Making Fiends (TV series)

Making Fiends is an American animated television miniseries based on the web series of the same name. The series ran from October 4 to November 1, 2008, on Nicktoons Network. The series is Nickelodeon Animation Studio’s first animated series to be based on a web series, and follows the evil gross-loving tomboy Vendetta and the new happy but dim-witted girly-girl, Charlotte, at school in the gloomy town of Clamburg. Charlotte unintentionally irritates and annoys Vendetta. As a result, Vendetta attempts to kill her with fiends, but she always fails due to Charlotte's luck.

The series is created by former South Park animator Amy Winfrey and produced by Nickelodeon Animation Studio, with Cyber Chicken Animation Studio and DQ Entertainment Limited animating the show in traditional 2D animation. Winfrey voices Charlotte and her grandmother Charlene, among other characters. Character designer Aglaia Mortcheva is the voice of Vendetta. All of the voice actors from the web cartoon reprise their roles for the TV series, with the addition of a new cast member and crew member, Dave Wasson, who previously created Time Squad for Cartoon Network.

Plot
Vendetta is a selfish green girl with the power to make fiends, "hideous things" which she has unleashed on her town to bring it under her reign of terror. The coastal town of Clamburg, once a thriving tourist destination, has become a grim, forbidding place, with stores shuttered and the populace cowed before the horror of Vendetta's watchful fiends.

Charlotte, a new girl at Vendetta's school, arrives determined to make a friend. An "impossibly cheery" optimist, Charlotte rapidly becomes the foil and tormentor of the morose and vindictive Vendetta, by insisting on befriending her.

Vendetta is unable to elicit anything but saccharine friendliness out of Charlotte, and so makes the first of many fiends that are specially designed to destroy the newcomer. After demonstrating that her oblivious joy makes her immune to the dangers and terrors of all of the fiends, Charlotte declares that her and Vendetta are "going to be best friends forever and ever."

In subsequent scenes, Charlotte displays an ability to change the nature of some fiends into helpful friends, further frustrating Vendetta's efforts to undo her. Being "oblivious to all that is bad and mean in the world", Charlotte neither acknowledges the damage caused by Vendetta's fiends, nor the threat Vendetta herself poses over Clamburg. Nearly all of the residents, including Vendetta's parents are actually afraid of Charlotte more than they do Vendetta within the first six episodes.

Charlotte never discovers or understands that Vendetta despises her, and Vendetta is never able to get rid of Charlotte. While this conflict is never resolved by the end of each episode, some minor developments appear to continue between episodes, like the introduction of Buttons 2 and an enormous statue that Vendetta has raised of herself.

Characters
Charlotte and Vendetta attend Mu Elementary School in class room 4. Mr. Milk, a soft-spoken nervous man, is their teacher. Charlotte lives with her grandmother Charlene while her parents (who are astronauts) are away in space missions. Vendetta lives with her tiny parents, Violetta and Viktor, who live in a hamster cage.

Music
Series creator Amy Winfrey wrote all of the songs featured on the show. After recording the demo track for each song, they would be sent to series composer, Ego Plum, for production.

Plum is noted for using unusual sounds and instruments in his music. Examples include: dripping water, toy pianos, baby rattles, plastic xylophones, and even a goat. On occasion, other Making Fiends crew members would pitch in to help play the various instruments, lending the music a "home-made" feel similar to the original web series.

Production
A daughter to an employee at Nickelodeon was a fan of Making Fiends. She showed the website to other Nickelodeon employees. They contacted Winfrey to see if she was interested in televising the series.

Winfrey is often asked where she got the idea for Making Fiends. She is not sure, but liked to sketch "strange and fantastical" animals in college. She is often inspired by "silly-looking and improbable" animals. She has a parrot and a pet flounder at home, and once had a salamander.

In early 2004, Nick started negotiations with Winfrey to develop the series into a half-hour television program. During the long negotiation and development period, Winfrey continued to create new web episodes independently, and sell related merchandise in her own online "souvenir shop". In 2006, Nickelodeon began distributing many of the web cartoons as streaming video on their own TurboNick platform, and later as podcasts available on iTunes.

