Nashville-based animator Mike Salva has started a crowd-funding campaign to fund an animated comedy series starring comedian Jonathan Katz called Death Row Diet. Katz is best known for playing the title character on Comedy Central’s Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, a role for which he won an Emmy. Salva’s previous work includes award-winning shorts “Max The Hero” (which stars and was written by Mystery Science Theater 3000 and RiffTrax.com’s Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett) & “Pound Dogs” (which features Nashville-based comedians Sean Parrott and Ryan Williams plus Atlanta’s Andy Merrill, who played Brak on Space Ghost and Oglethorpe on Aqua Teen Hunger Force).
In Katz and Salva’s animated short ‘Death Row Diet’, Jonathan plays a man on death row and Weight Watchers, where he consults with his lawyer (played by Tom Leopold of “Seinfeld” and “Cheers”). The cartoon was a big hit at film festivals and won a lot of awards, including a television pilot award from the New York Television Festival.
Work began to expand Death Row Diet into an animated series about the main character’s life in prison. A number of scripts were written but as they were ready to begin recording the dialogue, their funding source for the project backed out. The creators immediately began planning a Kickstarter campaign to fund the series. They are offering rewards to backers, including a “special thanks” listing in the credits, an “associate producer” credit, a speaking part in the cartoon, DVD copies of Death Row Diet autographed by Jonathan Katz.. and having the director & a voice actor come to your house to clean your bathroom.
Complete details of the campaign can be found on the project’s Kickstarter page and at DeathRowDiet.com. Here’s the original short:
Death Row Diet (with Jonathan Katz) from Project Meatball on Vimeo.
More infos:
Death Row Diet @ Kickstarter
DeathRowDiet.com
Facebook.com/DeathRowDiet
Twitter.com/DeathRowDiet
