Nick is Making Fiends
26 07 2007 |
| Amy Winfrey and Peter Merryman talk up their series to their fans. |
Based on the popular web series, Nickelodeon held a panel on its upcoming series Making Fiends. Amy Winfrey created the original web shorts in her apartment by herself and talked about how she used the Internet to reach her audience directly. They tell the story of a little girl named Vendetta, who creates little fiends (aka monsters) to do her bidding, but is thwarted at every turn when Charlotte moves to town and only wants to make friends. As the show gained in popularity, Winfrey began selling t-shirts and DVDs based on the show and said she actually began making money on her independent work.
Nick approached Winfrey to turn the series into a TV series. At first, she was reluctant to give up a piece of the series to a studio, but decided to do so because it would allow her to expand the series, which she wasn’t able to do when she was doing it, virtually alone. Coming over from the web series is her husband/ voice actor/ writer Peter Merryman (Grudge, Mr. Milk) and character designer/ voice actress Aglaia Mortcheva (Vendetta). Character design wise the show is staying very close to the original web series. However, the environments are getting a revamp with an expansion of the world and a larger texture palette. Many of the animatics shown to the audience were reworked versions of stories from the web series.
Though the panel was in one of the smaller rooms, it filled, which shows promise for carrying over the web fan base to TV. The cute simple designs and pleasant story lines mixed with a sly dark streak could make this a hot property when it hits Nick in early 2008.
From Rick’s view
