This will excite and entrance the teenager currently living under my roof:
Adult Swim is looking to clone the success of its highest-rated show, "Robot Chicken," with "Titan Maximum," a new comedy series from the creative team behind "Robot" that shares DNA with its predecessor: It too is a stop-motion animation series about robots ...
'Titan Maximum,'" [writer/producer Tom Root said,] "is about what would really happen if a team of idiot kids was in charge of a 6-story-tall robot."
Lots of plot possibilities with a monster robot and idiot kids. This thing could go on for like, ever.
And for those who disdain the smart-ass snark and slapstick that is Robot Chicken, remember that any television series which hits the bull's-eye of the 18-25 demographic the way that RC does can write its own ticket ... open its own mint ... and all those other cute metaphors.
And the inevitable result of the success is, network people knock on your door with wheel barrows full of money and ask you to go hit the bull's-eye again.
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I'm way outside the key demo, and I love RC. Looking forward to what these guys do with TM.
Monster robot and idiot kids?? Wasn't that done by Megas XLR already? And the name also reminds me of Genndy Tartakovsky's upcoming show, "Sym-Bionic Titan".
Anything that gets more stop-motion animation out there in the world is fine by me.
So between this, Robot Chicken, and Dino Stamatopolous' new show, Shadowmachine's going to have 3 shows going.
The only thing that bothers me about Robot Chicken is that they exploit intern labor more than any other studio in Los Angeles. Maybe someone who has worked there can chime in on this. Exactly how many "interns" do they have toiling away on that production?
You can go to http://www.adultswim.com/video and watch one of Shadowmachine's programs (Robot Chicken or Moral Orel) and look for the interns scattered through the credits. Sometimes they can amount to 20. But this is Shadowmachine Films, a non-union operation top to bottom, and Adult Swim's attitude with the shows they make seems to be "Low budget, or no show."
On the other hand, if the interns didn't want to do all this work, then they can just leave. They get paid in experience and college credit, and if they're in college they likely have housing and support.
Another show that does this is Superjail, done by Augenblick Studios in New York City. It's a bit of a unique situation for them, as Superjail is a crude yet fully and fluidly animated show, done entirely in Brooklyn. They have key animators and assistant animators working in-house, and all the in-betweeners are interns. That was what they had to do to give those animators jobs and keep the show under budget, otherwise none of those jobs would've happened, and they would've sent it overseas with everything else.
There is one notable part of Superjail's budget. The word from many people I know who worked on the show, is that with Christy and Aaron ad the whole crew practically opening a vein in their effort to make the show look as good as it does, they were expecting a better budget if the show was a hit.
...and they won't get it. A fringe programming slot like Adult Swim has close to zero chance of having a real sizable return in viewership and you NEVER front load your effort on a show for a network. They will simply look at what you have done for the budget you had, and ask you to do it again.
The exact same thing happened with Venture Brothers. The first season had all of us slaving away for hardly anything while paying NYC rents. All with the promise of "If the show is continued, we'll get a bigger budget for higher salaries!" Then, when they were getting the crew together for the second season we all walked away from it because they told us they could only give us the same salaries we made on the first season.
(I don't know if they promised a return on the third season to the new crew they hired after us)
So if there are two things to learn from this, it is to only accept a salary from the start that you are comfortable with, and if you want to pitch a show to Cartoon Network, start your pitch with a low figure for the production cost.
Word is, thats how "12 Oz. Mouse" was sold.
"It will only cost $80,000 an episode."
"Make it"
without Adult Swim even seeing what it was about.
The only thing that bothers me about Robot Chicken is that they exploit intern labor more than any other studio in Los Angeles. ....
We're happy to help put a stop to this if the interns are willing.
If the company has interns performing production work for free, then the company is likely putting itself at risk for violations of o.t. and minimum wage laws.
Let's hope strawberry farmers don't start using "interns" to pick the fruit.
...and they won't get it. A fringe programming slot like Adult Swim has close to zero chance of having a real sizable return in viewership and you NEVER front load your effort on a show for a network. They will simply look at what you have done for the budget you had, and ask you to do it again.
But the strange thing is Adult Swim DOES have a sizable return in viewership. They like to brag about their consistently high 18-34 ratings, and Robot Chicken premieres frequently score in the 1,000,000s with 18-34 and sometimes over 2,500,000 in total viewers.
South Park is the same way. Huge hit show, still makes a ton of money, and yet artists on that show still work 72 hour weeks for less than the same gig at Nickelodeon for a standard 40-hour week.
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