Watership Down, which had some real pedigree," said Stevenson, producer ofĭecode approached CORE to do the animation, a bit of a gamble considering that the Toronto company had never produced a fully animated series before: Their demonstration reel featured talking rats fromĭr. "It was great to go out of the gate with Angela and another property, AndĪngela Anaconda has not disappointed: It has allowed Decode, founded three years ago, to go out and start relationships with MTV and the Disney Channel. "She was like, 'I'm going to get even with her and name Nanette."Īfter Decode partner Beth Stevenson saw four shorts that Rose and Ferrone had produced for Nickelodeon in 1996, she knew the company was looking at its ticket to the big time. Not when she was a kid," she said, breaking out into an Angela-like guffaw. "I think Joanna truly had a Nanette in her life. If I came in second in the dental hygiene poster contest, she would always be first."Īpparently, Ferrone, the co-creator, named the character after a real person, someone whose perfection she had to endure as an adult. "She was always just one step ahead of me. "Mine was Helene," Rose said, naming the girl she trailed all through school in Hudson, N.Y., from Grade 1 to 12. Everyone has had a Nanette in their lives, that one classmate who was not only their intellectual superior, but popular and good-looking, too. Brinks, lives with her parents, two obnoxious teenage brothers and her baby sister in a split level with a frog pond out back.Īlthough Angela always sets out to better Nanette, she inevitably trips up and lands in hot water, which sets off a revenge fantasy - a cartoon within the cartoon - in which Nanette gets her comeuppance. Nanette, the teacher's pet, lives with her parents in a huge ranch-style house with a pool Angela, who gets more rebukes than praise from Mrs. Where Nanette has dimples in her cheeks and perfect Shirley Temple ringlets, Angela has freckles and a chin-length bob. They're not the best looking, they're not the smartest, they're not the most popular, they're not super heroes."
"So our characters, more obviously Pepper Ann and Angela, they're not your typical TV star. Rose knows she won't change the world with a cartoon, but she knows how important it is for kids to feel good about themselves. She got into animation after she and Ferrone created a stylized graphic of a skinny man with a shock of hair and named him Fido Dido.
Although Decode and CORE put their stamp on the show, the concept - the cut-and-paste animation - was Rose's.Īs an art director for a New York advertising agency, she had played around with collage, an artistic composition of flat materials, such as photographs, paper or fabric. Pepper Ann, who knew she and Ferrone had an unusual idea. The awards don't surprise Rose, creator of another animated children's show called The finished product is "nothing that I had really imagined," Rose said in a recent interview from her home in Los Angeles, "because I hadn't seen it before. The combination of visually arresting graphics and hilarious story lines has garnered some television awards, and the show is seen in 35 countries and dubbed into seven languages. and CORE Digital Pictures,Īngela Anaconda was the brainchild of Los Angeles-based artist Sue Rose and her partner, writer Joanna Ferrone. Produced in Toronto by Decode Entertainment Inc. Generated by computer, its cut-and-paste style looks like a child went wild with a set of paper dolls.Īnd although it is two-dimensional, animators use a 3-D computer program to make body turns, head movements and lip synching seems strangely real. Brinks.Īs legions of followers around the world know,Īngela Anaconda is a cartoon like no other. It's really Sue Rose, the creator of the animated series and the voice behind Angela, who is sick but on the telephone it sounds like her alter ego is suffering.īut when isn't television's newest animated darling despondent? If the eight-year-old isn't being tormented by her nemesis, the pretentious Nanette Manoir, she is enduring the wrath of her teacher, the cat-eyed Mrs. Angela Anaconda has a cold and she sounds miserable.