May 1, 2016

Maxwell Atoms unveils the lost student film that inspired "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy"

Last night at the Toro Animation Film Festival, Maxwell Atoms premiered a 1995 student film that inspired the "Billy and Mandy's Grim Adventures" series.

The short, made eight years before the Cartoon Network series, is called Billy and Mandy in Trepanation of the Skull and You. After the screening, Atoms posted it online:

Atoms (then using his real name, Adam Barton) made the film during his 21-year-old junior year at the Art Institute of Philadelphia. 'I was instructed to make a two-minute animation, which I did,' Atoms wrote on his Youtube page. At the time, "I was obsessed with fringe culture and was fascinated by trepanning. I also wanted to do something with the "Billy" character I was obsessed with and needed a dinosaur"

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He offers some additional explanations for this student short film on his YouTube page:

The animation was hand-drawn on paper, colored in with markers, cut out and pasted onto a cell. I figured that would save me more time than coloring on drawing paper, but the cutting and pasting process really sucked. So maybe that was wrong.

Atoms states that the quality of the potatoes came from "transferring the 16mm shot on Bolex during WWII to VHS, then to DVD, then ripped and posted (online)."

This short reminds us that what airs on television often does not begin as a complete concept. Young artists who wish to create their own TV shows might be advised to take a page from Atoms' script: focus on developing their artistic voice and honing their creative instincts.