Buddhist Monkey Business

Buddhist Monkey is a character we've already done two shorts for previously, Enter The Garden and Books Of Fury. When we decided to launch the Ka-Pow! series it seemed like a perfect home for the high-kicking sapien's antics.

Ghostbot Director Alan Lau is back from toughening up his drawing hands by dipping them in searing hot pencil lead to bring our Kung-Fu monkey back into action! Just don't mention the word "barbeque" or "first degree burns" to him or he'll roll up in a fetal position and cry.

Since the original Buddhist Monkey shorts were already pretty action-stuffed we had to think of a way to ramp it up for his third appearance in Three Courses Of Death. Previously, Alan and I had talked about having Buddhist Monkey go up against more and more ninjas but for Ka-Pow! we agreed something new and different might be in order.

The collective creative team of Ken Pontac, Warren Graff, Roque Ballesteros, Alan and I started plotting out a bigger story that our favorite martial-arts monkey would be involved in. No doubt, you've noticed that we're passing the baton or the "nunchucku," so to speak, from the ninjas to these new, deadlier (and crazier) enemies. And they aren't going to be push overs!

The best thing about coming up with new characters, especially in animation, is that ANYTHING is possible! In our original script for Three Courses Of Death, we found Buddhist Monkey fighting in an outside market. Ideas from villains sprung out from that environment; like a villain armed with cooking utensils and possibly a wok for a helmet. That led us down the path of food items and the idea of fighting with edible weaponry was so ridiculous that we just had to make it work! A character based around delicious Dim Sum cuisine is something the world has been craving for... and we're here to fill that need with the porky pugilist, "Char Siu!"



I think we might have all been hungry when we came up with Char Siu but I do love the idea of wearing the steamers as head gear and that each rack held a deadly (and possibly tasty) entree. We talked about the different animals Char Siu could be but ultimately settled on a pig for reasons you will be finding out much later in the series. Above were the initial designs done by Roque Ballesteros which remained unchanged going into production. That bratty expression on his face won my heart... and stomach.

Here are some color tests for Char Siu that we tried out. Kinda looks like an Andy Warhol painting.





We struggled for a while trying to find the third weapon that Char Siu would pull out from his hat for the finale until Alan piped up with, "what about a giant crab?" Again, the idea was so whacked out that we just had to throw it in there!




Alan imagined that the crab would emerge from the third steamer and that it would magically grow into gigantic proportions, dwarfing Char Siu himself as he dangles like a third nipple underneath... wait, do crabs even have nipples?

We also wanted to evolve Buddhist Monkey's repertoire of moves. In classic Kung-Fu tradition of secret martial arts techniques, we talked about a whole bunch of crazy and whacked out techniques that our mystical monkey can do. The "hot hands" maneuver was actually swapped in fairly late in the game because we originally had a whole different coup de grace. When Warren came in with the idea of doing the hot hands technique and boiling the crab to a sizzling death it just made ridiculous sense and cinched the deal for our climactic battle!

The episode also affords us a peek at Buddhist Monkey's past as we meet his master for the very first time!




Roque's initial design (above) totally captured the original idea of having a frail and old "sensei." However, the more we thought about it the more cliche that idea seemed to become. Going back to the dojo, we batted around some punching bags and kicked about ideas and quickly fell in love with a bigger, lazier master that Alan sketched out.




I asked Alan to base the Master's design on an orangutan, with those big, puffy cheeks. I'd tell you more about The Master but that would be ruining what we've got planned. So, for now, just know that we'll be seeing more of Buddhist Monkey's lethargic master in future episodes.


Here's the design for 'lil Buddhist Monkey. I really wanted to put him in a yellow jump suit with black stripes (ala Bruce Lee or The Bride from Kill Bill) but since Buddhist Monkey's skin color is already very close to yellow we weren't getting a clear a read from it. Plus, he just looked naked! So, we opted for his more traditional orange clothing with black stripes instead. I think it still works... and he doesn't look like he's going commando ninja.

Ghostbot Producer, Corrine Wong is back with her mutant organizing powers. I think she was bitten by a radio-active spread-sheet at some point and evolved some amazing and spectacular producing skillioz.

Background artists Brad Gake and colorist Leticia Lacy make an encore from W.A.R. Journal to do the beautiful and serene backdrop for Three Courses Of Death.




Since Alan was more involved in the animation process I asked him to tell us all a little about what went down:

Roque was in charge of the moody opening sequence. He took some of my storyboards and painted over them and did a really fun multi-plane effect on the panels. It’s one of my favorite parts.

I always try to make sure there is some small degree of authenticity to some of the close quarter combat. I watched a lot of Jet Li movies, frame-by-frame, to get the feeling just right. Of course doing kung-fu with characters with giant heads and tiny limbs always proves to be challenging.

The animation crew did a great job. Lyla Warren and Amanda Lettrell animated a lot of the sweeter moments while Tony Cliff animated the shadowy evil master’s lair as well as the epic introduction to the final Crab boss. Brad was an anchor across the whole show animating a lot of the Char Sew steam bun fight as well as the Crab boiling finale. Kris Toscanini handled a bunch of scenes including the poignant ending.

We find any chance we get to do more traditional hand drawn animation, on top of the Flash work it adds a much richer depth. We were lucky enough to get Adam Phillips from Brackenwood fame to animate the face melting effects in the final act.

For the sound and music, we wanted to push the Eastern influences in this episode more so than in the previous two. We asked multi-talented music composer, Jerome Rossen to keep the up-beat tempo from it's predecessors but experiment with using more traditional Eastern instruments in his mix. The results... well, it speaks sounds for itself!

Of course, the unstoppable Jim Lively (the man doesn't sleep!) on the mic provides all the ear shattering sound FX and mix to you can feel every punch and kick come out of your speakers!

It's a real blast working on these new titles and getting to work with the Ghostbot guys is an added torture bonus! I'm personally excited about the ideas of where to take our brawling Buddhist so, I'm hoping you will all continue to follow his future adventures.