In December 2007, we heard about a website called MyToons via the Cold Hard Flash website. The article was about a commercial bumper competition that was being hosted at MyToons. A commercial bumper (or break bumper) is a brief transition announcement that is usually placed between the television program and the actual commercials. The rules are simple: The bumper must be under 30 seconds, and it must contain the MyToons Logo.

We decided that we would enter this competition if we could fit it into our work schedule. At the time, we were knee-deep in the production of the My Neighborhood Pilot, so we were definitely unable to start immediately, but we did begin brainstorming about what our bumper would consist of. Coming up with an idea turned out to be way harder than we expected. In fact, we couldn’t come up with any ideas at all…

We were constantly asking ourselves, “what could our bumper be about?” We’ve never created something like this before and it was difficult for us to come up with an idea that we can show in 30 seconds or less. This was new territory for us, so it was very difficult for us to imagine anything. After spending so much time trying to come up with an idea that we felt could work, we eventually looked at ourselves and had a mind-blowing realization: WE were the idea!

In other words, we decided to use our frustrating situation to our advantage by simply making a bumper about us trying to come up with an idea for a bumper. Does that make sense? Basically the kid that’s starring in our bumper will be a reflection of ourselves, and he will go through similar frustrations of trying to come up with an idea. We’ll make his world black & white to represent his lack of any vibrant or colorful ideas. We will then combine that concept with MyToons’s slogan (“Everything Animated”) and have our bumper end with his failed ideas literally coming to life by coloring/animating everything in his room. Hence, everything animated.

We’re still in the process of developing this bumper, and so far it runs about 25 seconds long.  There are still shots to be completed so we’re cutting it close to the 30 second limit. But hopefully it won’t get much longer after all of the animation is finished.

The competition ends February 28^th 2008. The original deadline was January 18th 2008 , but they decided to extend it… lucky us!

Around the beginning of October 2007, we were approached by a company looking for animators to produce a 4-minute pilot for an adult animated series titled ‘My Neighborhood’ (Created by Gregory Griffin). This was our very first fully animated project request, so we were not only excited, but also very nervous about the potential opportunity. At the time, the only fully animated project that we had ever worked on (and finished) was 2nd Avenue, so we heavily questioned our capabilities. But despite all of our fears and uncertainties, we decided to push them aside, take a chance, and we signed on to produce the pilot.

We agreed to a rather short turnaround time, and in return we were provided with initial character designs, rough background designs, and a partial storyboard to help get us started. We spent the first few weeks revising the characters, creating character turnarounds, designing official backgrounds, and creating an animatic.

After creating everything that was needed to start (including getting approval on our updates and revisions) it was time to dive into production. In an attempt to try something new, we decided to animate this project at 30 frames per second. This allowed for much smoother animation, but also called for more key frames. Being that it was our first time using 30 FPS in an animated project, it turned out to be a bit more challenging than we had originally expected, but we stuck with it!

We started the animation process around the beginning of November, and finished in early January. The animation production process went rather smoothly once we got into the flow of things, and when we were finished, we sent a preview off for review and approval. The overall feedback was very positive, but there were a few changes that were wanted such as cutting shots and adding new ones. It took another two weeks to get those adjustments finished, but afterwards the was happily approved and officially completed.

 In the end, the length of the pilot episode was around six minutes instead of the originally expected four minutes. It looks good and we were personally quite happy with our work. We’ve learned a lot while working on this and we’re very excited to utilize these new experiences in future projects!

Here is a comparison of the storyboard to the final animation from the second P.S.P. website intro.

This is a comparison of the storyboard to the final animation from the first P.S.P. website intro.