Broken Frontier

Beginning Monday December 20th a short FRANKENSTEIN MOBSTER "MADE MAN" animated movie will be available for download and viewing on the Insight Studios website: http://www.insightstudiosgroup.com/FMTRAILER/trailer.htm

The animated film runs a few seconds longer than one minute and is the result of weeks of work by a stellar team of technicians.  FRANKENSTEIN MOBSTER creator Mark Wheatley is credited with art and storyboards as well as some surprising additional elements of the film.

"A lot of the art began life in the pages of the FRANKENSTEIN MOBSTER comic
book series," says Wheatley.  "I get sucked into these things thinking they will be easy, but every image needed to be at least partially redrawn for use in animation.  A number of images were new creations just for filming."

Wheatley also was responsible for the music, sound effects and voiceover performance.

"The return to an earlier branch of my professional work - recording music!," notes the creator. " And I've got to admit that this was the most fun portion of the production for me."

It had been over ten years since the creator was able to spend any significant time in his recording studio. For the film, Wheatley discarded his old analog recording and effects gear and replaced everything with upscale digital equipment.

"Obviously I expect to use this wonderful new gear for more than this one minute film," he says. "And I've already arranged one major new recording project. That one will take at least a year to complete.  So stay tuned!"

The work of animating the film fell to Mike Anderson.  Mike's credentials as a video guru have him doing double duty as a working industry pro and a teacher of a new generation of students.  The film was animated in the Macromedia FLASH program.  Due to tight deadlines the animation was completed in several marathon sessions.  Mr. Anderson's quest for perfection is evident in every second of the final film.  His expert use of the FLASH program also allowed for a very small file size that should make this film available to a wide section of internet users, including those who are accessing the internet with a dial-up connection.

Veteran film director and screenwriter Robert Tinnell acted as producer for the FRANKENSTEIN MOBSTER "MADE MAN" animated short. The film would not have been possible without his firm guiding hand.  Well known for his feature films that include the Disney Channel staples KIDS OF THE ROUND TABLE and FRANKENSTEIN AND ME as well as the powerful BELIEVE, Mr. Tinnell was involved in every aspect of the production.

"All I really did was make a few suggestions to Mark, says Tinnell. "Some he acted on and a few he ignored."

Tinnell is increasingly becoming involved in the comic book industry with the best selling horror graphic novels THE BLACK FOREST and the WICKED WEST also published by Image Comics. He pioneered the use of animated films to introduce the world wide web audience to his comics.

"There are millions of potential comic book readers on the web every day," says Tinnell.  "These short movies are doing an incredible job of reaching out to those readers. And I've got first hand reports of comic shops getting new customers because of these little movies."  .

The new result of the efforts by these three talented creators is a one minute and eight second long peek into the forthcoming FRANKENSTEIN MOBSTER "MADE MAN" graphic novel.  Scheduled for release in early March, the Image Comics book collects the first eight issues of the critically acclaimed FRANKENSTEIN MOBSTER series along with new story pages, extensive extra material and illustration art by a Who's Who list of top art talent in the comic book industry; Adam Hughes, Mike Wieringo, George Freeman, Jerry Ordway, Mike Oeming, Scott Morse, Angelo Torres, Alex Niño and Bernie Wrightson.  Available now for pre-order through Diamond's PREVIEWS, the book is a massive 256 pages and will be available in both a limited edition hardback (item code:JAN051600) as well as a lavish trade paperback edition (item code:JAN051599).