The series was picked up for a first season of television episodes in late 2006. Production began in January 2007 and the show started airing in 2008. The show was set to premiere on Nickelodeon, but Nickelodeon decided to cancel its plans for a broadcast on their parent channel, and instead gave this new series to its sister channel Nicktoons Network (along with the show, Random! Cartoons).

The series premiered on October 4, 2008 and ended on November 1, the same year on Nicktoons Network. It received generally favorable reviews by critics. Making Fiends carries a rating of TV-Y7 (FV - fantasy violence for some episodes). The series aired in the US, Australia and New Zealand, and in the Netherlands. in Canada, the series aired on YTV on October 11, 2008.

The writing team of Making Fiends consisted of only four people; Winfrey, Peter Merryman, Madellaine Paxson, and Matt Negrete. In the show's studio, there was a special "thinking couch" for the development of new ideas.

Cancellation
The series was cancelled on November 1, 2008 after one season. The show premiered with little to no promotion or press release. At one point, it was the highest-rated original program on Nicktoons Network. After the series ended, reruns continued to air until late 2016.

Animation
Cyber Chicken Animation Studio and DQ Entertainment Limited animate the series in traditional 2-D. The character designs are kept from the web series, with some changed details; such as cleaner lines and brighter eyes. Despite the fact that both versions use Adobe Flash to create animation, the television episodes have smooth animation and a vivid color palette. This is because the characters and backgrounds in the web episodes were made of overlapping JPEG files, and that the television series had access to an actual budget due to being a show on a television cable network. Noticeably, the colors still go outside the outlines, which is a unique stylistic choice. Every building was changed; in the web cartoon most buildings were grey, but were changed to different colors for the TV version. Each house represents a character. Vendetta's house is dark green and Charlotte's blue, matching their own skin color.

Cast
Creator Amy Winfrey voices Charlotte, her grandmother, Charlene, Mrs. Millet, Maggie (in most appearances), Buttons, Giant Kitty, and Marion. Character designer Aglaia Mortcheva, who also was in the crew for the web series, voices Vendetta and her tiny mother, Violeta. Winfrey's husband, Peter Merryman, voices Marvin, Malachi, Mort, Mrs. Minty, Onion Guy, Grudge, and Mr. Milk. And also, most fiends on the show. The series' supervising producer and director, Dave Wasson, voices Vendetta's tiny father, Viktor, and Mr. Gumpit. Madellaine Paxson, who wrote for Kim Possible and Johnny Test, voiced Maggie in the episode "No Singing". Winfrey, however, voices Maggie in all other appearances.

Reception
The show received positive reviews from critics, with KJ Dell Antonia at Common Sense Media gave the show 4 out of 5 saying "the dialogue is simple, the animation is intentionally scribbly and dark, and the color palette is limited. The whole thing looks like a kid's flip book. And yet it's funny -- funny for the kind of parents who think Dexter's Laboratory is funny, and funny for any kid old enough to handle the weirdness of rooting for a patently bad girl who will never win and with nothing but a secret, lingering fear of monsters under the bed."

Dan Heching at Tilzy said "clever and irreverent, Making Fiends is a fairly classic series of short episodes. [...] Nothing is left untouched; torture, animal attacks, musical numbers and April fools' jokes. [...] Character development is kept largely to a minimum, in keeping with the classic simplicity of the cartoon, [that is] Vendetta vs. Charlotte."

Marketing and merchandise
Before the series was picked up by Nicktoons, Winfrey sold Making Fiends T-shirts and DVDs with the web episodes at her "souvenir shop". Official t-shirts by Nicktoons were later released.

A 2-disc complete series DVD set was released on June 9, 2009 with the first season including all six episodes. Although it is shown in the gift shop at the Making Fiends official website, it is only available for purchase at Amazon.com in DVD-R format. The entire series is also available for digital purchase at Amazon Prime Video.