Powerhouse Animation created a series of spots with Tribal DDB for Mountain Dew which centered on NASCAR star, Darrell Waltrip. The agency had a radio spot that they wanted to turn into an online cartoon series. They wanted it to have a style reminiscent of the 70’s and 80’s eras Hanna-Barbera cartoons where celebrities like the Harlem Globetrotters and Fonzie would help Scooby Doo solve a mystery.

A great thing about animators is they can turn around character designs in multiple styles very quickly. Being a service studio our animators must be great draftsmen and draw in any style that a client may call about. So we turned around multiple character designs in a couple days. In the process we added multiple sidekick characters, since that was also a motif in the genre, like Dipstick the Dog, Wheelie, and Grease Monkey. The client went with Grease Monkey and the rest is history. Below you can see many of the versions of the characters that didn’t make it.

Learn More at Cold Hard Flash and Altpick.com.