Cynthia Littleton On The Air

Cartoon Network bows the Cartoonstitute: A 'think tank' for animators

An interesting development within Cartoon Network was overshadowed by the slew of other announcements unveiled at the cabler's upfront presentation last week.

Rob Sorcher, Cartoon Net's newly appointed chief content officer, is spearheading a development initiative they've dubbed the "Cartoonstitute." Sorcher (pictured left) wants to get a bunch of original development in the works pronto (insert a Hanna-Barbera zoink and pat-a-pat-a-pat-a-pat sound of running bare feet here), and so he's carving out a space with the Burbank-based Cartoon Studios facility for an artists colony that he hopes will harvest funny fruit in the near future.

Cartoonstitute will be run by two veteran Cartoon Net producers, Craig McCracken, of "Powerpuff Girls" and 'Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends" fame, and Rob Renzetti ("My Life as a Teenage Robot"). Sorcher aims to put six artists to work full-time on pilots and short segments for the channel immediately, under the guidance of McCracken and Renzetti. As many as 30 more artists -- some already in-house at Cartoon, some new to the toon net tent -- will be brought in to pitch in and/or develop their own ideas at any given time, particularly when they're on production hiatus from other Cartoon Net shows.

Sorcher was part of the early Cartoon Net exec team in the mid-1990s and rejoined the channel in January after six years at AMC. He wants to generate 150 bits of programming for Cartoon Net during the next 20 months. It's an ambitious target, and a sign of how eager the new programming chief is to inject new characters and fresh yuks into Cartoon. The mission, as Sorcher sees it, is to create a "think tank" for animators. A productive think tank.

"I wanted to put a swift development track together," he says, "but the other side of it is thinking about long-term development and what it takes to get a successful cartoon series. I know that a lot of it comes from setting out the conditions where artists and writers can really succeed at doing that. We started thinking about how to create an environment where this kind of creative thinking can happen."

"Family Guy" has the force in its season preem

"Family Guy" had its force-is-with-you mojo working on Sunday. Animated skein's two-part season opener, a "Star Wars" spoof dubbed "Blue Harvest, Parts 1 and 2," drew 10.7 million viewers and a 5.5 rating/13 share in the adults 18-49 demo in the 9-10 p.m. hour, which indicated a high awareness of the seg among a slightly older crowd that doesn't typically tune in to the toon. (Granted, most of the competish was still in repeats.)

Young auds showed up as well, of course, to the tune of a 7.7/19 in adults 18-34 and 5.3/17 in teens, per prelim Nielsens. In the boys-to-men 12-17 demo, "Family Guy" smoked with 7.8/22. In most key measures, Sunday's perf marked "Family Guy's" best numbers since its return to Fox's air (after its resurrection on Adult Swim and DVD) in May 2005.

"Lucy, Daughter of the Devil": Wicked fun from Adult Swim

The Devil wears argyle sweaters. He likes to croon karaoke tunes, and he owns a small chain of Tequila Sally's restaurants that offer such signature items as the "diet-rita" (a low-cal margarita) and the "A-taco-lypse" carne asada platter.

Underneath his well-honed image as evil incarnate, the Devil is more a misunderstood family man than malevolent dictator of the underworld -- at least that's how he's played for laughs in "Lucy, Daughter of the Devil," the latest animated addition to Adult Swim's latenight lineup. Wickedly funny skein, which bowed this month in the 12:15 a.m. Sunday slot for a 10-episode run, hails from Loren Bouchard, the co-creator of another Adult Swim fave, "Home Movies."

Like most of the shows on Adult Swim, the humor in "Lucy" is surreal and uninhibited by traditional standards of TV decorum, and unbound by the laws of physics as only animation can be. Even non- believers might even feel a bit, well, devilish for giggling at some of the things that "Lucy" pokes fun at. Who knew homicidal nuns, manic-depressive priests and nonsensical setups, like the Devil and Jesus engaging in a dashboard-bongo jam session while driving across the desert to get to the Burning Man festival, could be so much fun?

To Bouchard, "Lucy" is not overtly concerned with skewering sacred cows of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It's about a father's relationship with his feisty 21-year-old daughter, who is dating a charismatic guy dubbed DJ Jesus, much to her father's disapproval.

"I don't think that if you really watch the show you'll be offended" by the treatment of the religious themes and Biblical characters, Bouchard says. "There'll be moments here and there people might not like, but I don't think the overall impression you get if you watch the show from the beginning is that we're trying to offend."

Judge for yourself in this clip:

Aardman's "Pib and Pog" -- kidvid stars with attitude

Here's a fun, free and non-fattening way to while away the dog days of August while we're supposed to be working. AtomFilms is showcasing a series of shorts from Aardman Animations, "Pib and Pog," that cheekily skewers the banality of most contemporary kidvid.

At first blush "Pib and Pog" look like any other kids program produced on the cheap with minimal animation. But keep watching, these two are subversively funny, and even a bit potty-mouthed when they're not on camera in their show-within-a-short. "Pib and Pog" stem from a short film that director Peter Peake did for Aardman in the late 1990s, and Peake's back as the creative overlord of the new shorts developed in conjunction with MTV Networks' AtomFilms Studios.

Although it looks low-budget on the surface, it's Aardman -- purveyors of "Wallace and Gromit," "Creature Comforts" and other wonderfully weird stop-motion animation fare -- so it's deceptively simple-looking and beautifully produced. I love Aardman's stuff for the fact that you can see the human touch in all of their work. Somebody really does move the plasticine figures a tenth of an inch for each shot. The consistent quality of the company's work is truly impressive. I've never understood why "Wallace and Gromit" never took off on this side of the pond. My kid loves them. For a tour of the Aardman oeuvre, start here.