A lot to get you animated - MTV's new animated shows - Illustration

If, as it's been said, the longevity of any trend is directly proportional to the attention span of those who consume it, then Mike Judge's Beavis and Butt-Head, at the crusty old age of one year, is well past its prime. But thanks to our friends at MTV, this generation's animated starmakers, a new and hungry group of cartoon artists are about to set their strange and beautiful creations loose upon the land. "We like to think that we've created a living laboratory for animation," says Abby Terkuhle, executive producer of Beavis and senior vice president of animation at MTV. "It's going to be a huge part of the information stream we keep hearing about--a superhighway to the imagination." This month MTV plans to air six new shorts in the third season of its weekly animation showcase, Liquid Television, and is developing other animated series in its new in-house studio (yes, there will be more Aeon Flux). Here, a few of our favorite creators and their upcoming creations.

Danny Antonucci's Grunt Brothers, currently in development, looks to be MTV's next Beavis and Butt-Head: six sheltered brothers catch a glimpse of the outside world, escape, and have adventures; one falls in love with a lamp. Dialogue is grunting, subtitled. "People thought we couldn't get any dumber than Beavis and Butt-Head," says Terkuhle. "They were wrong."

Eric Fogel, who came to MTV's attention after submitting an animated film he'd done while he was a student at New York University, employed local highschool kids in his basement studio on Long Island to help him create the pilot for his new series, The Head, to be shown weekly on MTV this fall. Modeled on the old cliff-hanger format of serialized shorts like Flash Gordon, The Head stars a fellow with an alien who lives inside his tumescent noggin.

Ed Bell, who served as conceptual art director on the big-screen animated feature Bebe's Kids, is one of the country's foremost hip-hop artists. His Big City, which features the tale of an African woman who comes to America and visits the ghetto before settling down in the city, will air on Liquid Television this month. "It's all about family," Bell says, "how you gotta have it, and how the African-American community sorely lacks it." Big City's fluid, dreamy art techniques, set to rap narration, make it animation's own rebirth of cool.

John R. Dilworth's entry into the ever intensifying contest for most grotesque and politically incorrect animated series, Smart Talk with Raisin, features a creepy, snaggle-toothed little girl, her ogreish little brother, and her orphaned dog with low self-esteem. "My goal was to take all those unpleasant experiences you remember from childhood and make them really funny," says Dilworth. Expect Raisin's smart-ass mantra, "Yeah, right," to replace "Huh, huh, huh" in Liquid Television's pop lexicon.

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