The Time Has Come.

Mission Hill has finally been released on DVD. Fans of the show have had to wait more than Clone High fans (years, actually), but again, its not a time to bicker and argue, but a time to put the DVD’s in your 5-DVD rotunda player, and have yourself a wonderful, animated night. If you haven’t already, go to amazon.com, or your favorite DVD selling store, and pick up your “Mission Hill” DVD. You’ll be glad you did. It’s from the producers of ‘The Simpsons“, you know, back when it was good.

If you’ve been watching [adult swim] you may have noticed that Warner Brothers has actually put effort into marketing the DVD and has put up a commercial for it. I have it up for viewing in the Mission Hill downloads section. And when you’re done watching the commercial and you fall into the trap of needing to buy the DVD, you can follow this link to buy it.

On a Clone High note, I was unable to progress much this weekend on storyboarding, as it was a family holiday, but I did come up with some more sight gags, and humor that has been added to the storyline. I’m really excited for you all to see the episode.

*After doing some checking, Mission Hill is currently placing poorly on the best sellers list on Amazon.com. Not only is it not listed as being released in the boxed sets section for today (which there really wasn’t a way to contact the guy who wrote that article), but its sales rank of all DVD’s are currently: #2,458 in DVD. That’s not to say that it’s not lower if you look at just television, but I’m not going to look page after page to find out what high number that is. I was shocked that there was no ‘animation’ genre. On the other hand, at amazon.ca, our Clone High friends have been keeping Clone High in the top 20′s of all DVD’s. Currently residing at the number 18 spot at the time of this news post. Way to go! Also, on amazon.ca, Mission Hill is posted at number 93! Well, top 100 is definitely good. I hope it continues to do well.

Hello, once again. You may be wondering where I have been. I have been limiting my online time, such as posting news reports, because I have realized that it is a bit time consuming to do so, and I’d rather get more work done on the show. On my next update, I hope to have a couple more storyboards to show off to you all.The current good news is that I have been able to storyboard Act One, out of a total three acts.

I did, however, receive an early birthday gift. A certain, Macromedia Studio 8. I’m not sure if the upgrades are going to be any more beneficial for the cartoons, but I’m the kind of guy that needs the latest and greatest software. Maybe this website will be cooler. Who knows, but I’m sure you’d all like me to concentrate more on making the cartoons better, than having a spiffy website.

I definitely enjoyed the third episode of the Boondocks better than the second. I am ecstatic that they received so many viewers for [adult swim]. Their best opening or show viewed, ever. It was really nice to see new Stroker and Hoop episodes, and then after that, I can just shut off [adult swim] until they are able to offer better late Sunday night shows, save Baby Blues.

One more thing. Just a little thing if you all care to know some of the things I do behind the scenes. I definitely listen to Abandoned Pools constantly when working on this episode of Clone High. It just puts me in the right mood. My playlist includes all the short clips of the show available in the CH Downloads section.

Of course, I also added the Dashboard Confessionals – Standard Lines track to the playlist.

Something about it just keeps me going, and I’m sure I’ll be listening to my Cake CD’s when I move on to Mission Hill episode making.

And speaking of Mission Hill, the freakin’ DVD comes out on November 29! Hopefully the person I’ve been dropping major hints to, correctly gets me the DVD for my birthday.

The opening for Family Guy tonight, on Fox, with the long joke on Osama, and then the joke on “Police Squad“, was pure genius. Total classic. If only Peter made some sort of “jumped the shark” joke when Stewie ran over Homer Simpson, I think I would have died laughing.The rest of the episode, Family Guy taking on the FCC, was brilliant. They basically said everything that needed to be said against them, in song form. And it was well deserved. The fact that you can show extreme violence on television, yet, the first sight of something much more natural to human relations, love, is not to be shown on television. Yeah, let’s glorify violence, and hide around love. Yeah, like that’s the correct path to fixing America.

Moving along, American Dad, again, was a hit, with it’s take on marriage and Saudia Arabia. And the “to be continuted…” ooo, I wonder what will happen. How will he get back to the C.I.A.?

“Why are all the woman dressed as ninjas?” Ha! Classic.

The only downside to “The Boondocks” were the 12 oz mouse and Squidbillies commercial interruptions. Seriously, the show was fantastic. I do think its odd that they say “Jesus was black.” If anything, he was more arabic, but they do bring up a point that is very valid, that a white Jesus just isn’t correct. But again, that’s not what this site is about. But hearing the N-word about fifty times sure seemed to desensitize it. Well, not enough for me to even write it, but you know what I mean. The show was very funny, and very real. It’ll be another show I look forward to.

Another pilot was again aired on [adult swim]. Minoriteam. I got a kick out of the evil plot by the baddies being presented in Power Point. This show is another example of how a low budget can be well executed in the art department. It makes the other shows look just lazy in art. The show was pretty funny, but I don’t know how long they can give us racial-lead jokes and keep it fresh, but good-luck.

