Animator Joe Murray is bringing back "Rocko's Modern Life" for a 1-hour special that's going to be airing some time this year on Nickelodeon!
(For the youngest GOF members who were too young or not born yet when Rocko was on,) Joe Murray is the man who also created "Camp Lazlo" on Cartoon Network that aired from 2005 to 2008.
I'll give this special a chance, guys. Rocko was my **favorite** nickelodeon cartoon as a kid and it still is today! It was originally on from 1993 to 1996 (when I was between 4 and 7 years old.)
No nickelodeon cartoon tickles my funny bone or cracks me up **harder** than Rocko! And it helped give me the funny personality that I have today!
Here's what I know about this Rocko special so far. My sources are honest, and only taken from his animation studio's website. (This is *not* taken from Wikipedia, where anyone can write whatever they want to, whether it's true or false.)
Murray **officially** confirmed the special last August. Here's what he said about it on his studio website at
http://joemurraystudio.com/blog/Everything that i've put in brackets and quotation marks [""] is a direct quote from Joe Murray himself that he posted on his studio blog.
["What I can share is that the details are getting closely watched. We are painting the backgrounds traditionally rather than digitally."]
["There is actually pencils and paper getting used (which is a rarity these days). I’m enjoying working for Nickelodeon where I didn’t think I would."]
So, he's staying with the same cool traditional animation style, and not CGI, and i'm glad, too.
["The special is wrapped in secrecy, so I can’t give many details about it online. Only that we have recorded the dialog, and are deep into design, backgrounds and animatic. I’m liking it a lot."]
He also got approval from Nickelodeon executives, and they're not going to "water down" the level of humor. So it should still be *full tilt* funny.
["I started laughing about some of the things we could do with the “new” Modern Life, it became more appealing. After a meeting with Nick Execs that they promised not to water it down,( which they have not) I agreed to move forward."]
so he's got permission to be *FULL tilt* funny on the jokes!
["Basically, Rocko, Filburt and Heffer have to deal with Modern Life in 2016, 17, 18 and there are lots of twists and turns. I’m very happy with it. We are done with the storyboard ( which was split up with the 4 of us, myself included) and are now moving into production. I will keep this blog posted with developments and interesting quirks from the progression of production."]
So i'll keep checking Joe Murray's studio blog for updates on the new 1-hour Rocko special, guys.
As of January 2017, They've finished the storyboards, and the dialogue recording, and now they're working on the animation.
Murray also said he wants to try some new things with this 1-hour special, and that he didn't want a simple re-hashing of the old show:
["Of course I did have feelings like it could flop. But I told Nickelodeon I definitely did NOT want to do a simple re-hashing of the old show, that this would need to break some new ground, which it does. Even though we have some call backs, it is mostly new material going in some new fresh directions. I hope the fans feel like we did it justice."]
I'll give this special a chance, guys. Rocko was my **favorite** nickelodeon cartoon as a kid. It was on from 1993 to 1996 (when I was 4 to 7 years old.)
Again, don't use wikipedia or any of those "wiki" sites as information sources for this Rocko special, because they are not reliable. Anyone can write anything, true or false on Wikipedia.
My information was taken from Joe Murray's official studio blog. It's official news. It'll be done in traditional animation style, and *none* of the jokes and humor are going to be "watered down". He's gotten permission from the Nickelodeon executives to still be as funny as he wants to be with this.
I'll keep you updated if I hear anything new about the special. I'm *very* excited.
He even included a deleted scene from the storyboard that he just posted last month:
http://joemurraystudio.com/wp-content/uplo...-thumbnails.gif
