Behind the Scenes: The Making of Ruff and Reddy for Our YouTube Channel

Ruff and Reddy is the first made-for-TV cartoon that William Hanna and Joseph Barbera produced for their company, Hanna-Barbera. It ran from 1957 to 1960, with a total of 156 episodes airing on NBC. Each episode followed the ongoing adventures of a small cat named Ruff and a big bulldog named Reddy as they faced numerous dangers.

When we started making the first batch of characters for our YouTube channel, Ruff and Reddy were the first ones to have their heads sculpted. We eventually made their bodies too, but due to limited white clay, Reddy had his body sculpted in gray. However, it doesn't look too bad. Ruff and Reddy were definite characters we wanted to make, given the history they represented - they were H-B's first TV cartoon after all. So, we started with them first.

The first Ruff and Reddy story we produced for the channel, titled "Somewhere Out There," was written by me. Unfortunately, I don't have the original storyboard anymore, as it was lost over time. The plot followed Ruff and Reddy as they went to the park and stumbled upon a UFO. The second story, titled "The Mysterious Fellows from Above," was another one I wrote, but I made a mistake by changing the location from a park to a carnival. Nonetheless, the plot followed two tiny men trying to imprison our heroes, but Reddy picks up a ball and prepares to strike them. In the final story, "The Martins are Comin," which I also wrote, Reddy takes out the men with a strike, and Ruff and Reddy flee the scene. It took about three stories to create a full plotline, similar to how it was done in the original cartoon, although the cartoon had around five stories, so there may be some slight differences.

We are still in the process of writing more Ruff and Reddy stories, as well as other Hanna-Barbera stories you may see in the future. However, we haven't written a Ruff and Reddy story in a while, as of 2023, but I hope we can do so in the near future.

Introduction

Hello there! Welcome to my blog on the HB Stop Motions channel.

I'm happy to start blogging about the HB Stop Motions channel I've created on YouTube. Here, I'll share some behind the scenes info, the progress of making each video, additional information, how we make each character, etc. I'll start with the story of why I've started this channel. Hanna-Barbera has been an influence on many artists, writers and so forth. They've created many hits, such as Scooby-Doo, Yogi Bear, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and so much more. Soon after the company's closure, I saw Warner Bros., who own most of the library, didn't really do very well for them. I knew something needed to be done, and that's when I created a channel that would take those characters and put them into a 3D world.

The real challenge was the setup, since it had been the first time, I did stop motions, and so, I wasn't too familiar with setting up the channel. I found some techniques that helped the filming progress, we had the channel setup, we made a bunch of the characters in early 2021. Then we started, the progress was stressful at times, and some disastrous things happened on set, but in the end, we were happy about the outcome, and we set for everything to be scheduled.

The first video we published was one of the stories I wrote, an Augie Doggie story titled, "A Pup's a Quack." We first started to write out our storyboards on paper but switched to digital later on. All characters featured in the story were modeled by me, with the exception being Yakky's body, I believe, although I helped remodel the body. The voices were also recorded by me, I think the voice acting could've been better, but I guess it works for now. The setup I did was simple, we had them in a city with Augie asking his pop if he could keep a duck, something true to the character in the original shorts. The background setup was great, but in order to make the characters stand, we used a sort of play clay, since the characters were made out of Polymer Clay, it left some stains, which we later resolved by cleaning up the characters. 

I had it in mind that we would try our best to create most of the library, whether it was something that was bizarre, or makes one question the logic of the series, we would create it. Outsourced companies, like Hanna-Barbera Australia, may also be included, but stuff from companies like Ruby-Spears for instance, may not be included due to it being sort of its own company. I had an idea at some point that would allow people to request a show/character, and we would get around to it, but we created so many characters that we haven't shown all of them for the stop motions just yet.

Some more information will come around soon, I like the idea we came up with, and I'm sure our viewers do too, we give our thanks to them for helping us make our channel grow, and for making these characters have new adventures to which they haven't gotten in years. We hope one day for our channel to go more in-depth on the company and help let people know of these characters and of the company. We thank you for reading, more will be posted soon.