As we boldly step into the year 2007, I cannot help but think how far I have come with Lilredhead Productions.  Starting off with the first episode of Mr. Binkee’s Class and achieving what I have with Enterprise: Flashed and I Am Ahoyager is pretty mind boggling to me.  And if I can come this far, I know I can go even further!  But it’s always fun to step back and see where I’ve actually been and how I’ve gotten to this point today.  Over the next few days I will be doing a feature on the past of Lilredhead Productions and where it’s going to lead us in 2007.  So hold on, grab some popcorn, it’s time to take a trip into the past!

Previous A Look Back Articles:

• 2002- Baby’s First Steps

2003- Reaching for the Stars:

At the beginning of 2003, I released a couple more Bubba Has a Gun episodes.  Episode 2: Tornado! was a direct port of the 3dmm episode while Episode 3: The Beard? was a new entity.  After releasing these two episodes, I decided to take a small break from Bubba Has a Gun, for there was another series I was eager to do.

Ahoyager: The Journey Home was a concept that was brought back to life in early 2002.  It was a parody of Star Trek: Voyager, featuring characters and plots from the TV show but with a twist.  The characters and plot lines were conceived by myself and Pete Thomas (co-creator and co-writer of I Am Ahoyager).  Ideas were thrown around but nothing ever materialized (except for some references in The Adventures of Tom and Ken comic series and a short lived Ahoyager comic series).  But since I had a few Flash movies under my belt, I decided it was time to take a shot at bringing Ahoyager to life.  I started working on the first episode near the beginning of the year.  The plot, I will admit, was a bit screwy.  At the time, I had never seen the pilot episode of Voyager, and so I decided to go ahead and do something original.  The star of this series was of course Captain Pakaday (who also made guest appearances in Mr. Binek’s Class and Bubba Has a Gun).  Captain Pakaday was a parody of Captain Janeway from the TV series and thanks to Sev Trek’s Forager, she was also granted a huge ass bun.  And of course I had the honor of imitating and mocking Kate Mulgrew’s voice.

Ahoyager, at the time, was a pretty ambitious project.  I would work on it for a bit, and then set it aside and do something else.  While doing this, I began work on my fourth animated Flash series.  At some point in 2002 I had plans to do a series called Hellrasier.  This series (not related in any way to the popular horror films) was about three hardcore heavy metal guys and their adventures battling demons from Hell and such.  So basically think of Adult Swim’s Metalocalypse, except, you know, without the suckiness and you got the basic premise (actually, that’s not fair, I’ve never seen it, but I’ve never really had the motivation to).  It was from the minds of myself and Zach Tibor.  I always thought that this would be my fourth series (remember, I had a goal to have four series going at once) but it just never happened.  The project was set aside and forgotten and a new candidate took its place.

The Zakk and Justin Chronicles, released in late January, was yet another copy from my 3dmm days.  It’s ancestor, The Billy and Zach Chronicles, was all about senseless violence.  In each episode, the two characters would try to kill each other.  That’s it.  Nothing more.  The ZJ Chronicles used this same exact formula.   The 3dmm series ran for about 25 episodes.  Its Flash counterpart made it to only four episodes.  It took me no time at all to crank out the first episode.  I was using the Zakk and Justin characters from Mr. Binek’s Class, and so I had the characters all ready drawn up and animated.  I just needed to bring them into this series and do the voices.  At the time, the series seemed funny.  But it became clear it was kind of boring.  And it wasn’t very well received on the internet.  On the other hand my friends liked it, but that’s probably because they were feeling nostalgic for the 3dmm series.  After the first episode was released, it wasn’t until summer when Episode 2 saw the light of day.

I eventually went back to working full time on Ahoyager.  After a couples months of work, Ahoyager was ready for the public.  On March 3rd, 2003, Episode 1, Part 1: The Beginning was released.  The episode featured Captain Pakaday, a drunken, chain smoking disgrace of a captain trying to sabotage Captain Pricard so she could snag the Captain of the Year Award.  Of course things don’t go according to plan and the Ahoyager gets pulled into a wormhole (sure beats the hell out of the Caretaker plot line from Voyager, eh?).  The episode wasn’t very well received.  It was uploaded immediately to the internet upon release, and the results weren’t very positive.  My friends never seemed to care for it either, probably because it was so heavily inspired by Star Trek .   So, this sorta discouraged me a bit and I put the project down and worked on Bubba Has a Gun and Mr. Binek’s Class a bit more.  My friends continued to enjoy these new stream of episodes.  But I knew I had to continue Ahoyager, I couldn’t just let them dangle in that wormhole!

Around mid-April I started on Episode 1, Part 2 of Ahoyager.  It was very hard for me to actually get into this episode.  I would work on it off and on, all the way up until July.  Besides the release of two back to back ZJ Chronicles episodes, I made no cartoons during this time.  It was the great drought of 2003.  Finally, on July 19th, 2003, Episode 1, Part 2 of Ahoyager was released.  This much longer, more action heavy episode was better received than the first.  Here we got to witness Captain Pakaday negotiate with a woman ambassador, battle green skinned women, use her bun to repair the broken Ahoyager, and the Quack heal Bareass’ wound with a toothbrush.  All in all, it was even more screwy than the first episode.  I was quite proud of this episode upon its completion.

The rest of the summer saw the release of two more Ahoyager episodes and a Bubba Has a Gun episode.  Mr. Binek’s Class had sorta dropped off the radar at this point.  With Ahoyager, it became clear the episodes weren’t really meeting their full potential.  And so faith in the project started to dwindle (for me anyway).  Bubba Has a Gun saw a Halloween special in the fall, which turned out to be yet another port from the 3dmm series.  The episode was slightly modified and delivered some laughs to the fans of the series.  I tried to make a Mr. Binek’s Class Halloween special as well, but that fell through the cracks (the unfinished movie can be found on this site if you care to see it).  Around Christmas time I became ill and tried to use this as a plot line for a new movie involving the Ahoyager and Bubba Has a Gun casts.  But like the ill fated Binek Halloween Special, this movie was never finished.  However, I did find the courage to crank out a Bubba Has a Gun Christmas Special.  Entitled “Christmas Tree”, the episode involves Bubba and Lamont hunting for a Christmas tree.  When they try knocking down Santa’s tree (who happens to live outside of Bubba’s town I guess), they fight for their lives as Santa goes crazy.  Bubba even finds himself in Santa’s basement with his clothes off at one point.  Needless to say, this is one fucked up Santa.

I would like to think 2003 went out on a high note with the Bubba Has a Gun Christmas Special.  Ahoyager had a lot of potential to be great, but it was never fully utilized.  And The ZJ Chronicles turned out to be a dud.  However, you learn from your mistakes, as we will found out as this feature continues.  Next stop, 2004.  See you there!

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