Thursday, January 31, 2008

Making F I E N D S

Find of the day is "Making Friends," a site of original cartoons by Amy Winfrey and collaborators. Winfrey has landed a TV show, to appear this year, on Nickalodeon. Woo, Amy.

The central plot is the tension between macabre, as represented by the Russian schoolgirl Vendetta, (wish I'd thought of that) and her classmate, the sweet pea Charlotte. Vendetta makes fiends (monsters) to advance her agenda, and Charlotte counters by being Charlotte.

The voices are excellent. She has a real Russian or similar Slavic buddy voicing Vendetta*, presenting a real challenge to my wife and me, who have Russians in our strip. I'm of mostly Russian descent but I'm challenged to voice ours as authentically; at least the crackpot accent I give them is distinct. Of course, you'll not know for ages, as we are doing a strip and won't be attempting Flash animation stories in the near future, unless we suddenly see a chance to ride Amy's coattails into Fat City.

I'm looking forward to Amy's show. There's news about it on her site.

There's a lot of Flash episodes there. Season Two, Episode 13 gives the overall flavor very nicely, and is a good place to start browsing.

* I've since learned the voice actress is Bulgarian-American.