Sunday, December 23, 2007

016 Happy Holidays?

This holiday strip was actually one of the first ones I wrote. It was originally suppose to end with the Mouse saying "I hope you kept the receipt" and the Cat getting sad. After I started writing more strips, I realized that this strip was way too short so I added the Cat throwing a trantrum and deciding to celebrate Hanukkah. That was the best I could come up with. I have to go wrap presents but maybe later in the week I'll post some more on this strip, because I like how I animated this one. Happy Holidays!

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

1 Star for PB!

I've never seen anything on youtube with a 1 star rating. I'm blown away! I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of my wonderful fans, friends, and family for all of the support!


In 'The Future' the Cat has some pretty high goals, a 'public bus driver' and a 'fancy business tycoon'. My word of advice is to always aim low, it will turn that one star into a million! Also, some of you might think it's strange that the Cat and Mouse are old men with long beards in a year's time. My explanation is that animals age faster than humans, I don't even think mice live over a year.

Monday, December 10, 2007

014 Hypnotized

Here's some behind the scenes from the 'Hypnotized' strip.

We record all of the dialogue in Matt's garage. Eric and Matt go through the storyboard and recite the lines and add a few of their own. There's only one microphone so the voices are recorded separate from each other. Eric and Matt make several takes for each line. I usually pick the ones that make us laugh. As you can see it's a good time recording the dialogue. I'm very lucky to have my buddies, Eric and Matt lend their voices and insight to this series. It wouldn't be half as good without them!

Monday, December 3, 2007

013 Don't Eat That

This strip is based off of a true story. I should've listened.


Don't ask about the lips in the chew cycle, that's how I drew them in the storyboard. I usually stick really close to the poses I draw in the boards. Even though I already had a reusable chew cycle from the Harpies Outbreak strip, I still animated this new chew cycle, it's always nice to see something new everyonce in awhile. I've been told people appreciate that kind of stuff.

Monday, November 26, 2007

012 Told You So

This is my favorite strip of the season. I dredded working on it from the start, knowing it would be a lot of work. It took me four nights after work to produce (the average strip takes about a night and a half).


"I want excitement, I wanna Ah cha cha cha!" What movie is this line from?

I'm not really a background artist, so for this strip i did a lot of referencing, well, not that much. I referenced "A Boy Named Charlie Brown." The painterly style and the colors are really awesome in this movie, something I haven't seen in anything recent. Also there are a lot of shots that are flat without any perspective or horizon, I find it very interesting since this movie was made in the early 60's.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

011 That Turkey

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving, that turkey sure was good! Speaking of turkey, this is the second time we see Grandpa Turkey in the season. It was actually this episode that Grandpa Turkey's character was created, even though he had an appearance four episodes prior to this one. In the seventh strip I didn't have a character for the bartender, so I decided to throw Grandpa Turkey in there. But it was this episode he was originally introduced into the Prophet Buddy cast, you can't have Thanksgiving without Native Americans... makes perfect sense right?




Also, Matt Danner, voice of the Prophet Mouse attacked by paparazzi! I have to go hide now.

Friday, November 16, 2007

010 Kitty Cold & Tshirts

So I've been getting a little lazy with the Prophet Bloggy, I apologize. I've been hard at work finishing up the season and trying to get some sleep. Kitty Cold sounds kinda like a fight I would have with my girlfriend, blaming her for something she couldn't prevent. Coincedentally my girlfriend wrote this episode, possibly she's trying to tell me something... Cover your eyes kiddies, this is the first episode we see the cat naked!

Tshirts are now available in the ColdHardFlash online store! To make sure everyone is aware, I've made a commercial. They'll make great stocking stuffers for the holidays and they'll boost your coolness factor up to level 10! Support FREE independent cartoons by giving us money! (That was a joke)

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

009 Hairballs!

So this is what happens when I let someone else write an episode, completely random and nothing to do with prophecies. Actually in Bob's original story, the hairball beats up the cat and mouse. Something about a violent hairball doesn't sit right with me, so I changed it around a bit. Don't know what else to write about this strip, what do you want to know?

In other news, Prophet Buddy is on iTunes! Go to the iTunes Music Store and do a search for "Prophet Buddy" and subscribe to the podcast! Now you won't have to bother coming to the Prophet Buddy website because you can automatically receive the new strip every Monday when you launch your iTunes library.

