Reposted FaceBook note from April 22nd, 2013. All images in this post created by Jon Neill. Except the last one. I don't care for who created the last one.
In honor of Earth Day, and since the confidentiality clause in the written agreement has expired, I will now present a short description of a cartoon I helped co-develop back in 2008 called "The Green Glo Girlz". What first was planned to be a video game about an alien invasion changed gears into an animated series that was meant to promote "the green lifestyle", although the idea of turning it into an animated film was toyed with as well.
The premise was that an evil group of toxic villains, gathered from various planets across the universe, came to Earth to pollute, corrupt, and eventually take it over. Our saviors were The Green Glo Girlz, women from a Utopian planet called Unebula who would foil the bad guys' plans while promoting environmentally friendly and healthy living. The characters were:
The Green Glo Girlz
Gala- The level-headed leader.
Gisela- The hot-headed weapons expert.
Ulla- The knowledge hungry scientist.
Karina- The highly competitive pilot of the Girls' vehicles.
Nia- The combative muscle who served on Unebula's police force.
Aingeal- The inventor and mechanic.
Kimiyo- The vegetable growing, pacifist ninja.
Jalila- The nature loving mystic who is at tune with the Unebulan's dormant alien powers.
The Villains
L.E.N.- The vile leader of the bad guys who takes on human form to disguise his true appearance.
Fyrize- The fire-summoning pyromaniac.
RipTide- The shark-like water polluter.
Junk Head- The toxin fueled android whose idea of paradise is a garbage dump.
Mr. Slouch- The children's show host who promotes awful eating habits.
Maximus Energy- The energy crazed punk that steals power to fuel his wasteful habits.
Ray Freeze- The cold-hearted brute who decimates plant life and seeks to melt the polar ice caps.
Janessa- Green Glo Girl gone bad who targets her fellow Unebulans specifically.
After being given guidelines of what my boss was looking for in the project, I wrote the story, designed the characters, ideas for alien gadgetry, and the summaries for ten episodes of the first season. We had a professional artist on hand that took my character descriptions and created amazing artwork based on them that stayed very close to my ideas. The President of the company showed off our project to various entertainment conglomerates in and around Hollywood, including Disney and Warner Brothers, and it even ended up on the desk of Stan Lee at the end. While they all reacted positively to the concept, they weren't interested in taking it on.
We eventually discovered a company who agreed to help develop the project and shop it around to television networks to air it. First, they completely redesigned EVERYTHING until nothing was recognizable from my original work, which resulted in a gang of soulless abominations called "The Naturals".
They also failed to live up to the agreements they made with us in finding network support, and our relationship came to an end. Shortly after, The Green Glo Girlz project was shelved.
In the end I learned a lot about the behind the scenes in Hollywood, made some money, and had a lot of fun in this little venture and was sad to see that the Girlz didn't make it. I had a lot of myself in this project, and it was cool to know some major studio execs had at least a good reaction to it. But I do have a pretty good feeling I'm far from done in Hollywood.
