Here’s a round up of comic-related information updating my recent post about the Legion of Super Heroes animated series.
Brainiac 5 has been cast. Adam Wylie of Picket Fences fame (Zach) will do the voice.

Another sketch proported to be from James Tucker of Braniac 5 has surfaced. Some are speculating that it's a hoax because the style is nothing like the sketch from my last blog that has now been verified as a legitimate James Tucker sketch. Bruce Timm said as much on the website Drawingboard.com. The styles look so different I lean towards it being a hoax, but Timm did say that the sketch released was a very early version and the finished versions looked nothing like it. So who knows...

Several voices have been cast:

***Lightning Lad (Andy Milder): Over on Comics Continium, Andy Milner did a short Q&A and the working logo/title card for Superboy and the Legion of Super Heroes was revealed.

***Timber Wolf (Shawn ?): Shawn (last name unknown) has been cast as Timber Wolf and posted a blog about the first day of voice recording , including a picture of the birthday cake. Someone put the kibosh on it and his blog got deleted, but here's the text and pic from the deleted blog.

Recording went well. Friday morning I woke up sounding like a bull frog. I had pretty much blown out my voice the previous night rehearsing growls and howls...it was pretty funny. I spent the greater part of Thursday night crouching on the floor snarling and howling and making animal like movements in hopes that would help me find the right sounds. Whomever mentioned wanting to see a video of my rehearsal would have been entertained.

The session went extremely well. I was a bit concerned that I wouldn't be able to reproduce the rehearsed sounds at the session because my voice was shot but I had no such problem. It was interesting to hear the voices they cast for the other roles. I felt a bit subconscious at first. I expected everyone to record individually; instead we recorded together. In the end, it's a lot more practical to record that way. It allows the actors to play off one another to make the moments/beats sounds as real as possible. It also lends itself to finding or fine tuning key moments in the script.I felt a little added pressure at the start of the seesion to perform well because everyone kept mentioning how much they were looking forward to hearing what I was gonna do. A typical exchange at the meet and greet party was "Hey, you're playing timber wolf. Oh, I can't wait to hear you."

One thing I've noticed about people that work in the voice over industry is that they're a lot happier and nicer than people that work in other areas in the industry. What a relief it is to work with happy people that are relaxed and enjoy their work. The production staff acts like a team. On most sets you can tell who the top dogs are (producers/actors) and those who aren't. You normally see the stress on certain production staff members faces as they run about performing tasks for the higher up producers/actors to keep them happy. There wasn't any of that Friday. It was refreshing.

After recording was complete we, the actors, were given a short tour of the studio. They showed us some preliminary artwork for our show and a few other shows. I am new to all of this so I was and will be very interested in learning all I can about animation and the 'process' while we're recording the next few weeks. One thing I learned is it takes about six months for them to complete an episode after the actors have recorded.

Shouts outs to our producer T. He's the only black guy I've seen involved in the production thus far. He told me this show is his baby.

My dang camera was acting janky. I didn't get to snap as many pics as I would have liked. I am thinking about creating a scrapbook for myself. They have murals painted on a lot of the walls. A pic of the cake they had at the party. The comic book theme was hot.

*** Superboy: Reportedly cast but I have no info on who it is yet.

Other characters set to appear are:

***XS
***Bouncing Boy
***Brainiac5
***Saturn Girl
***Phantom Girl
***Cosmic Boy

The Ovi Nedeclu and Ben Caldwell designs are definitely out now. The sketch that appeared at the top of my last Legion blog was by James Tucker and is reportedly the look that is likely to be used. Though that sketch appears in color, it is a very, very early draft and the final results may be much different. It looks to me that his style is a little influenced by Ben Caldwell's, or at least they share similar influences. Another Ben Caldwell rejected sketch of Cosmic Boy surfaced a day or two after my last blog.

James Tucker was a producer, writer and director who worked on Batman Beyond and Justice League Unlimited. A James Tucker interview from last year can be read here. No mentions of the LSH toon, but you can get a general feel for his devotion to the DC universe.

Also circulating the web are some production sketches by Steve Lightle. These are pretty cool but they originate from a pitch back in the 1990’s for a Legion cartoon that got rejected. As cool as they are, they have nothing to do with the new toon that’s coming.

Norm Ryang is the prop designer for the Teen Titans cartoon and has been identified as the designer for LSH as well. His work on the Titans vehicles has been pretty cool. I can't wait to see what he does with the Legion cruiser. Remember--his vision will be the template for many toys to come, so I look forward to his first sketches as much as James Tucker's. Keep an eye on his site as he seems to like to talk about his work on Titans maybe somenews will leak out soon. Many of the links on there include people that may be working on LSH now as well but none confirmed so far.

Kelly Ward (best remembered as one of the T-Birds in Grease) is the voice director.

Allan Heinberg is the writer of many episodes of Sex and The City, Party of Five, Gilmore Girls, and The O.C. He’d been mentioned early on as being involved with the Legion animated series. This is starting to look like a bogus rumor as he hasn’t been mentoned in relation to the cartoon in months.

Posted by wayneb at March 12, 2006 10:21 AM