Film Roman's The Bartonnis

Production
Since 1986, Monsieur Squiggebvigga Gabonsonian wanted to make his own series, but companies wouldn't greenlight any of his unconventional ideas, resorting him to only making independent films for his country's film festivals in France. In 1994, he came to America to work on one of his own series' entitled "The Bartonnis" and even tried making an unfinished pilot for the What A Cartoon shorts showcase, but Hanna Barbera didn't really understand his ideas and thought his old independent films were "only understood by French people", even though Fred Seibert was the only person sticking out for him. In 1995, Squigge kept going from network to network pitching The Bartonnis (Nickelodeon, Fox Kids, ABC, Kids WB, and even Disney Channel) with each company rejecting him, all while working on shows like Twisted Tales of Felix, Kablam, and Dexter's Laboratory (although uncredited). These incidents lead him to make his own studio in France that helps produce his shows, and he was ultimately gonna have his show be primarily within his own country in France until Phil Roman made the phone call in Summer 1996. Phil offered Squigge an opportunity to make his own show under Phil's production, and since Phil trusted his vision in Timing the Animation in Twisted Tales (among other things), he let Squigge make his own series for them and entirely storyboard driven (unlike the majority of Film Roman's output) so that Squigge and his crew have full creative control. In December 13, 1996, a boatload of animators, artists, and cartoonists (John Kricfalusi, Craig McCracken, Byron Vaughs, Bill Plympton, Bob Camp, Sergio Pablos, Mark O'Hare, Dave Wasson, Sanjay Patel, Thomas Szabo, Alex Kirwan, Timothy Bjorklund, Barry E Jackson, to name a few) gave Squigge up to a million bucks to fund his animation studio for his show with Film Roman, thusly 65% of the animation was done by his newly formed in-house studio in Paris, France "Le Squigge Studios". After seeing a demo of Squigge's studio animations for "The Bartonnis" in the February 1, 1997 studio tour, John K praised this studio's input claiming "It swept my work with Carbunkle Cartoons away and perfected upon their practices". Squigge was pleased, however was noted to be nicer to his animators than John (Squigge still was a perfectionist).