DRAWN & QUARTERED
Graphic Arts as Literature
A rough sketch of the characters from the proposed "Mr. Chim Show."
Wiki Wiki Cartoons With recent news of the startup of a university-based film school and excitement generated with each major studio production that swoops in, there's one mainstream media that's been overlooked, and that's animation.
founder hopes to
open some eyes
By Gary C.W. Chun
gchun@starbulletin.comDan Boulos of Wiki Wiki Cartoons wants to open eyes and create a future for locally produced animation projects.
Boulos started as an intern with the Disney feature animation studio in 1989 and trained with one of the lead animators there, Glen Keane, son of "Family Circle" cartoonist Bill Keane. Boulos worked on such features as "The Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast."
He moved on to Warner Bros.' animation studio -- doing development work on "The Iron Giant," "Quest for Camelot" and "Space Jam" -- before heading to DreamWorks and working on "The Prince of Egypt" and "The Road to El Dorado."
In 1999, at the end of his contract period and after doing some freelance work in the Los Angeles area, the Illinois native and his wife (from Pearl City) had to decide on their next move, what with the addition of a newborn.
"We thought it'd be good to live somewhere with an extended family, since we had no relatives in L.A., and I knew I wanted to go warm, not cold, so we moved here," Boulos said.
Once here, the couple decided to start an animation company. Not surprisingly, Wiki Wiki Cartoons has been that only by name, as they have been slowly developing what they hope will be a prime-time series pilot with the same sense of humor as "The Simpsons," which they hope to sell to a local TV station.
While the company has done commercial work (along with Boulos' other job as a Leeward Community College animation instructor, and his wife teaching and playing the harp) to pay the bills, Boulos hopes the "Mr. Chim Show" will be his first animation project to be seen by the public.
Drawing on his experiences in the L.A. animation industry, Boulos said his monkey title character "is like a L.A. producer -- he's gone through the 12-step program, pulls lollipops out of his briefcase to put in his mouth to stop the craving and, in his fashionable office, admires all the Emmys he's won. Mr. Chim is based out here, and each episode represents a day at the office, where people come in to pitch their ideas or school tours pass through.
"The pilot involves someone from the Department of Water trying to pitch Mr. Chim some boring idea, and this guy is so plain that he blands out everything he touches," he said.
Just as "The Simpsons" has the occasional "Itchy & Scratchy" cartoon within the show, Boulos' show would have a cartoon-within-a-cartoon that's not as gratuitously violent.
Further along in development is a short entitled "Kealoha's Hawaiian Adventures," about a menehune's adventures with friends Kalo the poi dog and Hoku the starfish.
But all of this needs continuing financing to be completed, and, using the Kealoha short as a "calling card," Boulos hopes to attract investors to help him realize his dream.
"The whole idea is to show people that an animation studio like ours does exist out here and, with the advent of new media as well, we can be part of the filmmaking process in Hawaii," Boulos said.
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