Independent animation has grown over the last 10 years, evident with the rise of Youtube and other smaller websites like Newgrounds. “Cyanide and Happiness” has become one of the most popular web comics and series, with its second season currently streaming on Seeso.
After being inspired by cartoons like “Clarence,” “The Simpsons” and Seth MacFarlane’s work, Eric Marinello, sophomore in the College of Communication, is determined to create his own show. With a small team, the series creators behind “So Cheesy” wishes to launch their own website and create an animated series to eventually work its way over to networks like Adult Swim or TBS.
“So Cheesy” is created by brothers Eric and Nick Marinello, and their cousin Cody Tilistyak. The series is based off their own lives with an observation style of humor. The team behind “So Cheesy” began production back in November by mapping out scripts for the series. The setting will be inspired by Milwaukee, with inside jokes viewers who live in the area will appreciate.
One of these Milwaukee jokes is the Jesus-mobile Brother Ron drives down Wisconsin Avenue. They hope “So Cheesy” can stand on its own as a unique series.
“Everything is all original content, nothing has been stolen, we’ve watched a lot of cartoons, and we can tell when ideas are taken or stolen just to make a laugh,” Eric Marinello said.
Writing for the show is finished for the first season with the second beginning initial scripting.
“As a college student, learning how to write scripts is really difficult, but I guess we picked it up pretty quickly,” Eric Marinello said.
They have been challenging themselves creatively by writing and finding the voices for their characters, as well as creating music for the series. The team is planning on doing a majority of the voices themselves with Nick Marinello taking on the most.
“I watched videos on how to do it (voice acting) and watching cartoons,” Nick Marinello said.
He is now able to do voices of Cleveland Brown from “Family Guy” and the spin off “The Cleveland Show” along with “SpongeBob SquarePants.”
They are currently looking for an animator, but have started to study various types of animation in the event they cannot find one. The team hopes to release an 11 minute pilot by the end of the school year.
“If Matt Stone and Trey Parker could do it in six days, and 120 hours to produce an episode, I think we can do it,” Eric Marinello said.
They plan on releasing the series first on their website by live streaming the premiere with follow up episodes to appear down the road. The group will release shorts in between episodes to fill the gap as future episodes get finished. Concept art of the show has been hand drawn and digitized. Marinello’s team is currently trying to find animation software to help them out with the series. They are even looking at programs like Toon Boom and Flash as platforms to draw.