FlickerLab has animated the first of eight new Tek Jansen adventures that will be part of THE COLBERT REPORT over the course of the season. Each episode of "Stephen Colbert Presents Stephen Colbert's Alpha Squad 7: The New Tek Jansen Adventures" is each approximately three minutes in length. The first of the new adventures, "Beginning's: First Dawn," aired on THE COLBERT REPORT on Comedy Central, Wednesday, Sept. 12.
The first episode begins at a time before the hero was a hero, when Tek was just a pimply faced, physically awkward kid who had never had even a single girlfriend. Back to the day when the personification of evil, Thurmond Chang, has had the last Alpha Squad Agent killed and, before he dies, he hands his nano fiche to young Tek, placing the fate of the universe in his inexperienced hands.
"Tek Jansen has previously appeared on THE COLBERT REPORT, in an online novel, and in comics so we stepped into a world and a character with a deep history and fan base that could only be described as rabid. This gave us a fantastic foundation to work with. From there, we designed a planetary parliament full of new characters, and enjoyed the thrill of animating the origins of the galaxy's most virile hero," explained Harold Moss, Founder/Creative Director, of FlickerLab. "The fun of these cartoons is how serious they are -- everything is deadpan and beyond, harkening back to the adventure cartoons we all watched as kids. The whole team had a blast hitting all the over the top notes in those cartoons that kept all of us nailed to the floor in front of the tube, sugar cereal spilling out of our stuffed mouths, every Saturday morning as we were growing up."
The FlickerLab team included Creative Director Harold Moss; Executive Producer Tammy Walters; Animation Director Phil Lockerby; Lead Designer Max Porter; Character Designers Nick Bertonazzi and Simon Ampel; Background Designers Max Porter, Bryan Cox and Simon Ampel; Storyboards Phil Lockerby; Animatic Editor Anthony Orkin; Supervising Producer Melissa Johnson; Producer Franklin Zitter; 2D Animators Phil Lockerby, Simon Ampel, Adam Sacks and Alissa Harris; Animation Interns Theresa Finelli, Loo Wang, Micah Cohen and Pedro Davies; and Production Assistant Paul Imperio; Sound Designer and Mixer Thomas Lino and Assistant Sound Designer Johanna Bystrom.
FlickerLab utilized Adobe Creative Suite CS3; Apple Final Cut Studio 2; Panic Transmit software; PowerMac G5 Computers; iMac Intel Computers; Dell Ultrasharp 24" widescreen displays; Apple Displays; Aja's Kona 2; Sony Digibeta Deck; Sony Broadcast Monitor; Wacom Intuos 3 tablets and Wacom Cintiq Tablets in the execution of this project.
Founded in 1999 as a design and animation studio, FlickerLab's portfolio includes work for media and entertainment companies including A&E Networks, Bravo, Comedy Central, Discovery Home, Disney Channel, Lifetime, Lionsgate, Michael Moore Prods., MTV, Nickelodeon, Planned Parenthood, Cartoon Network and The WB, and product/service companies including Bassat Ogilvy, Continental Airlines, Grey Worldwide, Johnson & Johnson, McCann Erickson, Microsoft, Party City and Procter & Gamble, among many others. For more information, visit www.flickerlab.com.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