About 12 oz mouse and Squidbillies; while I don’t want to make fun of shows for their lack of animation or aesthetic-ness, I don’t like how they seem to half-ass the shows. Half the shows are dead-air reaction shots and just really mellow jokes. (I just saw an ad for “Perfect Hair Forever, which didn’t look any better.) I’m all for an assortment of cartoons, but if you can get a show that looks like “The Venture Brothers” on the same budget that Aqua Teen gives, why cheapen yourself and have barely drawn figures as your characters? I mean, South Park uses the same technology that Jurassic Park used to animate the dinosaurs, but again, uses it well to create their own style, while not looking lazy. Do the creators of 12 oz and Squid just pocket the surplus?

And props to Matthew Lesko and [adult swim] for conceiving a baby that was a joke at Lesko and his previous commercials. It’s hilarious that he could make fun of himself, while trying to sell a CD that I have no idea what it really is. [Turns out is a cd of music of a band called DangerDoom. O-kay.]

Wow, okay, enough of that. Let’s get an update on the Clone High Webisodes. I have continued doing more storyboarding, and have contacted the majority of the voicers. I ended up having to go with girl friends of my own to voice the women of the show. Cleo’s drunk foster mom may be a stretch, but they are fantastic at the voices they can do. To the others, I have sent out some lines for them to begin working on.

And as promised, here is a scan of a storyboard to tide you all over. I made a template of the original Clone High storyboards, received in the previous update. Obviously, by the page number, it is a very early section of the show. I didn’t want to pick something that may have been better drawn, but gave away too much.

And it’s getting so close to the release of the Mission Hill DVD. I’ve also got some voicers already just going through the released scripts of the unaired episodes for the next batch of webisodes I do.

This week, I met some really nice people over the internet. No, not in some lewd manner, but some really talented people, that I’m sure you’ll all be interested in.

Firstly, I met Steve LeCouilliard who, in his portfolio has a Scudworth sketch. Since his resume included his current storyboarding work for Ed, Edd n’ Eddy, I asked if he worked for Clone High, but it turns out that he is just a fan, with a very talented hand.

Although, the Clone High work consists of just this one work, you can check out more of his great work over at his site.

The other person I met recently was, in fact, a Clone High storyboard artist, who can possibly give us the insight into the behind the scenes of Clone High, that we so desired. Although the DVD gave us little, at best, these storyboards gave us a look into the full scripts, with jokes cut that we would never know.

Let’s hear what Arna Selznick had to say: I did 5 half-boards for the series. The designs were amazing and the scripts were really clever though they were often a bit long, which meant we’d do more work than there was time for and sometimes the funniest gags would get cut out as the show was put together. Otherwise it was a pleasure to work on. I was disappointed when it was canceled.

As you can see, in just this 6-frame cut scene from Episode 9, you can see a quick joke that was cut before Gandhi got his lights knocked out.

I put up the whole scene, (which is available on her site dancingmonkeys.com), on the newly created CH Bonus Features page.

In my web-isode world, I have begun the fun of storyboarding out the episode. It’s going really fast, as I’ve had the whole episode planned out in my mind for quite some time now. It is good to finally get it down on paper, and I’ll soon be sending out scripts to the voice acting team. I want to especially thank them for sticking around in the down time.

I didn’t realize how hard it could be to do storyboarding without having character sheets nearby. For the pages of work I’ve already done, most of it is remembering the characters by memory, but then again, its just supposed to be sketches for how the scene should be set up. But when I finish another day’s worth, I’ll find my finest example page or two, and post them for all to enjoy.

And keeping up with my somewhat regular section on [adult swim] reviews… there wasn’t much to post about last week, but last night, the new show “Lucy, the daughter of the Devil“, was a great show that I definitely felt needed to be longer. They just barely got into it, and it was over just when the action seemed to be picking up. I laughed a good amount at what little we were given, and am looking forward to seeing more.

And we get a Boondocks premiere next week. It will be good, I’m sure, but nothing will make me happy until we get our official Futurama Direct to DVD greenlit. It’s so close to getting the go-ahead, but it’s not official yet. The good news is, Comedy Central, bought a 5-year deal to run the existing episodes of Futurama in prime-time when [adult swim]‘s contract runs out, so in 2008, the cartoon will be moving channels. And at an expense of 28 million dollars, I hope I help by watching every episode on the new channel. Reportedly, [adult swim] paid 10 million for it the first time, and the fact that Comedy Central paid much, much more for it, just means how special a show it is.

And the “Garbage Pail Kids” card picture above is an actual card that was produced many years ago, but I just think it was funny and appropriate enough for posting here.