Also I've made a Prophet Buddy page on Youtube.com, so you can now embed the strips on your myspace pages, blogs, or other peoples comments!

The first season is halfway through, 9 more episodes to go. Thanks for stopping by!

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

008 Candy-Corn-Dog


If you were wondering who the cat is suppose to be for Halloween, he's Randy from one of my favorite movies "Loverboy" in his SeƱor Pizza uniform. If you've never seen Loverboy, I suggest you buy it NOW! Here's a few screen grabs to refresh your memory...

When you're trick or treating tonight, don't forget to ask for extra anchovies!

Monday, October 22, 2007

007 In For A Surprise

Due to the negative response the Prophet Mouse has created from his wrong doings to the cat, he has released this official statement:

Cat, I'm sorry. But it wasn't my birthday. I now know it was wrong of me to not show up to the party you had made for me. I appreciate everything you have done for me and really feel awful. Please find it in your heart to forgive me. Please. - Prophet Mouse

The Cat has followed up with this statement:
Buddy, I forgive you. When is your birthday? - Randy Cat


Boy, that sure cleared the air!

I'm sure all of you are wondering, who is this fine looking Native American chap? The Native American is Cheif Grandpa Turkey. He's a character I created based off of my grandpa, Grandpa Turkey. Grandpa Turkey was half Cherokee and all man. A man with a big voice and a thick belt. He called me 'Pumpkin'. You will be seeing more of Grandpa Turkey in later episodes.

Monday, October 15, 2007

006 I Hear You Knocking

Knock Knock jokes never get old... neither do fart jokes. I had 2 seconds left over at the end of the strip before the melody ended and wasn't sure what to do with that extra time, so I threw in a fart sound effect and animated a poot. Have you ever been so mad that you squeezed out a pooty?

Thanks to everyone who participated in the myspace Prophet Buddy tshirt giveaway, your shirts are in the mail. The shirts will be available to everyone else in a week or so... stay tuned!

Monday, October 8, 2007

005 Nothing To Do

I managed to make a strip about nothing. Nothing much to write about it either. Enjoy!



I'm going to record the rest of Season 1's dialogue with Danner and Bauza tonight. I'm also bringing along my video camera to capture some behind-the-scenes hijinks for you guys.

Sunday, September 30, 2007

004 Harpies Outbreak

This strip came from a Greek mythology story. In the story of Jason and the Argonauts, Zeus punished the blind prophet Phineas by putting him on an island with a whole feast as well as a couple of Harpies. Everytime Phineas approached the food, Harpies would attack him, snatching his food forcing poor Phineas to starve. Eventually Jason killed the Harpies and saved the day.

In this strip of Prophet Buddy, the mouse refers to the seagulls as harpies as they steal his half of the sandwich. The cat, bothered while eating his half, swats at those pesky birds and 'accidentally' hits his buddy, scaring the seagulls away. What a hero!

Speaking of something, the cat is wearing a 1984 Olympic watch. These watches were so cool, everyone I knew had one, or two, or three. I never had one, but have always wanted one. I tried finding the actual image of the watch online for reference but had no luck. It's amazing, in 1984 they were all over the place, now it's like they were erased from existance.


Thanks to everyone with the emails, comments, myspace bulletins... for all of the wonderful response. I'm glad you all like Prophet Buddy so far, it really means a lot to me. If you keep watching em, I'll keep making em! Also thanks to Jasminsaurus for maintaining the myspace page and spamming everyone. If you haven't already, add Prophet Buddy to your myspace friends and drop Jasminsaurus & the Prophet Buddies a line. T-Shirts are on the way!

Monday, September 24, 2007

003 Slight Chance Of Showers

The weather has been really weird this Summer, in Los Angeles anyway. We've gone from 115 degree heat waves to flash floods in the same week. It's crazy! This strip is about that kind of craziness.

Here's the script:

Here's some of my favorite parts from this strip:


I love animating shrink takes!



This is the first strip that needed mouth poses for lipsync, I couldn't decide if I should make full mouth charts or limited anime style mouth charts. I ended up making both. Here's a frame by frame of "The" lipsynced:

It looks more like he's saying "LAAA". I dunno, some cats might actually look like they're saying "laaaa" when really saying "the". If you really wanted to get philosophic, cats can't really talk so it's all wrong.

I animated this strip while watching Limelight, I dunno what this has to do with anything, some people find these things interesting.

