Talk to the Snail

So.

This Tuesday, July 11, 2006, marks the one-year anniversary of Random! Cartoons kicking into production with Kyle Carrozza’s “MooBeard”.

Pre-production, the part of the cartoon process happening before the actual animation begins, for all 39 cartoons will wrap up by the end of the summer. At this point, we’ve got fourteen shorts completed and in the can. In fact, the whole season will be wrapped up with a nice little bow on it by New Year’s, only about five and a half months away. Hard to believe.

I’d be thrilled to be a part of this series until I retire. It’s a kick to be surrounded by such creative talent. On any given day, I may get to see backgrounds for “Girls on the Go”, the rough cut for “Two Witch Sisters”, the CG models for “Fanboy”, or hear the record for “Bronk and Bongo”. Everything happens so fast. Random!’s filmmakers are in-house for just about three months before the materials they’ve worked so hard in putting together get shipped overseas for animation. I think it was last May Kyle got “MooBeard” to a point where we’d’ve had rocks in our head not to produce it. It was a short eight months later in January he had a completed cartoon (and a pretty good one, too) to show his friends and family. Believe me, in this business, that’s a blink of an eye.

It’s tough to fathom that in a year from now – on July 11, 2007 – not only will all of this season be produced and aired on Nickelodeon, but we’ll be in production on a series or two based on a couple of these Random! shorts. Of course, we also fully expect to be in production on another batch of cartoons with another group of tomorrow’s top cartoon superstars.

So, Happy Anniversary to us. Where’s the cake?