Drawn Together

Drawn Together, this animation jewel, was produced for the channel Comedy Central between 2004 and 2007 by Matt Silverstein and Dave Jeser, these are well known producers of TV series of acid thematics, and Drawn together was made by the Rough Draft Studios animation studios in California, and its branch in Korea. These studios are responsible of TV series like The Maxx, Star Wars Clone Wars or Futurama.




This show has a reality show format featuring 8 recognizable parodies of famous people from the animation, video games and even internet flash animations, and many extras too recognizable characters and stereotypes of reality shows. Comedy Central would be the first channel to launch an animated reality show, and that is, the characters live in a sort of Big Brother house and compete among themselves in similar tests.




Comedy Central thought: "Let's see what happens when cartoons are no longer clean and turn it into something dirty" for this reason, the pilot chapter include a lesbian flirt between Foxy Love and Princess Clara, who became a cliché of what were to become the series. A scene that shocked but paradoxically was a cliché of the reality shows, as well as other details of scabrous humor that plagued the series as scenes of homophobia, racism, black humor, sex, incest and other coarse salt jokes that make the series politically incorrect and exclusive for adult audiences. The pilot chapter had very bad critiques, which include that the chapter exceeded the limits of good taste, was racist and had rough and disgusting humor. For producers, it was all a joke. It treats several chapters to homosexuality, as well as references to bizarre sex, constant paraphilias, sado-maso, masturbation ... Same with violence, in almost every chapter one of the characters dies in the series (although they always reborn) and often we see killing and mutilation carried out by the characters.




The first 4 chapters included some false scenes of "... And on the previous week ..." as imitation of soap operas, in which it's told a false story to get situated. These scenes were not released, but were included on the DVD.

The controversy over the inclusion of taboo topics was served, and caused many critics which compared this series with South Park, both series explores the limits of good taste, but the TV-MA (warning adult content) was not exhibited by South Park until 2004, while it was exhibited by Drawn Together from its first chapter.




The series, as imitation of The Simpsons, Family Guy or Father made in America, makes multiple references to popular culture, whether to other animated series, movies or comics, there are many cameos and references from the world of cinema's clichés .



Characters come from different worlds (video-games, the fairy tales, comics ...) each with its own laws of nature, and there is no explanation of why all coexist simultaneously . In addition, the series has no continuity, each chapter contradicts the previous chapter, in a chapter Foxxy Love tells she is 20 years and in another she appears living in the 70ies, Raccord mistakes are beastily multiplied, and as the Producer, Bill Freibergerit, says , if someone tries to establish a universe of fiction based on Drawn Together, he will become mad.



The animation is done in Cell Shade, imitating the style of "manual color and ink," which it use to be Comedy Central's animation stylel, but despite wanting a retro atmosphere, they wanted a style where was possible to combine many different styles of animation too. Each character imitated the style of the reference parody.



There were a total of 3 seasons, the second season was interrupted and the third one was finally banned before it was over.




The final chapter was a compilation of many parodies of television programs, which showed scenes like Big Brother, music competitions between the characters, and projections of the highlights of the program. In the chapter they talked about the cancellation of the series as if it were a joke, but the series had been officially canceled, and the third DVD pack refers to himself as "the third and final season." Following the cancellation, the series has been issued as Sketchs in the uncensored Comedy Central's brodcast Secret Stash, and on the adult channel Logo. In fact, on Secret Stash nake is the only censorship, and Drawn Together is the escepcion to this norm.

Matt Silverstein and Dave Jeser left Comedy Central and Fox TV hired them for 2 years forreleasing new series, working on existing projects or continuing a fourth season of Drawn Together, however, they have any project released.




There currently is a feature of Drawn Together under production and this year will be released directly to DVD.




An impressive series as the first animation production of Matt Silverstein and Dave Jeser, good visual quality, with a chaotic but well thought out scripts, it explored the limits of good taste, and they didn't heard critics until they were canceled. Possibly the most ruthlessly eschatological animated series never issued. I'm sorry about it was canceled but I am not really surprised, I just hope tehy could release more projects.