The Adventures of Baxter & Clyde

In 2009 my niece, Kate, an experience theater actor, expressed interest in animation voice acting, so I decided to make a short cartoon with characters that she could provide voices for. At the time I had been trying to come up with a story to feature two characters I had been doodling (an egg-headed boy and a duck sitting on his head). I hadn't found the right vehicle for them until one moonlit evening before dinner, when my wife Didi remarked, "I'm so hungry I could eat the moon"! I pictured a huge creature climbing to a high peak with a fork, drooling at the moon. I imagined classic tv cartoon stars like Tom Terrific and Crusader Rabbit leaping into action with their sidekicks. I scribbled out a short storyboard of the boy and duck flying to the mountain and dragging the moon out of the creature's reach with a fishing pole. Over the next few years I expanded and refined the story, molding it into an homage to not only my favorite early tv cartoon serials but also to Pajama Sam, a character I had loved animating for Humongous Entertainment in the late 1990s. Didi was my sounding board throughout the decade-long production and also assisted in the prop photography and the two live action video segments (watch for her "hand cameos"). I set the story in my parents' home town in central Maine in the late 1950s, the era of cartoon do-gooders like Tom Terrific, Rocky & Bullwinkle.

In addition to the expressive voice acting of my niece Kate Michaud, voiceover artist Byron Wagner contributed other character voices, Rhonda Conley designed the backgrounds' style and created the background art, and Todd Smith composed and performed the music soundtrack.

I hope you enjoy our short cartoon, "The Adventures of Baxter & Clyde", suitable for all ages.