Odd Todd

Odd Todd

Odd Todd: A Day in the Life
Created by	Todd Rosenberg
Launched	2001
Website	http://www.oddtodd.com

Odd Todd is a website owned and operated by Todd Rosenberg, an unemployed "dotcommer", who has created a series of humorous Flash cartoons depicting the world of unemployment, after entering the world himself.

These animated shorts — written, drawn, and narrated by Rosenberg — encapsulate the trials and tribulations many people felt in Silicon Valley and its impacted markets after the dot com crash around 2001.

Rosenberg's first cartoon, Laid Off: A Day in the Life, shows the frustration, despair, and boredom of a man in his 30s learning about how money is "kinda important" and dates are hard to attain when you're overweight and balding.

The success of the first cartoon short led to more cartoons being posted for downloading, even the opportunity to contribute through an Internet "tip cup." Rosenberg was collecting unemployment insurance at time that he put up his "tip cup" and, when the New York State Department of Labor learned of the "tip cup," they sent him a letter demanding repayment of all paid unemployment benefits. Rosenberg successfully appealed this action and was not required to pay back any benefits.

Rosenberg spread his cartoon wings away from the unemployment world and delved into fantasy cartoons such as his annual Halloween cartoon and his Christmas episodes.

A hallmark of the cartoons is Todd's pronunciation of the "ee" sound at the end of certain words (the most popular examples being "cookie" as "cook-ay", "coffee" as "coff-ay" and "money" as "mon-ay"). While Rosenberg claimed this was unconscious in the early cartoons, once fans reported they liked it he deliberately included and exaggerated it in all subsequent works. The cartoons also feature an unlikely breakout character, an unidentifiable mammalian creature called Mep who appeared briefly in the second Laid Off short and has made frequent appearances in almost all the following cartoons and games.

As Rosenberg's fan base grew, so did the Odd Todd website, which now includes such random material as "What's Happening", movie reviews, his search for "Brittney Dirtor", "Daily Facts I Learned from the TV", reader-submitted poetry, recipes, and more. A predecessor to today's blogging craze, Odd Todd has developed a healthy (if somewhat unique) following. His What's Happening section is the most popular section besides the cartoons.

Rosenberg has published several games on his site, most of them in collaboration with http://AE4RV.com. The (Bad) Memory Name which was produced with AE4RV had a name change recently due to a threat from the Hasbro Corporation. It is now named "Mep Match Game". Rosenberg's most recent foray into the game world was in April 2007 when he included five games in his annual April Fools cartoon including Mepsteroids.

Cook-ay Slots is a popular game produced for the site as it contains cartoons in the game like "Lobster and Shirley". Mepball also contains a setup cartoon.

In May 2005, Rosenberg worked with Canadian freelance company One Hip Designs based in Ottawa, Canada. Through their design team, they produced Mep Invaders. The game was a Space Invaders clone but hasn't yet been placed on www.oddtodd.com due to bugs and lack of some additional content. The original idea for the game was based on a promotion toon for an under developed game Rosenberg featured on his website called Mep Wars. Other than these mishaps, the production team thought thought it was a success.

In April 2007 Rosenberg began collaboration with another Indie game developer, Steven Mikkelson, of http://MartianGames.com. Together they brought the blue-robed slacker, along with his friends Mep, ElfUp, and Roscoe into a 3D action game called "Cookay Blast", in which you drive around on a kitchen table collecting fudged-striped Cookays and blasting opponents with fizzing soda cans. Cookay Blast took six months to create and first appeared October 23 on the front page of www.oddtodd.com.

The Odd Todd Handbook was published in 2003 by Warner Books. It is now out of print.

His cartoon character was picked up for development at Comedy Central for a half-hour television show but was shelved. Todd has since provided cartoons for Motherload the Comedy Central broadband channel and Paramount Pictures announced they optioned Odd Todd as a live-action motion picture.^[1] Todd is represented by the Gersh Agency in Los Angeles.

Rosenberg has also produced freelance cartoons for Nightline, America's Test Kitchen, Nova, and World News Tonight, . He is also a commentator for NPR. Rosenberg recently wrote a sitcom pilot for CBS and produced a five-part animated series about global warming for National Geographic.

Todd developed an original cartoon series segment called The News Junkie for IFC Media Project with Gideon Yago and he produces monthly "You" animations for time.com.

Contrary to a rumor of unknown origin, Rosenberg did not create the "Don't Regulate the Internet" cartoon.

Rosenberg lives in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn with a dog named Roscoe. He broadcasts Roscoe live on Roscoecam.^[2]

References

1. ^ Fleming, Michael and Gardner, Chris. Paramount finds 'Odd Todd', Variety, June 5, 2006
2. ^ http://www.oddtodd.com/roscoecam/index.html