‘Ballmastrz: 9009,’ ‘Tigtone’ Second Seasons Ordered by Adult Swim (EXCLUSIVE)
By Jamie Lang
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Cartoon Network’s Adults Swim has ordered second seasons for two popular series from international animation studio Titmouse: Christy Karacas’ sci-fi comedy “Ballmastrz: 9009” and Andrew Koehler and Benjamin Martian’s fantasy series “Tigtone.”
According to Koehler, now an executive producer on “Tigtone” – along with Martin and “Workaholics” alum Blake Anderson, “‘Tigtone’ is doing what legends do best: continuing! If he were real, he’d be beyond excited for his shiny new second season.”
The series, which participated in the TV competition at last month’s Annecy Festival, is a fantasy series based on its quest-addicted hero, Tigtone. Poking fun at the fantasy genre and tropes from the video games, table-top games, films and series spawned from it, Tigtone hacks and slashes his way from one adventure to the next with little to no regard for his surroundings or the damage he causes to it along the way.
Its unique animation style set it apart straight out the gates, and it’s one thing that initially caught the eye of founder and president Chris Prynoski before they started doing the show.
“It’s a combination of motion capture for all the facial acting and uses a fixed rig for puppeteering all the bodies and broad animation, so it has this bizarre technique that I really dig. It really works for comedy where the faces have this kind of weird uncanny valley, but the bodies are animated in a very specific, jolted and not super-polished way,” he explained to Variety in Annecy.
“That was one of the things I really wanted because the creators, Ben and Andrew, had done a pilot on their own on YouTube, and they didn’t come from animation so they kind of figured it out on their own,” he continued. “There was something there that I had never seen anything like it before. So, when we started making it with professional animators, I didn’t want them to overdo it.”
For his part, Koehler was just as excited the series ended up at Titmouse’s.
“The maniacs at Titmouse are the perfect blend of talented and bonkers,” he said. “Titmouse is fearless when it comes to new, literally painful animation techniques, and everyone working on the show brings a cracked kind of enthusiasm for the fantasy genre. If Tigtone were real, he’d want to be part of the Titmouse team.”
“Ballmastrz: 9009” follows hard-partying, washed up superstar athlete Gaz Digzy – voiced by “Orange is the New Black” and “Russian Doll” star Natasha Lyonne – who gets demoted to The Leptons, the worst team in The Game: a dystopian blood-sport meant to satiate humanity’s violent tendencies after the Rad Wars. The only hope for Digzy is to teach her team of nobodies how to dominate the game, and perhaps resuscitate her career in the process.
The series was created by Adult Swim superstar-creator Christy Karacas, whose other credits include “Superjail” and “Robotamy,” where he refined his colorful, hyper-violent and often-psychedelic style.
