Underground Robot

What Webster has to say about this project:

In 2002 I was invited by Nickelodeon to pitch to them a series idea and
Underground Robot is one of the ideas that emerged. I wanted to do the show in
stop motion and I thought it would be best to do a "proof of concept" piece so
that they could get the flavor of the show. Only some of the shots are
actually finished, the rest is storyboard panels. The kids would be animated
in clay in the final version. Damon Bard fabricated the puppet over an armature by Lionel Orozco. Anthony Scott animated the exterior scenes at the end of the test sequence, and I animated the underground shots. The test took about three weeks to produce, and was shot in 35mm, finished on video.

Nickelodeon passed on the show. There are some stop motion fans there among the executives, and they don't get many stop motion show ideas presented to them, but it seems as though they were looking to keep their cel animation studio busy. Also there was another show called "My Life As A Teenage Robot" that they were producing at the time. They were concerned as well that the music might make the show seem dated in a few years, which I disagree with. Scratch music, like Stop-Motion animation, is a mostly analog art form that has never had a huge following, but has often been incorporated into other musical genres.

I'm hoping to find the resources and time to complete it as a short film. One minor note- the puppet was never quite finished, in the joints under the neck and between the chest and hips we wanted to put some material that looked like molded black rubber bellows.

-Webster Colcord