"FRANKENSTEIN'S CAT, FRANKENSTEIN'S CAT!"
"HE'S A MONSTER!"
"A TWIT!"
"I'M A CAT FROM A KIT!"
"AND YOU'RE GOING TO LOVE HIM TO BITS!"
Well, it's here at long last. It's been a long, long road from the first doodles and scribbles I penned on a train journey from Warrington to London Euston in 2000. Since then the Cat was picked up as a picture book by Hodder, optioned as a short film by Mackinnon & Saunders, developed into a 2D flash animated series and now finally appears on Television next week. Along the way characters have been discarded (the Butler, the Cook) and other have been added or developed (Lottie, Egora, Heidi and the Doctor). We've a large cast of colourful, and quite mad, characters populating the village of Oddsburg and it's surrounding wilderness, so I can only hope now that the show is well received by its audience (that's you, that is!)
Big thanks go to all the production teams and broadcasters who've worked on the show, at Mackinnon & Saunders, Kayenta Production, BBC, CCI, 4:21, and A Productions. Special thanks go to Jackie Edwards, Sara Mullock and Thierry Rivard (producers on the show), Alan Gilbey (head writer and script editor) and Raoul and Jane Davies (directors) for helping make such lovely animated shenanigans. And big man love to Pete (Saunders) and Ian (Mackinnon) for believing in my stinky cat in the first place and taking a big ol' punt on it. Big man love hugs to the writers - Ian Carney, Dave Ingham, Myles McLeod, Darren Jones, Lee Pressman and Joel Jessop. Suffice to say the voice artists (Joe P, Keith Wickham, Alex Kelly, Teresa Gallagher and Jimmy Hibbert, who also pitched in with a script!) have done a wonderful job of breathing life into the cast, and I owe them a drink or four...
Lordy, that sounds like an acceptance speech. I'd best go and accept a banana from the fruit bowl as that's all I'll be receiving for the forseeable!
Off on the road this coming week, appearing at Animex Festival of Animation from Wednesday through Friday. I'll be doing a character design workshop on the Wednesday and on the Friday, accompanied by Jackie Edwards, we'll be doing a talk about The Anatomy Of Frankenstein's Cat. It promises to be a hoot!
Bada Bling!
