Bloo’s Gang was the first professional cartoon Harry and I ever did. In 1996 a man named Fred Seibert began working at Hanna-Barbera where he started a new trend in animation, bringing control back to the animator. Dubbed WHAT A CARTOON, artists flocked from all corners of the world to be a part of this amazing new endeavor. Where the 80’s had brought on a time where the writers clearly controlled the cartoon medium, the onset of Ren and Stimpy and ultimately Cartoon Network put some of the control back into the hands of the animator. They called these creator driven cartoons and they have produced some amazing results. Dexter’s Lab, Cow and Chicken. Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Bravo, Kids Next Door and many others were all originally What-A-Cartoon shorts. From this one simple cartoon we learned how to storyboard, design, direct, draw backgrounds and even how to time a cartoon. I owe most of my career to the selling of this cartoon and so does Harry.
Bloo’s Gang followed the escapades of three dogs. Bloo, Scully and Simon. Bloo was a Blue Labrador (a very rare breed). He was a boisterous loudmouth with a passion for adventure and a nose for causing trouble. Simon the sheepdog was laid back and mellow. He always went with the flow and did what Bloo asked him to. No questions asked. Simon was a nut job. He liked pain and actually laughed when you clocked him in the head. His googly eyes made it hard for him to see so he was always walking into things. Scully was gung-ho for anything Bloo could throw at him! In this film I key-animated, storyboarded, designed, directed and even voiced Bloo and Scull./ It’s interesting to note that if you watch the pencil test you’ll see that Bloo’s voice is different. The network wanted us to go back to the original voice even after it was entirely animated and I had to ADR the whole film. In other words I had to lip-sync it all as it played live and they recorded me doing it. Sound hard? You’re not kidding! I’ll bet you can’t tell if I didn’t tell you though!