Hero Heights

Greetings True Believers!
Hero Heights is finished! That’s right! Last Thursday August 3rd we performed the final mix at Oracle Post in Burbank. It came out super!

Here I seized an opportunity when nobody was around and had Bill snap a pic of me with Hero Heights on the big screen.

Not to be out nerded, Bill snuck over to get his picture taken too.

Bill and I hamming it up with our final mix engineer DJ, who did an excellent job of manning the controls over at Oracle Post.

We also hammed it up with Random Cartoons Executive Producer Larry Huber and Post Production Supervisor Molly Maldonado. Eric Homan and Claudia Spinelli were also at the session, but we didn’t get a chance for a pic. Larry, Claudia, Eric and Molly made some great suggestions and really helped the session go smoothly. Thanks guys!

Well, it’s been a long journey but Hero Heights is officially wrapped. Bill and I have been best friends since Junior High and ever since then have always dreamed of collaborating on a project of our own. After high school we both went off to art school and then landed jobs in the animation business. I did my time at Walt Disney Feature Animation and Bill at The Simpsons. For almost 10 years we worked our butts off learning everything we could and growing as artists. We had time to mature and really understand the process of animation. So one day we got together and decided it was time for us to call the shots, and be the ones in control instead of following the direction of others.

The idea of doing something with super heroes had always been on our minds. Bill and I love the genre and are extremely well read on the subject. But we wanted to do something different. Explore an area of super hero stories that hadn’t been done before. Turn on the TV and you’ll see tons of animated shows about kids with super powers, but they are all the same. UltraBoy and MegaGirl have to stop the evil giant mutant from destroying city hall and at the same time turn in their book reports while maintaining their secret identities. Yawn! It’s been done to death. So with Hero Heights we did away with the whole secret identity monster of the week clichés and created a town where everyone is super powered. Now we could have kids use their powers openly and more creatively without any of the cliché baggage. As Bill likes to put it, “The Little Rascals with super powers.” This opened up a whole new cascade of ideas. So we came up with some characters and placed them in an interesting story that was full of emotion, conflict and resolution and started knocking on doors.

Enter Frederator and Nickelodeon. We went in and pitched our stuff and eventually got the green light to make Hero Heights. With our combined experiences Bill and I were able to handle anything that came our way during the course of the production. No matter what the crisis, we were responsible and competent enough to solve it. If we came across some aspect we didn’t quite understand we asked. I know it sounds simple, but you’d be surprised at how many creators get in over their heads and have absolutely no idea of what they want or what they are doing. Bill and I refused to end up like that. We came prepared with the knowledge, talent, and technical know how required to produce a cartoon.

We set out to make a cartoon that would stand out, and with the help of some incredibly talented executives, artists, technicians, and production people, I think we succeeded. The entire experience was fantastic for Bill and me. We ended up with a pretty good cartoon and would like to thank the following people for helping us do it.

Fred Seibert
Eric Homan
Larry Huber
Mark Taylor
Rico Hill
Claudia Spinelli
Kevin Kolde
Melissa Wolfe
Therese Trujillo
Molly Maldonado
Jack Kinman
Macgregor Middleton
Eric Cookmeyer
Aliki Theofilopoulos
Meredith Layne
Justin Brinsfield
Scott Mouro
Scott Uehara
Serge Michaels
Geoff Levin
Mike Petak
Taek Lee
Dave Eppen
Eric Brown
Wendy Jacobsmeyer
Robert Alvarez
Larry Leichliter
Ted MacHold
Jessica DiCicco
Annie Mumolo
Karen Malina White
Hynden Walch
Becky Thyre
Bill Devine
DJ
Oracle Post
Kevin Kirwan
Encore Hollywood
Wang Films
Matthew Saver
John Goldsmith
Matthew Ellis
Stanley Ho
Mee Ho

I would also especially like to thank my lovely wife Hortencia. Without her patience, understanding and undying support this production would never have been possible. Trust me when I say that.

We will continue to post any new developments for Hero Heights right here, but in the meantime you can see some of our other work and find our contact info here.

Illegal Aliens Productions

That’s all for now readers! So until next time this is Raul Aguirre Jr. and Bill Ho saying, “EXCELSIOR!”