THE FAMILY SERVICE AGENCY AUCTION

While I was busy telling you tales of the

Galactic: Kids Next Door,

there's been all sorts of stuff going on.

Stuff like the

Family Services Charity Auction

at

Cartoon Network:

I warned you it was coming up

over here,

but I had no idea how much fun it was going to be!

It was quite the honor to be one of the three featured artists

(with Nan Rae and Alice Asmar)

I got a nice big area to display some of my recent work.

Apologies for the lack of close-ups, but

on the left are some original paintings from my

picture book

1000 Times No

Along with some copies to sign, of course:

On the right are 

The 7 Dead

I did for the 

Disney TVA

Zombie Art Show

Along the bottom is 

the 18 foot line I did for the

Disney TVA

Disneyland Anniversary Art Show

The sooper giant TV in the middle had a loop of 

underwater animation.

Why?

Because 

FISH!

They were all over the pool table!

WHY?!

Because we were 

FISHING FOR DONATIONS!

I wanted to create a way for people to 

be guaranteed a piece of artwork to take home

in case they didn't win 

anything in the silent auction.

So we did this:

It was fun watching people pick their fish.

I don't know how many people pulled me aside to

tell me that they got 

THE BEST 

one of the lot.

And I had made a

LOT

of fish.

Too many in fact.

But I've got an idea what to do with the leftovers!

(I'll tell you in a later post)

Regarding the

silent auction,

there were well over a hundred

pieces of artwork,

by tons of great animation artists like:

Pen Ward (Adventure Time)

JG Quintel (Regular Show)

Chris Battle (Teen Titans Go)

Pete Browngardt (Uncle Grandpa)

Mike Wetterhahn (Courage The Cowardly Dog)

and the list goes on!

But there wasn't just art by

gross animators like me and my ilk!

There was 

fine art

graphic art

photography

sculpture

jewelry

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE!

But I'm an idiot and didn't take pictures.

(in fact, I've stolen quite a few of these pics from 

Nan Rae's much-better-than-mine blog post!)

In bidding news,

Mo's Pigeon sketch went for $500

after a serious bidding war!

My KND drawing went for either 

$2 or a cool $1,000,000.

Either way,

they paid too much.

The rooftop dinner at sunset was 

glorious

delicious

and 

held a special treat:

Sound Effects Master

Glenn Oyabe

(Fish Hooks, Billy and Mandy, etc)

just happened to be playing the event with his band

Little Ghost

What a perfect night!

Thanks, FSA!

Thanks, Cartoon Network!

And thanks Zita LeFebvre

for inviting me!

Oh, and here's a nice

bit about the show from

The Burbank Leader!

THE G:KND EXPERIMENT (part 9)

So...

Midnight was fast approaching.

Soon it would be April 1st 

and the

Galactic: Kids Next Door

hype train would

roll into the station!

Billions of operatives wondered if tonight

would be the announcement of a new era of

Codename: Kids Next Door!

But it wasn't.

And I knew that.

But you guys didn't.

And that killed me.

I would have liked nothing better 

than to tell you g:KND was happening.

But it wasn't.

So I could only hope that this video

would build enough hype 

to get Cartoon Network interested.

And there we were!

Mr. Moore and Mr. Courter 

busted their butts to 

finish the new animatic and were 

able to get it to

website overlord

Rob Eberhardt 

on the morning of the 31st.

And now he 

sat ready to hand upload the 

NEW

video at

JUST THE RIGHT MOMENT!

Because,

jeez man,

we weren't about to let this one

get hacked, too!

Seriously.

As midnight ticked closer,

we watched the visitors at

www.rainbowmonkeys.com

pile up.

It was only then that we realized we

hadn't really thought about

TIME ZONES!

The East Coast was gonna see the video a good

three hours before the West Coast!!!

And they would invariably 

spoil it

 and 

post it 

via social media.

Which kinda stunk.

We were also fairly certain it

would inflame the age old

East Coast vs West Coast

rapper rivalry.

