Farm Force (2005)

Winner of the Nicktoon’s Film Festival Viewer’s Choice Award!

In the summer of 2003, I came up with this little idea about farm animals with superpowers—A dim-witted Pig with super strength, a savvy Hen with technical egg-laying abilities and a Zen Master Bass, with Super-ninja skills. It was originally created as a TV series, and a producer friend of mine gathered together a team of people to develop, pitch and produce it. We decided to produce a short film to help cement the pitch.

It made a big splash.

It was picked was up by Porchlight Entertainment (closed in 2011) and eventually Heather Henson (Jim Henson’s daughter) came on to fund the project. After much development, the series came this close to being green lit, but in the end, the deal fell apart.

What we were left with was a fantastic short film that still holds up to this day. We submitted it to the Nicktoons Film Festival in 2005 and it won the Viewer’s Choice Award! Exciting!

Thank you to Rob Cowie, Dom Carola, Paulo Alvarado, Gregg Azzopardi, John Webber, Travis Blaise and all the other fabulous people that contributed to this amazing project. It was an experience I’ll never forget.

*Note: The fantastic concept drawings, stills and animation below were created by a dedicated team of animation pros, but the title card of the video was created by Ethan Long. Here’s the original sketch of the title card, and then the final image.

Watch the hilarious short film below!