Two brand-new animated series from MONDO and Vancouver-based experimental comedy and animation studio Oddfellows Labs are launching exclusively on Ellation’s fandom-focused video platform, VRV. Daddy and the Big Boy premieres today (Oct. 16) with 13 episodes, to be followed in December by Allen’s Pole, furthering MONDO’s commitment to delivering fans “artisanal animation.”
“Oddfellows Labs is a fantastically inventive hive of creativity, and we could not be more proud or excited to bring their work to viewers,” said April Pesa, VP of Development and Distribution for MONDO. “These series will be amazing additions to VRV, which has a fast-growing audience of animation enthusiasts and super-connected fans.”
Daddy and the Big Boy, created by Bart Batchelor and Chris Nielsen, follows the exploits of two con artists who pretend to be the long-lost husband and son of a wealthy dead woman in order to steal her estate. Each one thinks the other is for real – so they’re constantly keeping up an act of behaving like a stupidly happy family. Like the duo’s previous offbeat animated series World Doctors, which has generated millions of views, Daddy and the Big Boy incorporates the “uncanny valley” CG aesthetic of the early 2000s.
The first episode is available now on VRV, with new episodes premiering every Tuesday.
Batchelor and Nielsen are co-founders of Oddfellows Labs, with film producers Chris Ferguson (Afflicted, Child’s Play) and Brian Kavanaugh-Jones (Midnight Special, Insidious).
The second collaboration, Allen’s Pole, hails from Vancouver-based writer, comedian and improviser Kevin Lee, and is directed and produced by Oddfellows Labs. Set in 1897, the series follows the misadventures of a dimwitted, self-styled “explorer” who drags along his lifelong nanny and a naïve biographer in a quest to find the magnetic pole. They find little other than friendship, disappointment and danger for which they are woefully unprepared. Allen’s Pole employs a subtle, paper cut-out style to create an offkilter storybook feel.
