When I was working at FOX, mostly drumming up quick animations for their TV promos and website, we started to also try and work in games and interactive pieces that would tie into the episode that would air that week.
We were usually given a few weeks notice, along with a rough cut of the episode along with the script. This episode of The Simpsons, in particular involved a menacing 'badger' that we worked into a bit of an online game. I then got started on the animation!
I thought it'd be perfect to create it as an old 'classroom movie' complete with a jittery frame rate and scratches. I had also created a character named 'Dr. Beele' as the narrator of the piece.
This project also attracted the attention of the design/ model team at Film Roman whom were the animation team on the Simpsons. They invited a few of us to the animation studios for a primer on Simpsons Character Design. When I entered the Film Roman offices, the first thing I noticed was that it looked as though these folks lived here. Complete with coffee machines and blankets at their work stations. This alone seared an impression in my brain of the realities of working on an animated series.
We met with Mike B Andersen, who was the animation director on the episode. Mike was incredibly generous and helpful in his critique. His main note was in the face of the Doctor character and making sure we gave him the correct Simpsons 'lip', but with the Badger character, we were given the liberty to have as much fun as we wanted!
From there, I started on building the Badger character, and building the library of assets. At the time, i employed an arduous process of building everything in Adobe Illustrator with the pen tool. Then painstakingly importing everything into Flash. The drawing tools in Flash have come along way, and soon after let the user create the assets in Flash.
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