or, Don’t hate Tom Servo’s new voice! Get to know him!

Best Brains has always plucked its performers and writers from Minneapolis’ vibrant comedy community. And when it chose the performer for Tom Servo’s new voice, it did so again.

James Moore, 31, a native of Richfield, Minnesota, has been performing comedy half his life. He’s performed regularly at Minneapolis’ Acme Comedy Co. and is a longtime member of the improv group ComedySportz.

Oh and, based on his myspace page, his girlfriend’s name is Carmen.

Welcome to the show, James.

One of the things I meant to mention in the introductory post, but forgot, was that we still recommend “MST3K: The Discussion Board” as a good place to hang out with fellow MSTies. We both mostly lurk there, but it is a well-run forum, and probably the busiest on the Web.

Apparently the folks working on the animations at MST3K.com think so too, because last Saturday one “SHAD,” a member of the production team, decided to speak up after the first couple of cartoons got reviews that ranged from mildly to strongly negative.

He supplied some interesting behind-the-scenes info, to wit:

I wasn’t going to post because y’all scare me but these comments are bumming out my studio so I want to make an appeal that you don’t write off the animated bots right away.

The site and first animation “Reel Livin'” were finished and then Jim brought us on board. We gutted the site and have a bunch of talented folks working to make the animations better. (Max, the guy who animated the first one, is actually super-good but busy working on his graphic novels.) The bug-me-less version of the site will be up soon and our first animation goes up on Monday. You’ll see improvement from each one to the next. I swear.

While Jim, Paul, and the new comedians are feeling out how to write and act for animation, we’re working on making it look better. We figure that things will really start coming together around episode five. We got the audio of the bots talking on the site-front page for Thanksgiving and it’s pretty funny.

If it doesn’t get a heck of a lot funnier…we’re out of here too. No one wants to spend day in and out animating garbage. We all love MST3K and as geeks and Minnesotans feel like it’s in our blood and we not going to let it get spoiled.

Yep.

Shad – PUNY / Big Time Attic

Oh, and a couple of notes that maybe I’m not supposed to say:

-The bots were designed to be flat and use puppety animation so that they stay…puppety (by a really cool guy named Steve). He tried to boil them down to their essence. I think this was a good plan but we’re going to flesh them out a little over time without going all “Saturday Morning Cartoon” on them. Plus they have to be fairly easy to animate, Jim wants to keep the episodes coming despite no network $$.

-The bots are on SOL instead of on Earth/Continuity because animation gives them a really cool opportunity to explore the Satellite without building huge sets. These are short bits that folks should look at as expanding the show and having some fun in this new medium..not replacing it.

-Paul especially didn’t want to put up “Reel Livin'” first but it was the only one done and everyone figured that if we waited until really good ones came along,..then who knows when the site would launch. All the MST3K guys have a DIY “show the warts and all” mentality that made the show so great in the first place. So…we went ahead and threw up the site as is, that animation, and then a quick store to help pay for hosting and stuff.

-There will for sure be new videos, behind the scenes bits, and I sat in on a brainstorm that had a lot of Internet-centric ideas that cracked me up. They still got it.

Thanks!

Hmmmm…. [Hat tip to our buddy Mike]