Mod spy cartoon by Chris Reccardi and Lynne Naylor

Chris Reccardi and Lynne Naylor are wonderful pop surrealist painters I've featured on Boing Boing before. They're also respected animators. Chris worked on the Ren & Stimpy Show and Powerpuff Girls, while Lynne co-created the Ren & Stimpy Show and was lead character designer for Batman: The Animated Series and Powerpuff Girls. Two years ago, Chris and Lynne created a pilot for a mod spy cartoon called "The Modifyers." Execs at Nickelodeon passed on it, so Chris and Lynne have now posted the pilot online. I wish it were a full-length feature!

Previously:

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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LLLLLL

I LOVE the music!!
Anonymous

PPG and ren and stimpy were on Cartoon Network, not Nick. so idk y they didnt pitch it to CN first?
travispulley

Anonymous #9, don’t make me put on my old person hat and tell you how R&S came to us originally. That’s wonderful you were able to watch it on cartoon network after the original airings.

And someone else commented on this, but it bears repeating:
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: interlaced video uploaded to vimeo and youtube makes wonderful things look significantly less wonderful. Please be considerate. Deinterlace.
pumml

Brilliant piece of work all around. Definitely deserves more credit and it’s own series.
Anonymous

This was really good. I’d like to see this on TV
AsteriskCGY

Wow, a cartoon with a plot twist at the end? Unthinkable!
And you can never have enough of Ren and Stimpy. Except for the Spike TV stuff. Didn’t qute work.
Anonymous

Awesome! The art reminds me alot of Ren & Stimpy. I sure hope there is more where this came from.
greengestalt

I like this cartoon a LOT!
Really would like to see more.

Really neat neo/retro style.

Also, take note from this and other pics of his, I see the artist has an appreciation for the “Music Synthesizer”. The design might be fantasy, but the knobs “Pitch, Mod” and such are for real. Since I do music a lot these days, I’m sometimes up late tweaking a lot of small settings to coax just the right sound out both with software and with hardware. That is the final factor that really sold me on liking this show and wanting to see more episodes:-)
Anonymous

Is it me or did that Cats guy look like Samurai Jack?

Anyway this looked great. Shame on Nickelodeon for passing on it.
Anonymous

Thanks, but De-interlace next time please…
Ratdog

Ren and Stimpy. Now that is a amazing show. I miss all of the great shows Nickalodeon used to have: Ren and Stimpy, Rocko’s Modern Life, The Adventures of Pete and Pete, The Angry Beavers, Invader Zim.

Man, did they ever go down hill.
Anonymous

Actually very UPA, (Ren and Stimpy was aped from them, and other early greats) – too bad the stereo was reversed…but a great looking ‘toon!
Anonymous

Ah, I love it. What a wonderful cartoon. I’d definitely watch more if it were ever turned in to a series.
Deidzoeb

Thank you sir may I have another!

The title could stand to be more exciting. But as soon as anyone sees the episode playing, they’ll like it. It should be the first cartoon on the Make Magazine channel. Makers, Modifyers?
jcfiala

Oooh. Given the current upswing in steampunk, I’m surprised this got passed up. That was lovely.
godfathersoul

love it. you can put it on my channel! we’ll buy it! five dollars! ten dollars… ok, lemmee get a channel first. but i likes.
sixohsix

I liked it, though it feels a little unfinished around the edges. I want to know more about the cosmology of this world. Why is the Baron stealing stuff, and are the Modifyers part of the police? A secret government department? A rival thieving gang? Okay, so that’s hard to get into in 12 minutes but for a pilot it’s lacking in (forced) exposition.

One wonders why the rat works for the baron when any minor slip-up will get him fed to the fish-monster. It looks like screwing up is in the rat’s nature so why hasn’t he been digested a long time ago?

Great character design and art, nice animation (it lands exactly between the hyper-gross Ren & Stimpy style and the overly angular Powerpuff Girls style), but the plot needs a bit of spit and polish.
oheso

Totally awesome! Great Tardis!

But Cutie Honey is supposed to get nekkers when she changes costume:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAk8SthoI-w&feature=related
Anonymous

That’s a good knockabout comedy. The artwork’s channeling a huge dose of Ren and Stimpy, nice nods to Poe, and sound engineering.

It certainly beats what Nick’s actually comissioning.

Just a couple of minor gripes, though. One- did the application of Chekhov’s Gun with the ring-communicator-thingy have to be so blatant, and two- if they wanted the main character to have an English accent, then why not use a voice actor with an English accent, rather than have an American try to fake one, which inevitably goes rather Australian in places.
Anonymous

this is a great idea! love all the characters, i wish this would be on the air, fantastic work non the less
from anon
Anonymous

Groovy! Love the SFX + score.
This would make a nice weekly/biweekly webisode.
hbl

That was very entertaining. I haven’t seen Powerpuff girls in years, and then only a couple of episodes, but I remember it being pretty surreal and off the wall, so I wonder why this was passed on? Flimsy main badguy perhaps. I like the idea of the rat character who is everyone’s whipping boy, he reminded me a lot of mutley. It had a bit of a wacky races feel to it.
- horsepj
  
  Right on! I think they were trying to channel that era of animation and I think they did it one better.
Sunshine Girl

Silly rabbits…mods are for kids. What do suits know? Well done.