Nickelodeon’s hit live-action series The Naked Brothers Band is rocking animation-style this week. At 8:30pm tonight, the band’s first half-hour cartoon special, The Supetastic 6, premieres on Nickelodeon. Check out a 1-minute clip on the Nick’s Turbonick site.

“We’re excited to premiere The Naked Brothers Band’s first animated special which showcases their humor in a fun, new, fantasy-filled format,” said Marjorie Cohn, Executive Vice President, Development and Original Programming, Nickelodeon Networks.

Mark Salisbury, an athlete-turned-artist, captained a small squad of artists through this ambitious production. Working out of Worldwide Biggies, Albie Hecht’s New York-based company which also produces the live-action series, the team drew from a creative playbook to bring this musical action project to life. We recently caught up with Mark to discuss this upcoming Flash-animated special.

AARON SIMPSON: Give us an idea of how this project came to be.

MARK SALISBURY: As far as I know, here’s how it happened. Scott Martin, my partner at my own company Peach Nova, and I did a music video for The Naked Brothers Band two summers ago. The creator of The Naked Brothers Band, Polly Draper loved what we did on that video and said that if they got picked up for another season that they were going to write an animated episode. I’ve since joined Albie Hecht (CEO of Worldwide Biggies and former President of Nickelodeon), where they produce the live action series. And that’s how it happened…. as far as I know.

AARON: Does the animated version of the property take place in a similar world to the live-action Nickelodeon show?

MARK: It’s a superhero spoof, so it’s pretty far removed from the live-action show. The boys are still musicians, but they’re members of the Supetastic 6, who defeat evil in the music world.

AARON: Who wrote the project?

MARK: Bob Mittenthal and Michael Rubiner. Bob has written and produced a lot of stuff, including Robot Boy, Kablam andKenny the Shark. The script the two of them delivered for this project is one of my favorite animated scripts I’ve ever worked on.

AARON: Along the way, did you work with the writers as the show evolved through storyboarding?

MARK: Yes, completely. Working with the board artist, John Delaney, I added a lot of extra gags, visual gags, and I would call Bob to ask for lines because he’s funnier than I am. The original script had a whole lizard chase sequence, and it was just too big for the production so we had to scale it back a bit. But there were all sorts of little gags I added in along the way.

AARON: The character design process must be more difficult when your team was challenged to capture likenesses.

MARK: Yes, that definitely limits your design. But we had a whole set of designs done and approved before we started production. We had turnarounds done for most of them, but a lot of us here weren’t happy with the direction. So the art director, Tim Shankweiler, redesigned all of the characters. Its always a big risk when you change things that are already approved but it paid off well.

AARON: What did you do to sell you new designs to Polly and the Nick team?

MARK: We did animation samples in both styles as well as final art mock-ups of certain dramatic shots from the show. The original style was very Scooby Doo, which we felt limited our team, and the new one let us go wherever we wanted to go.

AARON: I’m assuming animation allowed you to take the boys in a direction live-action wouldn’t allow.

MARK: Yes, definitely. The whole band has superhero alter-egos. The “A” story follows Matt Pinfield (the former MTV host) and his plans for Global Balding. The “B” story follows Sonny after he has been baldified by a Pinfield ray. Sonny goes to see Dr. Krayzee, an absent minded evil scientist, and hilarity ensues. The story is fast moving and has great moments throughout.

AARON: Tell us a little more about the team that worked with you on the project.

MARK: We had a small, extremely talented team with only 5 animators and 3 designers. Tim Shankweiler, who I mentioned before, art directed. Michael Lennicx was the senior designer and Kirk Etienne was the designer (former art director of Little Einsteins). The animation team consisted of Scott Martin, Frank Summers, Joe Andriola, Barrett Benica and Chris McMurray, who joined late to help out. Conor O’Kelly-Lynch and I handled compositing. We also had two clean-up people – Bianca Franco and Andrew Bogenhagen. So I think that makes a team of 11 or 12 people for a 22 minute show with 370 shots.

AARON: Tell us about the 3D elements you integrated into the 2D world.

MARK: We didn’t have a lot of pre-production time to research the 3D to Flash process, but I had read that you could import Maya 3D elements into Flash as SWFs. So we produced all of the vehicle turnarounds that way and they ended up blending in very well. There are moments that you can still tell its 3D, but someone without an animation background probably wouldn’t. They likely think it’s either a very precise animator or it’s 3D. It also helped that we sent everything through After Effects for a lighting pass which helped take the harder edge off of the 3D.

AARON: Tell us about this After Effects lighting process.

MARK: Well, for instance, the Pinfield space station has this ominous, dark, red lighting. None of the colors were done in Flash, but instead in After FX by lighting the PNG layers. Every layer was exported individually and then lit with specific lighting. It lengthened the compositing process, but it was only on around 80 shots. It added a whole new level to the show – an ominous, evil-criminal mind feel… in a comedy cartoon way though.

AARON: Do you have a favorite sequence in this new movie?

MARK: Yes, the crash sequence. The band is about to crash into Pinfield’s space station and there are some classic cartoon moments in there. There’s also the sequence where Sonny transforms into a lizard as well as the first time we’re in Pinfield’s space station. That sequence features some nice flow and neat camera angles. This show differs from a lot of the half hours I’ve done – it goes by in a heartbeat. As I look back on the production, second guessing myself as I always do, there are sequences I wish I could have lengthened a bit, but then it wouldn’t have had that quick pace that I think makes the show work as well as it does.

AARON: How did you get into animation?

MARK: I started with a degree in criminal justice – the springboard to animation. I was a full scholarship athlete, and I didn’t have the choice to take art as a major because I played both baseball and football in college. I was on the road for a couple weeks at a time during baseball season, so it just wasn’t possible. After a failed attempt at a pro football career, I coached for a while at Yale while I made a 3-minute traditionally animated short. After I finished the film, I shopped it around which led to an animation job. I then moved from Connecticut to Washington DC to live with my sister and study with her at the Corcoran Museum while working the night-shift at Kinkos, and a caricature artist at the mall during the day.

AARON: Do you keep any of the art you created at the mall?

MARK: No, but I still have my Kinkos name tag.

AARON: When did you get your first job in New York?

MARK: 1996 I officially started my animation career at a place called Muffihnead Productions down on Canal St, it was a short lived gig. Late in that year, I took a job outside the city in Connecticut for a CD-ROM game company, and that’s where I met Scott. Scott and I were the lead animators on a lot of WB products, Animaniacs, Quest For Camelot games. In 1998 I moved over to Nickelodeon.

AARON: What type of animation do you watch in your personal time?

MARK: I watch a ton of the old Popeye and Fleischer Superman episodes. I like watching stuff that will never be done again – like Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes, which is my all-time favorite. I love looking at the credits on those and seeing that the animation team would consist of two people.

AARON: As America tunes into your project over Thanksgiving, what will you be doing?

MARK: I’ll be playing with my 3 kids. I didn’t get to see them too much during this production, but to quote my son Jack, “Daddy’s cartoon is gonna be on TV.” So that’s what I’ll be doing. But it won’t last long; our next project is already in production! That’s Albie – he moves fast.

AARON: Can the fans expect to see more Naked Brothers Band animation?

MARK: I really hope so. We had a great time making it and I think it would make an excellent series. We sure wouldn’t run out of ideas for new episodes.

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