SOMETHING OLD...

Geez; I don't know exactly how many years ago we did CIRCUS PEANUT. It was my first pilot that ever got developed; the boys at SIX POINT HARNESS, before they were technically called that and right before they had a studio are the ones who animated it--and the irreplaceable AARON SIMPSON helmed production duties as well as art and animation. He's a one-man army! What an experience and education. One of which were BACKGROUNDS. Our backs were up against a tight spot: CP was being animated in FLASH and my only experience with it was via the internet/webtoons. My biggest complaint was its "flatness". I loved ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE, so I attempted to utilize and exploit "limited animation" as much as it's own art form as one would use a color palette (which would've been cool--except there are sequences in CP that I couldn't even tell wasn't traditional; oh my God--ERIC PRINGLE is a magician, to say the least. Anyway; my solution to "softening" up the look to a Flash cartoon was to use TRADITIONAL BG's, most everything done up until then were vector-based, flat, click-and-fill backgrounds (suitable for the internet). Seeing as this wasn't designed to stream the superhighway, my #1 stance on this project was its backgrounds. That's all well in good; but technically we had a budget of an animatic and more or less 2 weeks to produce it. That meant no money to hire an actual BG painter--and turned out, no actual time to implement myself...until I said "Hell no!” I believe around 8pm one night--and turned in 40-plus fully rendered BG's the next morning. I think Aaron said: "You're insane", first--and then: "Well, okay", next. Here are a few images I was able to scan. I hadn't time to learn how to ACTUALLY paint with the proper tools, so I thought: why fake it? So I used a combination of markers, colored pencils and even crayons. I suppose I was going for a children's book feel, while still being heavily influenced by Jay Ward.







That being said; if anyone possesses a copy of CIRCUS PEANUT and knows how to put up on the web via Youtube or whatever--not only would I appreciate it, but I'd even do an original marker comp for you!