Wishbone, Skrumpy, and Raisins. If the Jim Henson Company has anything to say about it, these three will soon become household names as familiar as SpongeBob, Dora, and Hugh Laurie.
They're Skrumps, and they're part of a big new franchise Henson is launching. Based on characters created by artist John Chandler, the Skrumps are a colorful bunch of critters from Skrumpland (where else?), and they're brought to life with the Henson Digital Performance Studio, which allows puppeteers to perform computer generated characters in real-time.
Plans are under way to feature the Skrumps in their own TV series, books, comics... who knows, maybe even customized checks! We'll see if any of that stuff ever materializes, but for now, Yahoo! Kids has a rockin' new music video called "Dance Without Feet," by the Skrump band, Grumblebelly. It's a fun, silly song, which may not become a hit, but is certainly better than anything by Fergie. And if you love watching video blogs by abstract fictional characters, you're in luck, because they got those too.
Also, the latest podcast over at Henson.com has some behind-the-scenes info, although it doesn't explain why all the Skrumps are naked.
Okay, seriously, I could get into Skrumps. The little music video smacks of 'forced kid-friendly wackiness' though the music's a lot more hardcore than I would have imagined. But I really like the character blogs - it's a great showcase of how quickly and on-the-fly the puppeteers and animators can put this stuff together. And if these early bits are any indication, the show will actually be funny - Raisins in particular is like a hybrid between Mokey and Marzipan from Homestar Runner. Coming from me, that's very high praise.
ReplyDeleteI immediately thought of Marzipan when I saw Raisins's blog. I'm interested to see where this Skrump thing goes.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like a lot of the flavor comes from the HstarR. Like, Scrumpy has a little more than a little of The Cheat about him.
ReplyDeleteNot that this is meant as criticism, really - they're borrowing from a really great source.