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The Los Angeles Kings have plenty of famous fans based solely on where they’re located. Being close to Hollywood means the Kings have quite a few fans in (or who want to be in) the entertainment business, but how many of them actually take their filmmaking talents and combine them with their love of the local hockey team?
That’s exactly what flmmakers and Kings fans Chris Pavlica and Zach Baumgartner did by creating “The Dewy Show,” a cartoon series based around Kings defenseman Drew Doughty. The duo debuted their mostly animated, partially live-action series over the weekend on YouTube and the first two episodes are sure to get many a Kings fan (and beyond) through the last weeks of the offseason.
The two filmmakers used their imagination to create what life might be like for Doughty, the Kings’ 24-year-old superstar defenseman with a personality, and his dog Reggie.
The Dewey creators told Greg Wyshynski of Puck Daddy that the idea came about while they were wondering what life was like for Doughty. From their imagination to your computer screen, here is episode 1 in which “Dewy” finds his plans to throw an “epic rager” have been thwarted when teammates Mike Richards and Jeff Carter decide to throw one of their own.
Episode two follows a similar plot line with different execution and includes a couple of hilarious exchanges with Alec Martinez, Jonathan Quick and father-of-four Dustin Brown. Be sure to stick around for the surprise cameo at the end…
Pavlica and Baumgartner explained to Yahoo! Sports how they go about making the unique blend of animation and live action:
Well, we knew no one was going to finance this so we had to do it all ourselves by hand. Neither of us are cartoonists or classical animators so we sought a solution that would look good and also not take an eternity. We knew we wanted nicely drawn faces but we didn't have the heart to beg a favor from some cartoonists we know. Instead we outsourced it. The internet is a crazy, sometimes-helpful, place. But that's where it ended... we received some Photoshop layers and that's all. The rest was on us for writing, shooting, acting (miming might be a better word), tracking, animating, voicing, editing, VFX, etc.
Animating full bodies would take too long so we thought up something we hadn't seen before... real bodies, animated, cartoon faces. We weren't sure it'd work but we went for it and we loved it from the start. It looks so weird and creepy but we wanted to laugh every time Dewy smiled... so we trudged forward into what we believe is somewhat unknown territory.
Our voices make up most of it except for Zach's good buddy (and comedian) Joey Long. We knew we needed someone with more pizazz for Dewy and Joey has been perfect.
It’s pretty fun to see some fans take their love of their favorite team and turn it into something like this for other fans to enjoy. All of the little details that may double as inside jokes for the most avid of hockey fans are particularly great.
Is it October yet? Who cares? When does Episode 3 come out?
(h/t Puck Daddy)
