Back in 2009, Comedy Central announced that they were developing a new animated series “featuring “30 Rock” star Judah Friedlander as a wacked out gypsy cab driver whose great ambition in life is to top everyone around him.” It was created by comedian Jordan Rubin and co-developed by Six Point Harness Studios. Gypsy Cab never made it out of development, but some development animation was produced. Here’s two segments that Rubin recently unveiled:

Tracy Morgan

Dave Attell

The snow-capped peaks of South Park, Colorado have been witness to many horrors throughout the 14 seasons of the hit animated series. We’ve seen a headless Britney Spears, the rape of Indiana Jones and the all-powerful Mecha-Streisand. But starting this past March at 10:30pm, South Park viewers have been whisked across the country to a New York City brimming with science-fiction beasts that would kick Mecha-Streisand’s ass. It’s the setting for Ugly Americans, the new Comedy Central series created by Devin Clark that conjures a melting pot city filled with unspeakable ingredients. We meet vampires, demons, werewolves and aliens, but there’s also another horror lurking throughout the show – the beast of bureaucracy. You see, the central character is Mark Lilly, a social worker at the Department of Integration, which is the first and often last refuge of the squids, worm-creatures and talking trees that arrive in this gruesome Gotham.

After gestating the concept online, Clark developed the series with David M. Stern (The Simpsons, Monk), who also served as an EP on the project. Clark and Stern then turned to two animation studios to bring the show to life. First on the job was Augenblick Studios (Superjail!), appropriately based on Brooklyn, for development and pre-production, and then the majority of the Flash animation was produced at Cuppa Coffee Studios (Glenn Martin, DDS) in Toronto.

With the first batch of episodes under his belt, Clark took some time to answer a few questions for CHF, and below that we quiz Augenblick Studios founder Aaron Augenblick.

SIMPSON: Huge congrats on the new series. A big premiere back in March, positive reviews and now the additional episode order for October 2010.

CLARK: I feel amazingly lucky to get the opportunity to have one of my ideas brought to life; and to have so many fantastic, creative and smart people helping. But it’s funny, I’ve been so caught up in production, so busy, sometimes I feel like I don’t even get an opportunity to get excited about how big a deal it is. So, only recently, I’ve been like “Oh, this is a show I made. It’s on air. Holy cow.”

SIMPSON: Take us back to before the Atom.com deal.
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Today being 4/20, there’s bound to be some crazy-ass shit releasing around the world. One such item is The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie! DVD, which hits shelves at 4:20pm today in 420 stores for the low-low price of $4.20. Okay, it’s $14.99, but that’s not a weed joke.

With that out of the way, I’d like to begin celebrating the DVD’s release, along with the team at Six Point Harness Studios, who produced the DVD right here in Hollywood. They took the Comedy Central series that was animated traditionally in South Korea, and re-imagined it as a Flash production, easily mimicking the production values, and often going above and beyond.

In this behind-the-scenes video below, you’ll learn that the pilot was actually produced in Flash, and this feature-length production is sort of a “make good” on that clunky effort. You’ll hear from series creators/writers Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein who offer high praise to 6PH, and then there’s some lengthy discussion with director Greg Franklin, animation producer Andy Fiedler and editor Tony Christopherson. Huge congrats to the whole team at Six Point – looks great and I’ll see you tonight at the premiere.

and here’s the Red Band Trailer (NSFW):

Remember when the Cartoon Network team produced new Powerpuff Girls animation in Flash? Inevitably, the discussion veered towards whether the software ruined the project. (the blogger calmly unclenches fist) If CHF has a mission, it’s to dispell this kind of talk, and illustrate that it’s not the software, it’s the artist. If the artist sucks, ergo the animation will likely suck, and vice versa. Flash is meerly a brush and a canvas.

So…. we move on to The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie!, which will release direct-to-DVD in April 2010. Six Point Harness recently put the finishing touches on the project, which was animated in Flash right here in Hollywood. The TV episodes were never about the animation, so we’re not talking about recreating The Lion King here, but nevertheless there will likely be discussion about how the move to Flash has somehow soured the visuals. I personally think it looks great, and I’d argue that the production values have gone up a notch. More importantly, what do you think?

You’ll have to wait until March 2010 to see the premiere of Ugly Americans, but last night Comedy Central aired a clip during the South Park finale. The show, which is set in an NYC filled with demons, robots, zombies, and assorted creatures, was created by David M. Stern and Devin Clark. The animation is being directed by Augenblick Studios (Superjail) and with animation produced at Cuppa Coffee. Here’s two clips:

The Demon Chick

Sneak Peek