Thursday, April 03, 2008

At Cartoon Network

Just now Cartoon Network -- housed next to the Burbank Police Department in fabled "Downtown Burbank" -- has the Chowder crew developing new episodes on an upper floor and the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends animators working on half-hours of that serious on another ...

Foster's, since the beginning of its run, has produced a goodly number of its episodes in-house. CN doesn't produce all of the series locally, but splits animation duties between crews in California and Ireland.

Back when the show started production, management told me that the Irish animation crew had a narrow edge in cost-per-ep. (With the stellar performance of the American dollar over the past year, I don't know if this remains true.)

There are a number of empty cubicles on different floors just now, but last week one of the CN artists told me:

"Word is that the development people in Atlanta will be moving here to Burbank, so we'll have all the development under one roof. That sounds like a good thing to me. Maybe we'll get more shows developed and into production. We could use them."

Maybe the oncoming shorts program, ramping up this summer, will be a shot in the 'Toon Network's arm.

Update: Cartoon Network has just wrapped its presentation for CN's 2008 season, the details for which can be found here:

At the Cartoon Network Upfront presentation held today in New York, the network announced its programming line-up for 2008. On the heels of February's announcement that Star Wars: The Clone Wars will come to Cartoon Network as a series in the fall, George Lucas, the creator and steward of the Star Wars brand, attended the Upfront event to provide additional details on this highly anticipated offering. Building on the unprecedented success of last fall's live-action movie Ben 10: Race Against Time-the highest-rated telecast in Cartoon Network history-and the standout new series Chowder ...

Cartoon Network has designated Thursday nights as the new destination for comedy. Anchored by its new animated hit Chowder, which the network announced today has been picked up for a second season, Thursdays will also feature existing laughers Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Camp Lazlo and George of the Jungle and offer a platform for new series launches including this summer's The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack ...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

what? you aen't going to mention the executives in Burbank who were handed their walking papers and the executive in Atlanta who was demoted from his position?

Steve Hulett said...

Anon., I'll let you spoon out the sad news.

Me, I like to dwell on the happier things in life.

Anonymous said...

well, who knows. it might very well end up being the best for everyone. the status quo certainly wasn't working.
if this was a blog about goings on in the investment banking world i don' think there would be such a "hush hush" attitude about it. everyone involved will land on their feet.

greg said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
greg said...

Needed to clarify my clarification...

Hey Steve, Boulder Studio in Dublin is no longer doing any animation for Foster's. They had been splitting animation duties with CNS's in-house Flash unit through season four. With the start of season five early last year, all animation has been done in-house. So CNS, in fact, does produce all of the series locally, in fabled "Downtown Burbank".

Steve Hulett said...

Greg:

Thanks for the clarification. Actually, I think somebody mentioned that to me, but I zoned out about it writing the post.

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