Monday, September 17, 2007

002 True Love

Thanks everyone for all of the great response, I was sure there were going to be some haters since the first strip IS pretty goofy. You all made it much easier for me to post the second strip. My test group says the strips get better and better, so if you liked the first one you'll like the rest. The second strip is kind of about Chinese food and finding love. For me it's mostly about inconsistency. Part of my dayjob is to catch all of the inconsistencies between scenes and pose hook ups which can sometimes get ridiculous. This strip is my outlet where I allowed myself to not care about consistencies (you probably wouldn't have noticed if I didn't point them out).
Between the first and third shot the Chinese food goes missing.

Not an inconsistency, just some digital drybrush.

This expression doesn't hook up.

Notice how I didn't bother with lipsync, I'm lazy!
Thanks to Shawn for building the Prophet Buddy site for me, you should go check out his new site, it's pretty silly. Also, thanks to Aaron and Cold Hard Flash for the launch post.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

The Origin

Hi, welcome to the Prophet Buddy production blog or the Prophet Bloggy. I plan to use this blog to post production pics, tell stories about my processes in making Prophet Buddy, also to explain jokes that I would only find funny.


I thought it would be appropriate to start the blog explaining the origin of Prophet Buddy. A few months ago while sitting in a boring production meeting, I started making doodles as usual. I was thinking of
Anna Chamber's stuffed animals at the time and was trying to draw something in a similar style. I drew a cat and a mouse sitting together on a wall. A wall because Charlie Brown and Linus always hang out at a wall, I figure that would be the best place for two good friends to hang out. Above the cat and mouse I drew them thinking about a corndog and a bottle of mustard. I love corndogs, and I love mustard even more.


During the meeting I was making a story up in my head about the cat and mouse communicating to each other telepathically using images, my story was called "You Bring the Corndog, I'll Bring the Mustard." That doodle sat on my desk for months, but I never really had any plans for it.


One day at work, I was giving back retakes to the animators. I had just finished giving back retakes to one guy, before I could call the next animator in to my office, that very animator I was going to call came in and asked for his retakes. I told him he was like a prophet or something, and then I called him my prophet buddy. Right as I said prophet buddy, I had looked down at the doodle sitting on my desk and it all clicked. That day I made a quick storyboard (now the pilot), keeping a similar corndog and mustard joke as in the original doodle. The storyboard was only four panels long so I figured I could animate the whole thing in an hour, so I began designing it in the computer.


When picking the colors of the characters, I wanted to make the cat and mouse an homage to Tom & Jerry, one of my favorite cartoons, so I used the same color scheme; blue cat and brown/orange mouse.


That night I had come up with a few more episodes and decided that I was finally ready to do my own stuff again; the first time since Warner Bros. bought Go! Go! Moba Boy and shelved it forever. I was really excited to just do something that makes me happy without the snags. I didn't want to develop and jump through hundreds of hoops for the next several years, only to get nothing out of it again.

The next day I purchased the domain and storyboarded more episodes. The episodes are all really short, basically one gag, that's why I refer to Prophet Buddy as a comic rather than a cartoon. People will probably expect more if I call it a cartoon, therefore I'll save myself the criticism, Prophet Buddy is an internet comic that happens to be animated.


Several days later I asked
Eric Bauza if he could do the voices for the characters and he agreed. I didn't really know what I wanted them to sound like; I sent Bauza an image of the characters and told him to come up with something. Bauza had said that he's always wanted to use the Mike Fontanelli impression that he uses at all of his auditions but always gets rejected. I'm really easy to persuade, so the Fontanelli impression it was for the cat, which made Bauza excited. But who for the mouse would complement the Fontanelli voice? I was racking my brain over it. One night, I started thinking about when I was working at Spumco and seeing Fontanelli around thinking about his voice and his conversations with the people around the office, then I was thinking of who worked there that had a really unique and distinct voice... our boss, Kevin Kolde. The next day I told Bauza via instant messenger, his response was "LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL." Thus, I had found the mouse's voice. The next week I got together with Bauza at Matt Danner's house to record the audio. Bauza suggested that Danner should do the voice for the mouse since he does a much better Kolde. Me + easily persuaded = Danner plays the mouse.


The night I began official animation production I heard noises outside of my house. The noises turned out to be a little brown mouse... was this a sign of good luck, or was my exterminator just not doing his job? It's probably neither, I have some dirty neighbors!

main title boards:

That's just a little tid bit of the origin, come back regularly for more behind the scenes of Prophet Buddy.