Sunday, October 20, 2013

Media Moment 2 - Women in Animation: Natasha Allegri's Bee and Puppycat

Natasha Allegri's Bee and Puppycat was originally released as a two part web series this past summer on Cartoon Hangover, a subdivision of Fred Seibert's animation company Frederator. Frederator has published popular cartoons such as The Fairly Odd Parents, Chalkzone, and Adventure Time. They created their web channel Cartoon Hangover this last year to publish cartoons online that maintain the integrity of the original visions of their creators. Their freshman series "Bravest Warriors" by one of my idols, Pen Ward, became an instant sensation and created more room for amateurs to try their hand at creating webtoons for the YouTube Channel. This is where Natasha Allegri comes into the picture. She is a character designer and storyboard artist for Adventure Time who was originally discovered through Tumblr for her animated Gifs. After pitching her cartoon to Fred Seibert, it was picked up as a 10 minute short that would be released in two separate parts. When it was originally released in July, I watched it and was instantly hooked to the strange language and comedy. The first part may have only been 5 minutes, but I still managed to watch it ~10 times in the first day. 
Right now Cartoon Hangover has created a Kickstarter with the goal of making Bee and Puppycat a series, and one of their selling points is that this is the first Cartoon created by a woman that is not just for other women. Fred Seibert has said in several interviews that in his 20 something years in the animation industry, he often found that cartoons by women with lead female characters never lasted very long. One interviewer brought up "Daria", a popular 90's show on MTV that starred a monotone and sarcastic high school girl that became popular with both teenage boys and girls. Fred was quick to point out that even though Daria saw great success with both men and women with a female lead character, the creators and producers were all men. Natasha may become the first woman in the field of animation to create a show with a female lead character that has the following and potential to become commercially successful. The Kickstarter has already reached half of its $600,000 goal in less than a week.

What "girl" cartoons have you enjoyed growing up and what makes them "for girls"? 

No comments:

Post a Comment