PlopKat
09-09-2001, 05:40 PM
This news is from the Fall 2001 issue of Hogan's Alley, a magazine which mostly covers comic strips & panels but also some animation.
It's a pretty short piece. Everything betweens the lines is from that article.
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Chris Savino is a directore on a new Flinstones animated featre from Cartoon Network. Davis Smith is co-director on the feature.
CHRIS SAVINO: The name of our feature is The Flintstones: On The Rocks, and the release date is tenatively November 2001. It's undecided if it will be a video release first or TV, but I'm pretty sure it will be TV. It changes from day to day.
DAVID SMITH: The characters are based on Ed Benedict's original designs. Anything from 1970 to present day we did not look at. Craig Kellman, our character designer, was so inspired by Ed Benedict's original work and he based his redesigns on that.
SAVINO: There were some similar designs done six or seven years ago for merchandising of the thirty-fifth anniversary of The Flintstones. The merchandising did not do too well, but at the same time those designs were never used for anything else. We thought this was a perfect opportunity to use them again and bring back the look and feel of what the Flintstones originally were. We the the original Flintstones as they appeared in Episode One in 1960 was not a kid's show, but a sitcom dealing with adult relationships and marriage. Over the years the Flintsones became very iconic. Fred was no longer a fat loudmouth. Barney was no longer a short idiot. They became very contemporary, even-tempered and unappealing. We treat our film as though 1961 has rolled around again and are taking it from there. We've neglected Pebbles and Bamm Bamm as though they didn't exist, or maybe they do exist and are grown up and have kids of their own, but it's up to you to decide. We don't touch on that at all. We focus on the problems of marraige and deal with that 1950s ere where the woman stayed at home and the man was the breadwinner. We don't reinforce that idea in any way, but we've kept Fred in that traditional role and have given Wilma more of an update, which causes them even more conflict.
SMITH: It's traditional hand-painted animation. There's no digital anything in this. We specifically wanted it to look as close as possible to the original. We had a background painter from the original series, a gentleman named Don Watson. He started around episode 113 of the original first run. It was an incredible experience to work with him. His knowledge and experience worked well with our ideas and it was a privilege to have him with us. He really brough it back to 1960 for us. The backgrounds are probably the closest thing to the original series, becuae we've really ripped them off.
SAVINO: If you look at one of the first sequences of our film, you'll see there are obviously differences from the original, but what we're going for and have said all along is, this is how you remember The Flintstones. You'll get the feeling of what it originally was. We're using Hoyt Curtin's original music, but since we'll be taking Fred and Wilma into a Latin America country, we've added some Latin American music.
SMITH: We hope we're not doing something with these characters that has been done for many, many years, which is ruin them. We could be doing it and don't know! (laughter)
SAVINO: I'd also like to pin out tht there were four people who wrote and storyboarded this: myself, Dave and a married couple, Cindy and Clay Morrow. We were all born in the '70s and are not of the 1960s era. I think it's kind of funny that we're taking an existing product like The Flintstones and bringing back the nostalgic feel, even though we were never part of that filmmaking time.
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This magazine also features interiews with others who worked on the Flintstones: Ed Benedict, Gene Hazelton, Dale Hale, Roger Armstrong, Scott Shaw, and June Foray. Hazelton, Hale, Armstrong and Shaw also worked on the Flintstones comic strip. Foray's bit is the shortest and she mentions how disappointed she was when neither she or Daws Butler were hired for the series.
-PlopKat
It's a pretty short piece. Everything betweens the lines is from that article.
-------------------------------
Chris Savino is a directore on a new Flinstones animated featre from Cartoon Network. Davis Smith is co-director on the feature.
CHRIS SAVINO: The name of our feature is The Flintstones: On The Rocks, and the release date is tenatively November 2001. It's undecided if it will be a video release first or TV, but I'm pretty sure it will be TV. It changes from day to day.
DAVID SMITH: The characters are based on Ed Benedict's original designs. Anything from 1970 to present day we did not look at. Craig Kellman, our character designer, was so inspired by Ed Benedict's original work and he based his redesigns on that.
SAVINO: There were some similar designs done six or seven years ago for merchandising of the thirty-fifth anniversary of The Flintstones. The merchandising did not do too well, but at the same time those designs were never used for anything else. We thought this was a perfect opportunity to use them again and bring back the look and feel of what the Flintstones originally were. We the the original Flintstones as they appeared in Episode One in 1960 was not a kid's show, but a sitcom dealing with adult relationships and marriage. Over the years the Flintsones became very iconic. Fred was no longer a fat loudmouth. Barney was no longer a short idiot. They became very contemporary, even-tempered and unappealing. We treat our film as though 1961 has rolled around again and are taking it from there. We've neglected Pebbles and Bamm Bamm as though they didn't exist, or maybe they do exist and are grown up and have kids of their own, but it's up to you to decide. We don't touch on that at all. We focus on the problems of marraige and deal with that 1950s ere where the woman stayed at home and the man was the breadwinner. We don't reinforce that idea in any way, but we've kept Fred in that traditional role and have given Wilma more of an update, which causes them even more conflict.
SMITH: It's traditional hand-painted animation. There's no digital anything in this. We specifically wanted it to look as close as possible to the original. We had a background painter from the original series, a gentleman named Don Watson. He started around episode 113 of the original first run. It was an incredible experience to work with him. His knowledge and experience worked well with our ideas and it was a privilege to have him with us. He really brough it back to 1960 for us. The backgrounds are probably the closest thing to the original series, becuae we've really ripped them off.
SAVINO: If you look at one of the first sequences of our film, you'll see there are obviously differences from the original, but what we're going for and have said all along is, this is how you remember The Flintstones. You'll get the feeling of what it originally was. We're using Hoyt Curtin's original music, but since we'll be taking Fred and Wilma into a Latin America country, we've added some Latin American music.
SMITH: We hope we're not doing something with these characters that has been done for many, many years, which is ruin them. We could be doing it and don't know! (laughter)
SAVINO: I'd also like to pin out tht there were four people who wrote and storyboarded this: myself, Dave and a married couple, Cindy and Clay Morrow. We were all born in the '70s and are not of the 1960s era. I think it's kind of funny that we're taking an existing product like The Flintstones and bringing back the nostalgic feel, even though we were never part of that filmmaking time.
------------------------------
This magazine also features interiews with others who worked on the Flintstones: Ed Benedict, Gene Hazelton, Dale Hale, Roger Armstrong, Scott Shaw, and June Foray. Hazelton, Hale, Armstrong and Shaw also worked on the Flintstones comic strip. Foray's bit is the shortest and she mentions how disappointed she was when neither she or Daws Butler were hired for the series.
-PlopKat