Last year I had the privilege of working as a character designer for 3-2-1 Penguins!, a Saturday morning animated series currently airing on NBC. Penguins began it’s life on VHS back in the 1990’s with several episodes being produced by Big Idea (the company that gave us VeggieTales). Last year NBC warmed up to the property and ordered an entire season of brand-new episodes for their Saturday morning TV block.
3-2-1 Penguins! could best be described as Star Trek meets Looney Tunes. Four zany penguins (Zidgel, Fidgel, Midgel, and Kevin) travel the universe in their space ship, taking along two kids (Jason and Michelle) to help them on their missions. Their main enemy is Cavitus, a melodramatic villain who is really just a hamster parading around inside of a giant robot suit. Each episode involves a run-in of some sort with aliens, robots, and other wacky interplanetary creatures (one episode takes place on a planet inhabited by lawn flamingos and garden gnomes). In the course of each episode Jason and Michelle learn a biblical lesson from the book of Proverbs.
This week the series began its rollout onto DVD. “Save the Planets!” (Amazon.com link) is a one-disc DVD containing three episodes from the TV version of the series:
- The Green-Eyed Monster
- More is More
- Give and Let Give
Special features include:
- Audio Commentary on all three episodes
- How to Draw Kevin and Chancellor Gutt (one of the character’s I designed)
- Animation Progression Reel
- Pearls of Wisdom
- Make Your Own Planet
- Video Trivia
- Discussion Guide
- DVD-Rom Fun!
As I mentioned above, I designed misc. characters (and a few props) for about half of the episodes in the series. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that all three episodes chosen for this DVD were episodes I worked on. Hopefully more episodes will make it onto DVD in the near future.
3-2-1 Penguins!: Save The Planets! is available at your local Wal-Mart, in Christian bookstores, or on Amazon.com.
EDIT: Here’s a review of the DVD from Past The Popcorn.