Prickles the Cactus

Pilots are often a treasure to behold, either they're good that could've been great shows, or something that are better off as just a one-off sort of thing. Then you have the middle ground where you don't mind it being a one-off, but also like it to continue on. This cartoon is somewhat the middle ground.

Title card of Prickles

During the 1990's, Cartoon Network was trying out different shorts that can be spun off into a full fledged series. They did this a few times, such as "What a Cartoon Show", but they might have viewers pick out which cartoon is the best, which is done in the form of "The Big Pick", a marathon of short cartoons that viewers can vote that can become a series, which they did for both summer of 2000 and 2001. One of the cartoons I wanna talk about is Prickles, a anthropomorphic cactus who lives in Cyclone Ranch with her dad and brother Bert and Egbert, and her main gimmicks is that shes is clumsy and fear of touching water as that makes her puff up. She was created by Denis Morella, and this was the first thing he worked for Cartoon Network after looking at his IMDb page, the other thing prior was Liquid Television for MTV. I was actually unaware about this cartoon until I was replaying some games Cartoon Network used to have called "Summer Resort", a episodic overhead view game where you play as a random character from the pilots and need to help out with the Cartoon Network characters with their problems. Turns out she was one of those characters you play in that game.

One thing that bothers me was that I'm not sure which came out first, as there was not only the pilot, but also a short cartoon released on Cartoon Network's official site prior to the revamp. Internet Archives states that it was in 2003, but the toon itself says it was released in 1999. I assume this was released on a different part of the official site during that time. But I'll discuss about both toons.

The first will be on the flash cartoon, which I found out was actually made alongside the pilot to help promote it. In the toon, Prickles is competing at the Miss Green Teen Pageant 2000, and she has to deal with her rival Becky and partner Cccynthia. Becky does try to juggle to show off and to give Prickles a run for her money by giving her the stuff to juggle as well. This doesn't go well as Marci was trying to eat the rats Prickles was juggling, which causes Becky to drop the goldfish bowls and the water swells up Prickles. Prickles does win, but she dislike the picture.

Like other flash cartoons, there some interactive parts you can poke around, like there's one part where you can make Prickles dance to the music of the jukebox, and the magazine part towards the end.

The other is the pilot which probably might've seen if you were watching Cartoon Network of summer 2000. Here, the ranch is in a severe drought and there's hardly any water to keep it going, as well as keeping everyone thirsty. Her dad Bert tells Prickles to find water using a stick, so both she and Marci decided to travel to find some, which they find a small cloud who was very troublesome until the magic stick pokes him. The cloud agrees to go with the two back to the ranch. Things go well until Sunny decides to be a dick and try to fry the cloud. Prickles calls out on him and whines that he gets carried away, then it gets worse when the cloud calls out for his mom, and torments Sunny for picking at her son and causes it to rain. Good news; no one is thirsty. Bad news; it's flooding. And that's pretty much it.

Both of the toons are pretty good for what they are. I like the colors more from the webtoon, while the animation on the pilot is better animated. The plots themselves aren't remarkable, but they're still very good to watch. The voice acting is very good, my personal favorites are Prickles and Marci. Prickles just sounds innocently adorable, while Marci has the deadpan snark tone which fits them very well.

Unfortunately, Prickles didn't became a full series after that summer, with the winner being  Billy and Mandy. Which I can't blame as that had the more interesting series out of the bunch. However, I still think Prickles could've had some potential to be s series as well, though I think the desert setting would've been boring for some, despite being only two cartoons on the cactus.

So what happened afterwards? Well, according to some users, the cartoon reaired one last time on May 2003 and as I stated above, Prickles became a playable character in the Summer Resort game afterwards. As for the creator, Denis actually got a bigger career when he worked for Disney, first working on the Disney Junior (formerly Playhouse Disney) show Higglytown Heroes, then finally his recent and biggest project Sheriff Callie's Wild West, which like Prickles takes place in the desert and features a talking cactus.

You can watch both cartoons on YouTube and through Internet Archives (which you can watch the webtoon here).

