Back in 2003, I produced a pilot at Warner Bros. titled Circus Peanut. It was Andy Suriano’s original concept, aimed at Cartoon Network. Matt Danner directed, Eric Pringle was Animation Director, while animation was handled by Brendan Burch, Greg Franklin, Dave Vamos and a number of other folks who soon after launched Six Point Harness. Suriano hand painted (it was actually sort of a marker wash process) each and every one of the 40 backgrounds, which were then scanned into Flash. On his blog, Andy recounts my reaction to his decision to go it alone.

As with so many pilots, testing success and a quality project don’t always equate to a season order. Politics, timing and just pure luck play huge roles in the outcome, and in this case the show never saw the light of day. You may recognize Dave Foley as the voice of Circus Peanut and if I remember correctly Tom Kenny handled the Rollo. Kim Olds, the lead development executive on the project, played the Sweet Tooth. Thanks again, Andy, for teaming up with us to bring your vision to life. Here’s the pilot episode Lunchtime For Leo.

Suriano remains a sought-after series creator, storyboard artist and character designer, but he also designed a popular comic book and recently found time to hang some art on the walls.

Note to the team at WB Animation – who else was on the crew? Help me fill this out….

Check out the storyboards, which were also drawn by Danner, at the Prophet Buddy blog. Also, get an closet-full of Prophet Buddy t-shirts in the CHF store.

In honor of this announcement, Pringle and his pals Matt Danner (mouse) and Eric Bauza (cat) have created the very first Cold Hard Flash commercial. Yee haw!

Well, the show is as cheesy, badly acted and written as I thought, but after actually sitting through a whole episode, I did notice one thing: the cartoons were great.

And according to an article at AWN.com, “animators work on set, doing drawings on a Wacom tablet and basically creating storyboards on the fly while the live-action production is going on, incorporating ideas generated by what’s happening on the set.” Matt Danner, the supervising producer and animation director for the series is one of those artists who heads to the set in Downey, California each day and as you can see in the clip above, the animation is some of the strongest Flash work around.

Lastly, here’s a clip from Ryan Green, who runs Bluefoot Studios. He animated this Flash-animated promo for Out of Jimmy’s Head in two nights.

Pringle directs and animates what he calls “an internet comic that happens to be animated.” The voice acting team boasts an impressive cast – Eric Bauza, who currently plays Rodolfo Rivera on Nickelodeon’s El Tigre, is the voice of the Cat and Matt Danner, the Animation Director on Out of Jimmy’s Head, offers the voice of the Mouse.

For more on this new series, check out the blog.

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