The Upstate Four is a pilot that I created for Cartoon Network with my brother Fran Krause. We were involved in all aspects of the project from writing, design and storyboarding to color, animation, and sound.
We made the cartoon in New York, and managed to finish the project without outsourcing any of the animation. Hooray!
Here’s a link to a Cartoon Brew article about the process of making this cartoon:
Cartoon Brew – The Upstate Four
I made this cartoon with my brother Fran Krause over the course of a weekend. It won an award at the ASIFA animation festival for the sound.
Utica Cartoon was my first professional animation project, and possibly my last chance to produce a traditionally-animated cartoon for television. Fran and I left New York City (where we were living in a basement) to go to Providence for the production of Utica Cartoon. Not only was rent cheaper, but we also scored Mike Overbeck and Jesse Schmal at a fire sale price because they were fresh out of school. Hooray!
We set up shop in a little cottage from 1754 that we rented from a local preservation group. It was terrifyingly haunted and had a possum in the basement, but there was also space to set up a stress-relieving drumset so it all balanced out.
As I called to find places to get our cells xeroxed I learned that most businesses that supplied materials and services for traditional cell animation were out-of business or packing up their cell machinery as I talked to them on the phone. That whole Furniture Design degree finally came in handy as I had to build our own light tables, camera stands, and cell pain drying racks. We rented a xerox machine and did all of our own xeroxing and re-registering, and I must have mixed about a gallon of slightly different bear and monkey colored paints.
The pitch went from bible to pilot at a remarkably fast clip, so we had to get rolling quickly! I’d never animated before, so a crash course was started. It all turned out well in the end… well, except for it becoming a series. Our friend Tom Warburton was the lucky one this time around, though we did get to travel to a festival in Turku, Finland with Utica Cartoon. I met some wonderful people and ate lots of liquorice!
The story was inspired by a friend whose plan to beat the local hot dog store’s record was “a blender and a can of sprite.”
