the doors for hilarity will likely be opened again in the future. That made my anger subdue, until I learned that Cartoonstitute was affected by this also. Of the planned 150 animated shorts to be made, only 14 were successfully completed. It was at the point when I realized that there was no real bright side to this other than 2 or 3 of these shorts becoming full-length series (if that's still happening). I completely and utterly hated what Cartoon Network has done. What the hell happened!!??

EDIT - Craig McCracken confirmed that only 39 shorts were to be made, which (in retrospect) makes more sense than 150 shorts. There is no way a studio could complete 150 shorts in 20 months without the help of several other studios. The only reason the project was canned was because of the horrible economy, so it was either the shorts program or something else.