Time Warner Gets Animated

Your Obedient Servant (me) spent time with the employees of Cartoon Network these past two days. (Like, I hung out at the studio.) And the mostly-empty third floor in which I walked around a few weeks back is now pretty filled up again...

Yesterday employees saw the "Billy and Mandy" direct-to-video feature that many of them worked on while also doing the television series. The consensus appears to be that it's pretty damn good.

Half of the third floor is now filled with artists working on Chowder, a new series just put into production. Ben 10 has been retooled and is now charging ahead with 26 new episodes, My Gym Partner is a Monkey still marches ahead with Sean #4, and Foster's Home of Imaginary Friends has been greenlit for season number six.

Camp Lazlo has nine new episodes in hand for its fifth (and possibly last) season. But though Lazlo may be departing, new series Flapjack has been greenlit and even now staffs up.

On CN's jungle telegraph front: I'm told that an e-mail came through today or yesterday asking the staff to maintain a dignified silence about recent newsworthy events surrounding Aqua Teen Hunger Force. (Seems like a wise idea, but how much are 'toon artists in Burbank going to know about a Turner sub-contractor's ad campaign that went blooey in Boston? Not much, I'm thinking.)

And there's good feelings about the cramped production schedules that seem to be the norm at lots of t.v. animation studios these days, including CN.

Meanwhile, across the verdant San Fernando Valley in Sherman Oaks, Warners Animation receives the go-ahead for four new series, each with 13 episodes (I think those are the numbers.)

You've got your Legion of Super-Heroes. There's a new round of Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Getting a Clue (with Shag and the Scoobster getting some design makeovers.) The Batman comes flapping back into town, and those perennial favorites Tom and Jerry return in Tom and Jerry Tales. It will be nice to see Wanrer Animation get busier.