But at this point there was nothing for it.

We were lucky to even have something new to show.

Ugh.

Tick...

Tock...

The visitors continued to line up!

It went higher and higher

until:

BOOM!

So what happened then? That's a story for next week!
...
...
...

KIDDING!

Let's FINISH this story! 

But to be honest,

there's not much to talk about.

Well, other than this:

Without the announcement of a series there were 

a lot of emotions zinging around:

Sadness

Disappointment

Anger

Shock

Confusion

Denial

There were 

Tears

Screams

Head shakes

Laughs

Threats

Squeeeeeeee's

GG's

Flipping over of tables

And assorted bad words hurled in my direction.

Numbuh Four's epilogue at the end

drove a nail in the coffin of any operative who thought 

there was officially a

Galactic: Kids Next Door

series in the works.

But at least there was some closure to the

weeks of rumours that had been swirling about.

I remained silent for a bit,

just watching the aftermath of our

grand experiment.

But eventually I had to say something.

I couldn't deny involvement any longer.

It wasn't fair to you guys.

Besides, we had to let people 

EVERYONE 

know about the g:KND!

Not just the faithful!

And I loved how 

operatives world-wide rose to the challenge!

You really got the word out!

ESPECIALLY

Trevor Isaacs,

who put together the

petition at 

Change.org!

A root beer float commendation 

certainly awaits you on Moonbase Zero!

Over 28,000 signatures as of right now!

For that I salute each and every one of you!

Just reading the comments

is enough to make me grin like a big dope!

And 

YES!

Some folks at 

Cartoon Network DID take notice.

(with a couple helpful hints dropped by me)

And we talked a bit.

And there was some chatter about bringing up 

g:KND in some meetings.

I mean, there are definitely some pro-KND operatives 

still at CN!

But after a long wait,

I received this:

Sorry to say that sadly, 

there isn’t interest in 

doing more KND 

at the moment.

... sigh ...

...

...

...

I knew it was a long shot,

but I still can't help but be disappointed.

But I still think it'll happen one day.

Missions alter.

Tastes change.

Regimes switch.

So g:KND can wait.

Good things always do.

Anyway...

thanks for taking this ride with me

and all the operatives who made it happen.

If anything, it proved that there are a

ton of KND operatives ready to mobilize at a moments notice.

And one day we'll take over the world.

THE G:KND experiment (part 8)

Madness.

That's the best way to describe what was going on.

The leaked Galactic: Kids Next Door video 

was racking up views on youtube 

(reaching over 350k!!!)

and getting linked to from tons of 

websites, forums and message boards.

Even a Kanye West message board.

(I mean... the connection is obvious, right?)

All of social media
was ablaze
with KND operatives
awakening from decommissioning:

Questions machine gunned in every direction:

Was it a fan video?

Were those the original voice actors?

Was it guerrilla marketing by Cartoon Network?

Was Mr. Warburton involved?

Is this an official announcement of a new series?

When is it starting?

Can I get fries with that?

Some

creative

souls even

took it upon themselves to

post straight up nonsense

about being artists already 

working on the new KND series at Cartoon Network.

Or starting Tumblrs 

spreading false information.

Or that they heard directly from 

Mr. Warburton that the show was

happening.

None of which was true.

(Tsk Tsk)

But the positive response was overwhelming.

There were

THOUSANDS

of comments/notes/videos/messages/and posts

screaming

begging

crying

fist-pumping

dancing

and

jumping up and down on the bed

over a possible 

KND reboot.

Me?

I was still keeping my mouth 

shut about who made the trailer.

And now I had to figure out what to do

without a video to show at the end of our

mysterious alien countdown!

Everyone was expecting a 

HUGE 

announcement!

So after talking it over with Numbuh D20,

we decided to do another animatic

to kind of sort of explain what happened.

BUT THE CLOCK WAS TICKING!

We had less than 10 days!

So I wrote a script on the Friday after the leak.

