Did you know: Carlos Alazraqui from Reno 911 (Deputy James Garcia) plays Walden on Wow Wow Wubbzy.

The show is animated by Los Angeles-based animation studio Oddbot Inc, who have also teamed up with Playhouse Disney in the past on shows like Shanna’s Show and Shane’s Kindergarten Countdown. Here’s a clip from the episode titled Movie Manners, and below that we interview Christopher Hamilton from Oddbot.

AARON SIMPSON: Christopher, how did Oddbot wind up working on this project?

CHRISTOPHER HAMILTON: I’ve produced a number of short series for Playhouse Disney since 2003. I directed the Shanna’s Show series, Shane’s Kindergarten Countdown, and was supervising director on Lou and Lou: Safety Patrol during my time at the studio One Red Room, where I also served as the company’s Creative Director. When that company closed its doors in 2006, I formed OddBot Inc. Based on the successful collaborations of our previous projects, Playhouse took a chance on our new studio and asked us to produce another batch of Lou and Lou: Safety Patrol, which later led to an order of the new series Can You Teach My Alligator Manners?

AARON: How much paper and pencil factor into your production?

CHRISTOPHER: Actually, quite a lot. When designing the characters, every rough image was sketched on paper until we landed on a character style we liked. From there we would scan and clean up the images using Flash. This was the same for character turnarounds, props, backgrounds, and even early character test animation. I’ve found that a majority of artists (at least the ones I’ve worked with) prefer designing with pencil and paper over working with Wacoms and Cintiqs. I definitely share this feeling.

Oh yeah, and our director Robert Ramirez likes to thumbnail-out scenes for the storyboard artists on large post-it notes. So we go through a billion of those!

AARON: Who designed the characters?

CHRISTOPHER: The talented Todd Oman.

AARON: What type of animation direction theories went into the production?

CHRISTOPHER: We took a traditional animation approach for Al. Before the production started, we knew that we wanted Al to be slinky, quick, energetic, and very child-like, so we encouraged the crew to squash, stretch, bend, and use smears when appropriate. The animators would rough-out their animation on paper or draw directly into Flash with a Wacom tablet – depending on their individual preferences.

When it came to the human characters, including Mikey, we purposely moved them a bit slower than usual with less extremes. This made for a nice contrast between Al and the rest of the characters.

Also, Al’s acting is all pantomime and the animators couldn’t rely on much dialogue for support – just a lot of vocal expressions and reactions. So they really had to push Al’s poses to support his many emotions.

AARON: How many animators are on the crew?

CHRISTOPHER: We had about seven animators working on each episode.

AARON: There aren’t any outlines on the characters. Does this tend to make it easier to animate?

CHRISTOPHER: Absolutely! With no outlines, you’re just left with solid shapes, and that definitely made a difference when it came to moving that alligator around. We made the decision very early in production (even before the designers started) to leave the outlines off of the characters. During Lou and Lou: Safety Patrol, animators painstakingly made sure that there was never any separation of outlines and that the line thickness was always consistent. Obviously, this is a very time-consuming task, but it was essential to achieving a solid look for that particular show. On Can You Teach My Alligator Manners?, I really wanted the animators to spend most of their time pushing Al’s acting and not worry so much about keeping his details consistent.

AARON: Have you taken any of Al’s lessons to heart throughout the production?

CHRISTOPHER: Absolutely, we can all use a reminder or two about manners!

According to the NFPA, The Uh-Ohs are “block-shaped critters that are cute, curious and careless,” and Nash explains that each episode will feature Rounders, friendly, hard working animals, who try to prevent the Uh-Ohs from hurting themselves. The property will be rolling out coloring books, key chains, t-shirts and plans for an animated series are in the works. Below we learn three safety messages: always enter the water feet first, stay 3 feet away from a hot stove and always wear a helmet when you ride a bike. Nash brought in Dave Schlafman to co-write and direct and Casey Leonard helped out on the animation front.

This Flash-animated series is being physically produced by Renegade Animation, based in Glendale, California. Below you can see a clip from the series that is formated as “the first animated program to bring sketch comedy to young children.” More videos are available at the official website.

Below are two Flash-animated shorts, one featuring The Trampolini Brothers, who help us with adjectives, and the second finds Synonym Sam demonstrating similar words. The animation was produced at Soup2Nuts, who utilized both Flash and After Effects. Between the Lions is a partnership between WGBH Boston, Sirius Thinking Ltd. and Mississippi Public Broadcasting.