Last week I posted the first half of my interview with Mark Ackland and Riccardo Durante, creators of the hilarious new shorts series, ‘Gruesomestein’s Monsters,’ premiering on YTV’s Funpak animation block. We’ve heard about how the gruesome twosome met, what inspired them, and their overall thoughts on Macromedia’s Flash software. In the second half, we dip into the nitty gritty – the nuts and bolts of their production method. So roll up your sleeves, and prepare to meet the beast within.

Aaron Simpson: Is most of your work designed on paper, and then imported into the computer?

Everything in Gruesomestein’s was hand drawn first. The BG’s, the characters, everything. All the poses were hand drawn, then inked, and scanned and trace bitmapped. It worked awesome! To get the clean up line we wanted with our time constraints it would have been almost impossible to do by cleaning up directly in Flash…especially when we were using so many poses.

AS: Are your BGs traditionally painted?

We’re glad that you didn’t pick up that they were painted digitally. Ian Hastings was our art director and BG painter for the episodes. Don Gauthier painted some backgrounds in the sixth episode as well. They painted everything in Photoshop, but did a great job of keeping the backgrounds looking traditional, which is what we wanted.

AS: Your credits don’t list a character designer. What gives?

Mark Ackland: I designed all the characters, and did all the posing; Riccardo did all the boards and all the backgrounds. We left this out in our credits in order to save time.

AS: Most animated series keep a consistent cast of characters, but you flip it every episode. Do you find that challenging?

It was a lot of work, but it was great! And refreshing! And perfect for our short attention spans! The original idea of the show (imagining it as a half hour series) was that all these ‘true’ stories would be in a big book written by retired millionaire embalmer R.M. Gruesomestein, who you’d never see. His manservant, uncle Wadsworth would be an animated anti-Mr. Rogers who would ‘read’ the stories to the kids (the audience), which he hates to do, but it’s one of his many chores. It would be formatted like the classic cartoons, where you have a roster of like maybe 10 really strong characters who each reoccur in their own shorts (there’s so many more monsters we have stories for!). We also find a lot of cartoons on TV these days kinda boring. On a lot of shows out now, you can watch any episode of the entire season and they all look the same. The thing with Gruesomestein is you never really know what you’re going to get. Each episode has a completely different mood, colour palette, and music style. Our editor, Scott Buscis, did all the music himself, and he did a killer job.

AS: In future episodes, do you have plans to revisit characters like The Yeti from ‘Freddie the Yeti?’

Definitely! That’s the idea. That’s why when we did the sixth episode, we did another Witchy cartoon. The Yeti would probably pop up again as well, but in future Freddie shorts, Freddie and his Dad would confront the lochness monster, get caught up in a dawn of the dead scenario, discover Bigfoot, etc. It might even be funny to do a Poltergeist spoof, where the ghosts take away Freddie. The deal with them is that they can never have a relaxing outing together. I think Freddie attracts this…he’s a little off.

Many studio executives feel that it’s too much work to brand a show with a large cast of characters. Our perspective was, just because it’s ‘tough’ doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Just as long as all the characters have strong personalities, and are funny. Warner Brothers, Disney, Hanna Barbera… They all built their studios on a huge cast of characters. It’s been well proven in the past.

AS: Is your animation team seriously made up of one person?

Yup. Each of the 6 shorts was done entirely by a different animator, and you can really tell the difference in timing. Each animator gave their episode a real mood. They did a great job. This helped keep the shows consistent and maintain a personal rhythm.

AS: I see that both of you are credited with voice work in ‘Freddie and the Yeti’ – what characters?

MA: I was Freddie, and Riccardo was the Ranger. And we discovered the new Mel Blanc in a man named Blayne Burnside…he played the Dad.

AS: What’s next?

Currently we’re directing a feature for Nickelodeon called “The Wayside School”. Our next series idea is for a stop motion animated series.

AS: Well, that’s it. Best of luck with the series and happy haunting.

Make sure to tune in for YTV’s anthology program “FunPak,” starting Thursday, February 3rd at 7:30. Then vote for your favorite short on YTV.com.

I’m sitting here with Mark Ackland and Riccardo Durante, the creators of ‘Gruesomestein’s Monster’s,’ the mirthfully macabre new series of animated shorts set to bow on Canada’s YTV. Okay, I’m not actually sitting with them. They’re in Toronto, Canada, which, is just slightly out of range from my little bungalow in Venice, California. But after watching ‘Freddy the Yeti,’ the series premiere episode, on the Nicktoons Film Festival, I feel like I just sat in a wild gag session with these two creative masterminds. Their show is quick, clever, and funnier than a barrel full of monsters. Errr – you get the picture. We’re only a few weeks away from their show’s television premiere on YTV’s ‘Funpak,’ (February 10th), and it’s yet another example of 2D animation flourishing by way of digital production.

AARON SIMPSON: How did you two first start working together?

