Howdy there, Scream Freaks!
You know, when we decided to be horror hosts, we knew it would come with its own unique challenges. For one, how do you stand out in a digital world where anyone and everyone with a computer and camera can be a self-claimed host or reviewer? You’ve got everything from talking heads in bedrooms to elaborate green screen productions with some of the zaniest characters emerging from people’s darkest psyches. In the past, horror hosts have been everything from vampires, ghouls, and hillbillies to space travelers and even puppets entertaining fans worldwide with their own zany brand of jokes and criticisms. What had horror fans not seen yet?
We can still remember when we were originally planning on Screaming Soup! being a live action production built in a garage. We were going to take the old school approach with a sad greased face actor playing Deadwest, and Billy would have been a homemade hand puppet. Thank goodness someone slapped us upside the head and reminded us we were artist and should try saving time and money by animating our idea. We researched that suggestion a bit and realized they were on to something. We can’t find any evidence of there ever being a long running animated horror host show. Sure, there are horror hosts with mini-animated adventures like comedy sketches on their primarily live action shows, and the Crypt Keeper even had an animated series for kids, but we couldn’t find a host who was fully conceived for an original cartoon series that poked fun at popular B-movies.
Thus began the thousand mile journey with a single step. Inspired by the quick and simplistic animation style of shows like “Space Ghost: Coast to Coast,” we set out to create a whole world from scratch on paper and the computer. A good 2 years was spent building the essential foundation of the series, doing everything we could while juggling our day jobs and family duties. After drawing, scanning, coloring, and animating hundreds of animation cells for our characters, we then had to teach ourselves how to animate on the computer which resulted in the pilot, Screaming Soup! Deadwest Screams at Deadgirl. We remember how good it felt to finish that first episode and be able to tell we achieved something special. It was even more gratifying to present it to our friends and hear them validate our show’s art and humor.
TO BE CONTINUED . . .
Until we pick this conversation back up, be sure you’re caught up on the rest of Screaming Soup! Season 2, use our social buttons in the upper right corner of the site and follow our tweets, subscribe to our Youtube channel, like our Facebook, watch and share all our vids, and keep that fan mail coming.
That’s pretty much it for now, so I’ll see ya’ later Scream Freaks!
Screaming Soup! 