Ani-MADE-ed in Georgia - Bento Box Atlanta's The New Adventures of Paddle Pop

Welcome to Ani-MADE-ed in Georgia, where animation made in the US state of Georgia is discussed. 

So let's talk about probably the biggest studio in Atlanta currently, Bento Box Atlanta. They are a satellite studio of Bento Box from LA, which has made its mark in the previous decade with crafting hits for adult animation series such as Bob's Burgers, and Paradise PD. The studio set up its own animation division in Atlanta, whose main job is to provide animation services to shows that had pre-production done within LA's offices of Bento.

I like this idea of the studio to give steady work to suffering East Coast animators in a far location outside of the LA bubble, where consistent work can be tough to find. As well as doing the animation work of an American animated series entirely done stateside, which is a rare occurrence in this day and age. Most other work either goes overseas or to Canada, so I really appreciate Bento Box for forming and maintaining a stateside studio, especially in a new fledging city for animation such as Atlanta.

But the actual execution needs some major work. I'm appalled that Bento Atlanta pays their staff incredibly poorly for example, but that's one issue I'm not really qualified to talk about yet. But I will say support the new unionization efforts at Floyd Country Productions so that the Atlanta industry could improve as a whole: FCP Guild (@FCP_Guild) / Twitter

What I can talk about with certainty is that there is also a quality problem with the type of projects that come their way that I am not particularly thrilled about. It is hard on adult sitcoms such as Paradise PD, Hoops, and The Prince, for these Atlanta animators to really stand-out with their character animation on these types of adult series. It's not because the animators aren't talented enough, not at all. In fact, these series are very hard to pull off animation-wise, as simple as they may seem to be on first glance (Say hello to the endless amount of rules on Family Guy for instance). I can massively respect that. But it's not a pipeline where the animator can shine on their own terms or take advantage of the medium in a meaningful way. The character designs are locked heavily by the showrunners, and can almost never be anything other than on-model. These designs in general look extremely generic as well. Showrunners and executives on adult animation series constantly have this belief that "good animation or designs can get in the way of the writing", and it shows its head the most within Bento Box's series. As such, the Atlanta animators can never get the opportunity to truly shine with personality or character, instead taking the back seat to the showrunner's jokes being told with flat staging and characters mostly standing around with a minimal amount of character acting, instead of the art elevating the comedy as it should be.

I find this to be a waste on the animator's part because the Atlanta scene has so much potential for creativity, and most of that work in Bento's studio is just on visually bland adult sitcoms in the same lane as Family Guy.

But Bento Atlanta does have one notable exception where this is not the case. Released in 2017 and directed by Aaron Hawkins, The New Adventures of Paddle Pop is a 45 minute special that advertises the Paddle Pop mascot in a high-school setting. It is an unusual case of a project being outsourced to an American studio from an overseas client (Australia). It was made mostly in full by the Atlanta studio of Bento Box from storyboarding to compositing. It is not a great special by any stretch. The plot relies on the typical high-school tropes such as the battle of the bands and the mean girl rivals. But the character animation by itself is a breath of fresh air for the studio, as it is allowed to be fun and creative for once.

Unfortunately, it is hard to find an English version of this special anywhere, so I just watched it from a Thai dub found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XFJj8YU5Xo

There's a couple of characters that have good personalities come thru from the character animation, one of which is the Hairdresser Rabbit at the salon.

I fell in love with this character in the very short time he is in the special at the beginning. Thankfully, you can hear some of the English audio of this scene thanks to storyboarder Billie Liao posting his boards here: https://vimeo.com/243358997. It looks like he was voiced by Carlos Alazraqui. 

Stuff like the rabbit happily hopping over to the salon chair is really fun and show a lot of his character. You can get the sense that the rabbit loves his job as his passion. His traits of being a rabbit is also incorporated into the animation as he dainty hops over to the salon chair The animator even put a spin smear in to show that the rabbit has a bit of bravado also, making hare cutting into a show.

There is a feeling that the rabbit has had this job for quite a long time and so this is how he usually acts towards his customers. He is quite sociable, and loves everyone he meets and wants to get to know them better by wanting to engage them in a conversation.

Max the Lion said that he's getting a new hair-cut for a new school year. I like the rabbit's reaction. He loves to receive the information about his customers about this. You can tell that this situation is familiar to rabbit as he probably had to do haircuts of hundreds of people for the new school-year at this point in his career.

These rigs used in this production are probably not that great in terms of mobility and acting, so there is some frame-by-frame drawings used to supplement for the rigs' weaknesses, such as here. The animator drew in their own squash and stretch drawings of the rabbit (The squash down and the stretch up drawings in this shot above), probably to better accommodate Alazraqui's enthusiastic vocal performance with this dialogue. It really is some great character voice acting, the rabbit being extra excited of what  could be in store for him to tackle for this haircut. Also, I like that the animator incorporates more rabbit traits with that giddy mini-hop in those squash and stretch drawings.

Some funny gross-out reactions of the rabbit. It's well-timed. You can see the rabbit's hands smear offscreen between when he's sniffing the mane and his tongue sticking out, which is a nice detail. Something I also noticed is that the rabbit's ears exhibit some nice flowing overlapping action in this shot.

The lion twirling his mane hair is a clever way to allow for more unique animal acting.

I also enjoy the gag of the fly coming out of the lion's hair, it is something that would happen to a real-life lion. It fits the lion leaving his hair to be "natural", considering the human-like society of the animals.

Some more well-timed animation. More rabbit mini-hops are incorporated into the rabbit's expressions. I especially like that the rabbit's ears perk up when the rabbit vows to overcome the challenge of the hair.

More of that great squash and stretch drawings of the rabbit as he prepares to dive in to the challenge. The rabbit treats his hair-styling as an art, and it's cool to see a character in love with his passion like this.

More fun inventiveness with the rabbit hopping closer to the chair by hopping on those steps.

Business like the rabbit hopping from both sides of Max the Lion is executed well with the natural features of a rabbit while tying into his personality of him trying to reach out to Max to engage in the conversation more.

This is what I want to see more with Bento Box Atlanta in general, but the problem is that this type of animation just is not allowed to stand out within Bento's usual adult sitcoms and that is truly a shame that they are not able to stretch their wings any further. As this shows that the animators there contain a lot of untapped potential.