As usual,

Guy Moore strapped on his

 helmet and waded right in,

storyboard guns

BLAZING:

Meanwhile,

I got on the horn to 

Lauren Tom

(aka Number Three)

Dee Bradley Baker

(aka Numbuh Four)

Dave Wittenberg

(aka Numbuh 74.239)

And

Grey DeLisle Griffin

(aka Numbuh Vine)

and

**SPOILER ALERT**

Lizzie!

We recorded on a Sunday

by the grace of David Guerrero at LA Studios:

And still the hours ticked away!

Once Guy was done with his storyboard panels,

he dumped them over to sooper editor

Dave Courter,

who had to also serve as sound 

effects and music editing guy.

And just one day before the countdown was gonna end...

we got it done.

Holy crap

that was close.

Then

April 1st

came.

But more on that later.

THE G:KND EXPERIMENT (part 7)

The countdown on the secret 

g:KND log-in site

rolled closer and closer to April 1st.

The plan was that after the countdown ended,

our Galactic: Kids Next Door teaser

would run for all to see.

But as the KND often say,

"JEEZ, THAT PLAN DIDN'T WORK!"

Because ten days before the big day

www.rainbowmonkeys.com

got

HACKED!

I was having pizza with my son's 

soccer team that night.

I was on my phone, casually flipping through the usual

top secret Facebook messages from KND operatives,

when I saw one that essentially said,

OMG LOL DUDE NO WAY

JUST SAW THE GALACTIC KIDS NEXT DOOR VIDEO

K THX CYA BYE

Then my phone's battery died.

GAH!

What did that mean?!

What video?!

I was in a total panic and had

no way of finding out what was

happening!

When I finally got home hours later,

I dove onto the computer

and watched the madness unfolding.

There,

on youtube,

was our sooper secret video

under the title

NEW SERIES ANNOUNCED

And it was already approaching

100,000 views!

So I got on the horn:

After a bit of research,

we discovered that someone

had done a little digging

and found the video just sitting in our website's directory.

And then decided to put it up on youtube.

Granted, 

we hadn't thought anything 

like this would happen so we didn't 

take the appropriate precautions. 

So it wasn't very hard to get into the website.

And now operatives
EVERYWHERE

were losing their minds!

Facebook.

Twitter.

Reddit.

and especially Tumblr.

They were exploding

with

cheers

theories

 speculation

and

even fan art!

I sat up for

HOURS

monitoring the 

insanity.

Was I mad about the leak?

Hells no!

A hacker breaking in was

 so 

perfectly

KIDS NEXT DOOR!

We couldn't have

written a better script!

But there was just one problem:

The countdown was supposed to be the launch of the teaser.

Now everyone thought it was leading up to an 

OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT 

of a 

Galactic: Kids Next Door 

series.

Which it wasn't.

...

So what to do?

We couldn't have

NOTHING

when the countdown ended!

So I did what any 

resourceful 

KND operative would do.

I wrote a script.

THE G:KND EXPERIMENT (part 6)

The mysterious Numbuh Vine

showed up on Facebook sometime in 

March 2015.

He/She/It 

had no friends.

But the creature lurked around

KND fan pages and dropped

little hints of what was to come.

A picture here:

A code there:

The alien was generally ignored until

this was posted:

See that tiny URL

in the top left corner?

That got people talking.

And it answered a question 

we had been asking ourselves:

IF WE BUILD IT...

WILL THEY COME?

We knew KND operatives were smart.

We knew they were resourceful.

Drop a bread crumb 

and they'd follow the trail.

Give them a code and they'll crack it!

Operatives quickly figured out that the countdown

was leading to 

April 1st.

And some took that date to be a sign.

Was this an elaborate 

April Fools joke?

Numbuh Vine remained eerily silent,

only occasionally dropping new cryptic hints.

The countdown continued.

Operatives

begged

cajoled

demanded

cursed

(tsk tsk)

and

cried to

Numbuh Vine

for answers.

And then,

with ten days to go...

Everything changed.

...

But we'll talk about that next week.