Mr. Men Show Redesign - Mr. Clever

Happy Christmas eve everybody, time for another character from the original Mr. Men I redesigned in Mr. Men Show form, and it's Mr. Clever.

Mr. Clever from the books

Mr. Clever (not to be confused with the Doctor Who character) is a Mr. Men who lives in Cleverland that is in Misterland. As the name suggest, he is very smart and knows everything, or so it seems. One day, he went out for a walk when he stumbled across some of the Mr. Men and brags about him being clever. However, when someone asks him what is the best joke or dish to cook, he doesn't know. By the time he headed back home, Mr. Clever doesn't think he's all that smart. However, like everyone in the books, he recovers and is back to his old self. Despite Arthur Lowe did a audio tack of the story, Mr. Clever never got the animated treatment, although he made a appearance in Little Miss Trouble's story (which is where I first saw the character)

My original design of Mr. Clever, based on Mighty355's design

I originally did the design around late Spring/early Summer of 2010 when some mysterious artwork of some redesigns of rumored characters were going to appear in Season 3 of the Mr. Men Show (though this turned out to be false, and was later found out to be fan designs by a user from DeviantArt named Mighty355. Despite this, I wanna try to do my take of the character if he appeared in the show. I basically used some assets from characters from the show, (Mr. Tickle's body, Mr. Grumpy's hate and Miss Helpful's shoes) based on what the user did. Other pieces I reused are M. Quiet's nose shape and Mr. Nervous' glasses, though modified. I didn't bothered with the ears because the glasses would've made it an issue. I was quite please with the design for a while, until a friend of mine named Jacob Henjes (Trainboy7) told me that he didn't like it that Mr. Clever shares the same hat as Mr. Grumpy (because both Grumpy and Clever wore the same green hat in the books), I guess because he didn't like how some character share the same exact wardrobe.

Revamp designs of Mr. Clever

When I got back into the Mr. Men late last year, I decided to revamp the design. Everything was kept, but I decided to give him a different hat. I was thinking of using a academic cap, a hat either worn by professors or graduates of school and thought it looked good. I'm not sure if this what either Jacob or another friend suggested me, or if I came up with. I did different color schemes for the cap; one that is black with the tassel as the same color as the original hat, or just with the same colors from the original design but swapped. I ended being pleased with it afterwards.

I later did a animation piece during late Spring of this year based on the audio that I mentioned Arthur Lowe narrated, but in the style of the Mr. Men Show, after hearing my friend Lachie was saying he was going to animate Mr. Rush before, and thought on doing so.

Hope to see you all!

Mr. Men/Doctor Who designs - Introduction

So I've been a fan of Doctor Who and the Mr. Men for a while and thought on doing some personal blog posts about my designs of the characters from Doctor Who if they were in Mr. Men and Little Miss form.

For those who don't know, Doctor Who is a science fiction series the BBC aired since 1963 about a alien known as the Doctor, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who can travel in time and space. The initial series was going to teach history lessons, but this drifted away once the science fiction kicked in.

I got into Doctor Who around early 2009 when I decided to give it a watch after some friends online were talking about it, and it was very good! I haven't watch it too much after Series 6 as I started to stop watching it due to other stuff (and no, it wasn't because of how the show was getting worse), but I do go back in and out watching some of the recent clips in and out, as well as the older episodes during the classic era.

My drawing of the (then) 11 Doctors in Mr. Men form

One of the things I wanted to do after getting into drawing again was doing some Doctor Who artwork done in the Mr. Men style, specifically the 2008 show as I was getting my groove for the style, and while I may not be the first one to think of this, I was the first to express it online. I thought both of these franchises together would be interesting as they're both British and the fact the BBC aired these (at least the original Mr. Men from the 1970s). I kinda stopped this sometime after 2011 as I was losing interest of both franchises, but started to get back late last year after hearing about the Doctor Who/Mr. Men crossover books from the BBC, and as I was getting my Mr. Men interest back.

Ian Chesterton, Sarah Jane Smith, Peri Brown and Adric

I'll be posting some of the Doctors, companions, props and other characters from that show in the Mr. Men style.