RICCARDO DURANTE: I was working at a studio in Toronto, directing “Ripping Friends.” Mark was hired on to design and pose.

AS: How did the idea of Gruesomestein’s Monsters first come to be?



We both have a similar sense of humour, and we both love classic cartoons…mainly the Warner Bros. and Hanna Barbera stuff (Yogi bear, and the Flintstones in particular). We talked about what we thought was missing on TV as far as animation goes, and what we’d like to see on TV. Monsters! Of course! What else? So Mark began drawing these funny little monsters. We started laughing at the different personalities, and ridiculous situations we were coming up with, and it just grew from there. What’s funnier than cute, silly, stupid characters trying desperately to act scary? The scarier they try to be, the funnier they are.

AS: What are your major influences? Animation, Comics, Illustrators…



MARK ACKLAND: I love classic 50’s ad art, as well as some of the old Disney shorts. I loved “Tales of the Wizard of Oz” as a kid (which definitely influenced the design style) and a lot of the other Rankin Bass stuff. I also like Chris Ware, Jim Flora, the Provensens (Alice and Martin), Mary Blair, Tom Oreb, and (Miroslav) Sasek to name a few. And I can’t forget Ren and Stimpy.

RD: I also like the simple, stripped down 1950 illustrative style. I think Bill Peet is pretty cool. Some of the old Warner Brothers cartoons are complete genius. As for comics, (Jack) Kirby is King in my book. Oh, and monsters are cool! (Ray) Harryhausen rocks!

AS: What led to your choice of Macromedia’s Flash as your animation production software?



Originally, we wanted to do it 2D and have it animated overseas as opposed to using Flash. Firstly, because we knew very little about Flash. Secondly was due to the stigma that Flash has. In general, when people think of Flash, they think of that really squashy stretchy stuff. We didn’t want our show to look like that. We wanted to retain a traditional 2D feel to the shorts. But we were also worried about the quality control issue of sending stuff overseas. In the end, Flash seemed more feasible, and we just told our animators not to squash and stretch anything at all, unless absolutely necessary. In hindsight, Flash was definitely the way to go. If used properly, Flash is amazing! We just posed out our show a lot so that you didn’t need to force the character comp into doing things that it really can’t do.

AS: What other software did your team use besides Flash?



The one major downfall with Flash is camera moves. Sometimes they look terrible, and very amateurish. So we ended up importing a lot of scenes into “Toon Boom” and doing the camera moves in there. It handles them much better.

AS: What about Flash, when compared to other production methods, do you like best?

Flash is just so instant compared to everything else. You can fix timing, drawing, colour etc. in a snap! It’s also simplified nicely. Very easy to learn. Neither of us really knew too much about it when we started the production, but it was so easy to pick up.

AS: What would you like to see included in the next Flash version?



Well, obviously, better camera moves would be nice. As well, the new Opus program, which is a 2D digital animation program that Nelvana has been developing, while more complex than Flash, has some great features to it, especially in drawing tools. In Flash, whenever two vectored lines cross, those lines become intersected and essentially become four separate lines, or, whenever you put a brush stroke down, that brush stroke becomes one with the brush stroke underneath it (if it’s the same colour). In Opus, each line and stroke is separate unto itself.

END OF PART 1

Check back soon for the second half of my interview with Mark Ackland and Riccardo Durante, co-creators of the new YTV shorts series ‘Gruesomestein’s Monsters.’



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The Nicktoons Film Festival is over, but Coldhardflash’s continuing coverage of the featured Flash films is not.

Moving to a new neighborhood is always a chore, but it’s far more traumatic when you’re young. This seems to be one of the many underlying themes packed into the hysterical new series of ‘Rotting Hills’ shorts created by Glen Wyand. Only this time, the new neighborhood is crawling with the rotting corpses of the undead.

The Nicktoons Film Festival recently aired the ‘Drive to School’ episode. Clark, a leery, newcomer to the spooky city of Restful Hills, is carted off to school by his completely clueless Dad. As far as old Pops is concerned, school starting at midnight is just the way it works around these parts.



It’s a clever set-up, and we get the feeling Dad will never quite understand what he’s gotten his family into, and Clark had better buy some fast, new running shoes. The design work is elaborate, with great attention put to setting the right mood. There’s surely no mistaking this town for Springfield. The Nicktoons website lists the show as a Flash production, and Macromedia’s software has truly been put to the test. This show is heavy on design, animation and action, and the final result is a real feast for the eyes. The shadows on the BGs are almost as fun to look at as the slick character designs, and the beautifully designed karate-kicking dog, Buddy, seems destined to steal the show.

I hear that Canada’s YTV ordered 5 episodes of this short, and it makes perfect sense. Glen and his gang of animation zombies have crafted a project that’s begging to get picked up for a full season. If it gets called up for a full run, I’m hoping young Clark might find a backbone in one of the open graves littering the landscape. He’s a bit soft for a show lead, but other than that, it’s hard not to love the sweet smell of decaying flesh coming from Rotting Hills.