Noah Z. Jones and Maxwell Atoms on Fish Hooks Promotion Tour
A brand new series of Fish Hooks is hitting the UK this year and to celebrate the event the executive producer and creator are visiting the UK on tour.
Fish Hooks is an animated comedy series set in a fish tank. Cleverly parodying school life through the trials and tribulations of the main characters, Bea, Oscar and Milo, the show is meant to be as quirky as it is inventive.
The three BFFs (best fish friends) go through the same challenges faced by everyone as they go through school and get older. Fish Hooks takes a new tangent looking at experiences like friendship and dating, whilst retaining the comical anecdotes typical of a cartoon aimed at tweens.
Digital Animation and Photo Collage
Created by Noah Z. Jones, well known illustrator and children’s writer, the team combined digital animation and photo collage to give Fish Hooks it’s own unique look. Noah told Animation News that they picked these techniques because it “gave the series a sort of jinky, hand done feel, and it makes the characters stand way out from the background.”
Noah designed the characters from drawings in his sketchbooks. Describing the process he says the characters were fun to draw because “they are very colourful and their faces take up so much of the design, so you can always tell what they’re thinking.”
Talking to Noah and executive producer, Maxwell Atoms, they described some of the challenges of combining these two techniques which they believe have never been used together before. Atoms described the project as “risky”, because although “we do the best to make sure it’s going to look right before it goes [to the animation studio] you never quite know what you’re going to get back.”
All the backgrounds and props are photo collage, whilst the fish are animated digitally. Noah, Maxwell and their team of 40 staff produced all the images and character designs, then sent them up to Mercury Studios Canada to be animated there.
Production Tour
The show not only has a great voice over cast, but includes guest star appearances from the likes of Tress MacNeille and John Dimaggio, both renowned through the industry, including roles in Futurama. Maxwell Atoms will also be doing some of the voice acting.
Atoms didn’t only get involved in the voice acting. He describes himself as “very lucky” because although he produces the series, he gets to remain a creative person. “I get to draw, I get to write and I get to do storyboards. It’s very collaborative.” Noah adds that the whole production process was “fun, because you go to work and you’re not quite sure where the day is going to take you.”
Noah and Maxwell will be attending an exclusive screening of the new series, before kicking off a question and answer session.