FREAK OUT! A Major FREAKAZOID EVENT Coming this Fall!

The Freakazoid event of the millennium!  Coming this fall to Southern California!     Start planning your autumn now!

 

Animaniacs Pose Sheet by Dan Haskett

Here's an Animaniacs pose sheet of Wakko and Dot by Dan Haskett, one of the great animation artists who worked on the series. 

This batch of drawings comes from 1992, a year before the series aired, when Wakko did not yet have the whiskers added to his cheeks.  Dan joined other huge talents like Rich Arons, Ken Boyer, Lynn Naylor, Barry Caldwell, Alfred Gimeno and many others to bring life to the early inspirational drawings of Yakko, Wakko and Dot and the other Animaniacs cast members.

Tiny Toon Adventures on DVD: How I Spent My Vacation

Coming August 14, 2012, on DVD:  Tiny Toon Adventures' How I Spent My Vacation. 

Above:  On the left, the new artwork for the 2012 DVD cover.  To the right, the artwork on the VHS cover, when "How I Spent My Vacation" was first released in 1992 as the first direct-to-video original animated feature.  

Back then, the folks at Warner Bros. Home Entertainment were dedicated to the notion that short movie titles were the only way to go, so they insisted that we change our original title, "How I Spent My Summer Vacation," to the insignificantly shorter title that omitted the word "summer."   

These are the same marketing geniuses who demanded that we change the title of the Animaniacs direct-to-video feature from "It's a Wakko Wakko Wakko Wakko Wish" to "Wakko's  Wish."  

I much prefer our original titles on both.  

As for the cover art, new and old, above  --  what can I say?   It's like the current regime at Warner Bros. isn't even trying.    

Steven Spielberg At Warner Bros. Animation

Here's a photo from one of Steven's visits to Warner Bros. Animation at our Sherman Oaks headquarters in the mid-90's.  This appearance took place following one of Animaniacs' Emmy victories.  Here, Steven picks up his Emmy trophy and addresses the crew.   In the background, standing next to me, left to right, are Lenord Robinson, Rich Arons, Rusty Mills and Ed Haney.  

Tiny Toon Adventures: Steven's First Emmy

In May 1991, "Tiny Toon Adventures" won the Daytime Emmy for "Outstanding Animated Program."  Our executive producer Steven Spielberg was shooting his feature film "Hook" at that time, so a few members of the crew visited him on the set to present him with his very first Emmy Award.  

In the photo, from left to right:  me, during my brief beard phase, partially obscuring the view of our voice director Andrea Romano;  writer and co-producer Sherri Stoner;  of course,  Steven in the middle;  writer and story editor Paul Dini;  and directors Art Vitello and Rich Arons. 

And, in the background, pirates.  

Steven, Kathy Kennedy and Frank Marshall sent us the following telegram on the night of the Emmy event.   Telegrams were cool!  You sure don't hear much about telegrams anymore.