Blog History of Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Part 4.
Blog History of Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Part 1. Part 2.
Part 3.
I am admiring of how Nickelodeon went about interpreting our suggestions for getting into the original cartoon business in the late 80s. They listened respectfully to our approach to go back-to-the-future of cartoon creation to model their entry on Looney Tunes. That is, make a single, short cartoon, with highly talented and skilled filmmakers, show it to the audience, and, if they like it, make more.
So, as the best clients often do, they took what they wanted from that advice, and did it their way.
And their way worked like crazy. Nick’s head of development & production (now Chairman) Herb Scannell enlisted the help of Vanessa Coffey and Mary Harrington, two cartoon novices (though with oodles more experience than Herb, or me for that matter). Herb, Vanessa, and Mary identified five indie studios to make pilots: John K’s Spumco, Klasky-Csupo, Jim Jinkin’s Jumbo, Joey Ahlbum, and I don’t remember the fifth. The results made animation history, and changed the game in TV animation forever: Ren & Stimpy, Rugrats, and Doug, all from Nickelodeon’s initial foray into original cartoons.
(More next time.)
