Before proceeding with the post, I'd like to say that said post was originally posted on RM Ent.'s official blog on July 1st, 2014. In September 2012 I did something similar on a blog I had (in Portuguese) that had a few viewers apart from myself.
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Get ready for a long post, because it will explain more about Darwin the Merman and his origins.
The year is 2011. I recovered from my "I hate Cartoon Network" symptoms and the schedule was improving. I was the channel's biggesat fan (but I didn't talk too much to friends about that) and I had the following in my mind: if there are cartoons where the main character is a mermaid, why not make one where the main character is a merman?
Anyway, Darwin the Merman was born from a dream I had before waking up on the morning of November 1st, 2011. That dream had nothing to do with what would be Darwin.
I was leaving my school and I noticed that there was a weird arcade nearby. I entered and turns out that it was purple and had some cabinets and some weird stairs. I got up those stairs and I went to someone else's house in turn. I had to rest in a bed.
That morning, and without any relationship to the dream, I imagined myself. As a merman. Named Darwin. Living with a younger brother. And a merman from Flapjack.
And then I started thinking on what would the show be like. I already had an idea for the theme song:
Initially, Darwin was supposed to have a look inspired by Flapjack if he was a merman (as the final episode, Fish Out Of Water, clearly evidences), but then I changed it to a different look with a square nose.
In late December, someone on Deviantart under the name of kmy1205 posted what could end up being the best design for Darwin. I picked up a humanization of Flounder ar a merman. Let me explain: he has blue and yellow hair, his head was round, he was wearing a yellow shirt (which my design refuses) and his tail was blueish-gray with the tip being blue and yellow. Days later, I went to cut my hair and when they put hair gel on me, I felt like I was Darwin because I had the idea that his "hair aroma" was just like some hair gel they put on me. Darwin the Merman's popularity grew from mental level to personal level.
I started to think on his sister. I thought on a red and yellow color scheme on her hair, seashell bra (half-red and half-yellow) and her tail, with a significant part of it being peach colored. Initially her name was supposed to be Eivlys, because of this:
Anyway, Darwin needed someone stronger. An older brother. I called him Kevin because of the character on the various Ben 10 shows.
Not too long before Darwin's older brother was created, I had to use chats to express my ideas twice. Considering that I already recorded with Vocaroo, I decided to use Chatfoo considering that it was being advertised on Vocaroo for some time. Only recently I knew that Chatfoo closed. If you tpye "Chatfoo" on Google, you'll see my two chats. That was one of the best days of my life with my fake cartoon.
I started to pick the best design for Darwin: the aforementioned drawing of what would Flounder look like as a merman posted by kmy1205. I imagined him without any shirt.
I expanded my expressions on the awful blogs I had in 2012: that fall, I posted a lot of what remained of that wonderful artwork: now it existed in smaller sizes. I started to give ideas for more characters. I also renamed Eivlys to Bea, because Eivlys wasn't a good choice.
I joined Toonzone in late December 2012 and slowly wanted to give Darwin some "focus" on some forums nobody wants to read. In late May/early June, I published a partial script, but no one answered me.
But anyway, Darwin the Merman was inspired (in a way) by Fish Hooks, and it probably served as a demented idea that will come true one day.
Please comment.
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Afterwards, I came up with more concepts like a mermaid called Darwinia which seems to be a mirror of Darwin as if he was genderbent, which had a brief moment of popularity as a Toonzone April Fool's Day prank (the previous year had "Love?/Three Crossovers"), the king is King Triton (which I'll draw today or tomorrow, he is partly based on the mermen from Flapjack), yet it looks like thirteen different countries, Triton is in Atlantis and Darwin and his friends live in Darwinia, which has a different king, the occasional specials where everybody is on land and it turns out that they were dreaming by the end of the episode, similar to a Fish Hooks episode where they all go human, and the concept that the show is popular in an alternate dimension.
Graphilm retweeted my ideas which annoyed me slightly and if they make it instead of CN, then the show will become a cheap European production.
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