Bee and Puppycat (Natasha Allegri)

Now and then I would check out Cartoon Hangover's channel, seeing as I am a fan of Adventure Time myself, this short however remains one of my most favorites to date.

Getting some Hayao Miyazaki vibes here.

To start off, "Bee and Puppycat" is an American Animated web series created and written by Natasha Allegri. The series revolves around Bee (Voiced by Allyn Rachel, who is known for co-creating the web series "Couple Time" with her boyfriend, which was later on developed for FOX), a young woman who was recently fired from her waitressing job. It is not long before she encounters a strange creature whom she takes into her home and names PuppyCat (Considering it has a mixture of dog and cat features).

The series currently consists of a two-part episode, which was (As mentioned before) uploaded on Cartoon Hangover's Youtube channel. Upon gaining immense popularity, the channel started its first Kickstarter project in order to fund additional episodes, you can guess how pleased I was when the Kickstarter had raised enough for nine 6 minutes episodes, of which the first would air n the summer of 2014 (Which feels so far away…).

As of its funding date, Bee and PuppyCat became the most successful animation Kickstarter in history, being the Number 1 Kickstarter  based on a Youtube video and being the 4th most successful film/video Kickstarter, only being behind three Hollywood based projects.

I chose this image because that's an adorable dress she's sporting.

Natasha Allegri is the adorable creator herself, known for being the storyboard artist and revisionist for the "Adventure Time" series. While she originally wanted to just make comic books, she is most well known for her work first as a storyboard artist.

While in college, her friend, the man himself, Pendleton Ward, contacted her about working on "Adventure Time", and she has worked on the show since. You could also say we have her to thank for when it came to creation of the gender swapped version of the show's characters, Fionna and Cake.

Natasha noticeably does more intricate outfit designs for the characters
as compared to what is normally seen in the show

A little more trivia about her is that several of her influences include works by Rumiko Takashi (Whom I had done a post about previously), Sailor Moon and Superbook, and even Bob's Burgers (This show could also be the inspiration behind her comedic script writing aside from the art style).

Getting some Hayao Miyazaki vibes here.

It is an understatement to say that Bee and Puppycat is one of the most aesthetically pleasing animations I have seen in awhile, even if  it is expected seeing that the animation is based around the mahou shoujo/magical girl genre. The character designs are fun and colorful, the color palettes used are gorgeous, and everything… just, everything about this series is beautiful.

And of course there is the animation itself, I still can't help but admire how smoothly animated this was (But then again I am still taking baby steps in using any sort of animating software so it might not be such a big deal to others who are more experienced), at first I wondered whether it was done in Flash, but surprise surprise, it was all done in Photoshop (I always get these two mixed up when attempting to identify indie animations), everything just looks so crisp and clean.

The humor of course bears similarity to Adventure Time but is also endearingly unique in its own way, the music most probably pays a pretty huge part in evoking stronger emotions in this series than one would expect, and I have to admit, using a Vocaloid voice for PuppyCat is pretty ingenious, I find it challenging to find suitable voices for cute looking characters these days (And trust me, I have seen quite a few other shows mess that up).

Now if you haven't checked out the 2-part short yet, please do so, now.

(I just might write another entry about this series in the future, since I have not yet covered about the updated character designs for the upcoming episodes.)

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