This is legitimately a thread about all of the work that went on Behind-The-Scenes of Crossover Nexus, OK KO!'s tribute to Cartoon Network that all happened in 11 Minutes because of our staff who truly care about the past as much as you,
Read and cry. I about did.
Read and cry. I about did.
the idea for Crossover Nexus originates from a set of 5 OK KO! episodes we did set at the superhero school Point Prep(1064-68 through 1064-72). Our bosses thought the idea of a school for heroes might lend itself to a couple cameos of heroes from other CN shows!
That didn't sit right with us though- when OK KO does a crossover, we want the crossover aspect to be the MAIN EVENT! So we hatched the plan to create a separate brand new 22-minute special that brought together all of the characters one by one!
The original pitch had a different setting where the characters, hypnotized by the evil Red Pen(Strike's drone in the final), first battled each other before teaming up. It also included a moment where KO meets Ruby and Sapphire, boarded by @scrotumnose!
KO met the characters in the same order he meets them in the final. After battling R&S, Garnet is introduced (using some panels done for us under the table by @rebeccasugar😉)
The full board was written by @bootswithnofur, @scrotumnose, @dannyducker and @killapede. We pitched the entire thing to a HUGE crowd at the studio!
We were really proud of our work! But word came down that the network would prefer this as an 11-minute episode. The team was crushed but we wanted to still do our best for the fans. We worked together with CN to create a new take. We really had our work cut out for us! Read on:
Instead of just cutting scenes, we rebuilt the entire concept from scratch to be more compact, changed the setting to truly be CN City, and created a new villain! Former OK KO! boarder @parkerrsimmons stepped in and helped us put it all together. He created Strike's design:
With the setting of the special now set in stone, we analyzed the classic "CN City", "CN Building" and "It's Friday Night" bumpers created by @PrimalScreen for locations. Taking these pristine areas and destroying them was a ton of fun!!
Getting all of the character cameos was an INTENSE process. We had to submit legal requests for each one. We also had to track down model sheets or official artwork for each character so they would be depicted correctly. OK KO!'s production team became a research department!
SIDE NOTE: it's TRUE-- we left out Class of 3000 and Secret Saturdays! Those characters were in scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor. A project this big is going to have some missed opportunities. We beg your forgiveness.
Recording the episode was a ton of fun! @courtenaytaylor(KO!) got in the booth with @TheJohnDiMaggio(Four-Arms!), @EstelleDarlings(Garnet!) and @tarastrong(Ben and Raven!) we also had @peebgardt(Uncle Grandpa!) and @akaWorf(Red Strike!)
The fun thing about recording with these talents is they got to have fun re-creating even older characters. This happened impulsively and afterwards we had to revise the board to add Jake, Illana, I.M. Weasel, Schnitzel, etc!
However we hit a new snag: we needed to find the official mouth charts for all of those characters! We couldn't find Weasel's ANYWHERE! CN's paper archive for this stuff is in a Raiders Of The Lost Ark-style warehouse out of state that we had no access to! All was lost! Until...
Using archive.org, we spelunked through CN's ANCIENT website. And lo and behold... between several broken images, Weasel's mouthchart was miraculously intact! PHEW!
The newer artwork was much easier to get, and we worked hand-in-hand with other crews at CN and the TTG! team over at Warner Bros to get all the reference we needed, and even all of their signature sound effects!
We also had a ball putting together the original backgrounds for the episode, which included tons of blink-and-you'll-miss-it spots of graffiti referencing tons of old CN blocks and promos! Here's our compilation of just some of them:
we broke down all of the designs and shipped the whole board which was massive for an 11-minute episode. it clocked in at over 225 individual scenes and over 300 unique designs! whew!
Our overseas studio for the episode, Digital eMation, knocked the episode out of the park and even brought their prior expertise animating the characters. One of the animation directors formerly worked on SU and was excited to draw Garnet again!
The music was created by our friends at @MintPotionTV. It's one of my fav scores theyve done for OK KO! and uses the 4-note "new new NEW new" tune as a main motif as well as referencing other CN sounds. Listen to the whole OST right here: soundcloud.com/mintpotion/set…
That's all I can think to add! There's still a ton of stories left so I may return to this thread eventually. Our crew worked so hard on this show and I hope our fan-energy radiated through. Thank you so much for watching, and thanks for reading!
And of course thank you to @cartoonnetwork, the network that supported Nexus and let us create it in the first place. and thank you to all of the creators of all of the shows we included. You are the inspiration!
And hey, if you at all enjoyed the tone of Crossover Nexus, make sure you check out other episodes of OK KO! I know from the outside it looks like an intimidating show but it's sweet and very goofy! You can watch a ton of it on @hulu!
