#effnocka

From the long-ago age of 2008- the nockFORCE pitchbook written by Jim Gisriel and Ian Jones-Quartey

In my last post, I explained that nockFORCE was a cartoon and music project by Jim Gisriel and yours truly, but what has never been known publicly is that we were also pitching nockFORCE to networks as a TV series. (WHAT!!!!!! ITS TRUE!!!!)

I can finally reveal--- That was the secret meaning behind this cartoon:

I was working at [the now defunct] World Leaders Entertainment in NYC as an animation director for Venture Bros at the time, and we signed a deal with them to develop nockFORCE as a TV series. If it was picked up, WLE would have produced new TV-quality full episodes. We shaped the existing material into a show format and pounded the pavement to several networks to see what they thought! The pitchbook was the end result of the development process and we were pretty proud of it. I still am actually. We even included a peel-off vinyl sticker on the inside cover!

How did it go? Not that well, I think... apparently adult swim enjoyed our video content, but then said something like "what the hell is this even supposed to be? we have no idea who these guys are. stay out of georgia!!!". Comedy Central, FOX and others pretty much went the same way. 

Looking back, we were maybe a little naive about getting it made, and we worked so hard on it that we never considered that we would need additional talent, practice & exposure to become the kind of people who networks would want to buy a show from. BUUUUT we learned a whole lot from it, and I remember that the day we got our final rejection and terminated the contract, we just kept on making cartoons and music like it didn't matter. 

And maybe it didn't! I know if we were doing this today, we probably would have just had our audience support it using tools like patreon or kickstarter. And we never would have had to suck up to any networks! 

hey so early this summer i posted all the nockFORCE ep’s on tumblr. i wanted to make a master post of all the links for anyone who missed them or might be interested. also so it can all just be in one place

The First EP

The Junior Novelization

The Siege at Death Mountain Mixtape

nockFORCE 3 Battlefight: the offical video game

nockFORCE J-Dog

Recorded this song the same day as Jay Street and it’s really just us fucked around but it came out pretty good. This is a real collaboration Ian asked me to help come up with some of the gags in the background. Also I know Rebecca Sugar animated some of the kids dancing in the background. Just like Jay Street it was a lot of fun to do and it always makes me smile.This was an intense video to make but it’s so well done.

nockFORCE Jay Street

In the years since nockFORCE I rarely see this one brought up but it's really funny. we made this song just fucking around and later Ian came up with the idea to animate. i love it. Still is the hardest shit we ever did