Davenport Artist Drawn to Animation, Fundraising for New Project
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Normally, calling someone a “chicken” is an insult. For artist Michael Cook of Davenport, he created Chucky Chicken as an unlikely hero, who triumphs with pluck, humor and a big heart – traits he sees in himself.
A friendly 33-year-old native of the Chicago suburb Oswego, Ill., the gifted animator cooked up Chucky in 2008, when Cook was attending the Illinois Institute of Art – Schaumburg, and he’s been working ever since to get his cartoon series on a screen near you.
“Chucky Chicken is an animated comedy series featuring a charming, plucky and occasionally awkward rooster who, along with his ensemble of friends, showcases humor and good heartedness while telling a
The cover of a 19-page concept packet for “Chucky Chicken.”
variety of stories in a wide array of settings,” according to his production company, Valley Studios.
The planned series is dubbed “classic contemporary” – a combination of inspiration by the great, classic cartoons of the past and the hand-drawn method in which they were made; along with the contemporary methods and story lines of the present.
“I loved cartoons ever since I was a kid,” Cook said recently. “So for me, it was just kind of natural, that you can make money doing cartoons. It was like, that’s what I want to do with the rest of my life.”
When he got early animation software, he fell in love with it. After Cook graduated from high school, the Illinois Institute of Art in Schaumburg was his first and only choice for school, where he earned his bachelor of fine arts degree in media arts and animation. It’s actually there that he created Chucky Chicken during his first year.
“When I was a kid, you didn’t go to school for an animation degree, you went to school to get
The colorful cast of characters for Valley Studios’ “Chucky Chicken.”
like a fine arts degree or a graphic design or film or something like that,” Cook said. “So animation was fairly new when I started, but nowadays there are all sorts of colleges and institutions that are offering animation degrees.”
When he started college, that was the time that 2D animation was being phased out of theaters altogether.
“So everyone was really trying to focus and harness our attentions on doing CGI and 3D animation,” Cook said. “I bucked the trend – I wanted to learn 2D animation. I want to do it the old-fashioned way, because that’s important to learn. And it’s important to know because technology will always continue to evolve. And there’s always going to be another new program that you’re going to have to relearn and you’re going to have to re-train yourself.
“But if you’re able to animate on paper and you know the fundamentals and you know everything on paper at the lowest, I say it like I don’t mean to sound condescending, but if you know how to do it at the most basic level, then you can do it on any program as long as you learn it,” he said. “Honestly, a lot of people nowadays really want to see traditional, hand-drawn animation come back, which is why we keep doing it.
For example, the video game Cuphead came out in 2017, all with hand-drawn animation, like a 1930s cartoon, Cook said. “When the game came out, it was just phenomenally successful. Not just with the fact that it was hard as nails to play, but it just looked beautiful, and it was a completely different than anything on the platform at that point. So once Cuphead came out, everybody was just kind of like, whoa, the 1930s are cool again and I’m sitting here, it’s always been cool. I’ve been doing it for nearly ten years before you guys. So, thanks, but it’s kind of funny looking back at it now, but a lot of folks our age we grew up with the four hours of cartoons on one VHS tape.”
“We all grew up with the Disney renaissance of the ‘90s,” he said. “I remember going to the theaters and seeing movies like ‘Beauty and the
The cartoon hero, Chucky Chicken, is described as a “charming, plucky and occasionally awkward rooster.”
Beast’ and ‘Aladdin’ and ‘The Lion King.’ It was so prevalent during that period, that you couldn’t help but get wrapped up and fascinated and enchanted with it. So being a kid during that time, it was kind of a no-brainer. I’m like, oh my God, that’s what I want to do.”
“I grew up in a wonderful time. So now as an uncle, I’m not a parent, but I am an uncle. I know a lot of my friends are now parents and they’re showing their kids what we grew up with,” Cook said. “It’s never going to go away, like we’re going to continue to pass it down so it doesn’t matter. What happens today in the media, we’ll always have those memories and those films to show our kids and hopefully the next generation will look at it and go, hey, I really like that. I want to keep that going and bring that back.”
Chucky’s friends include Louie Loon and Johnny Jackrabbit.
His brother and his wife have two-year-old twins in the Chicago area.
“It’s kind of fun to be able to share those classic cartoons in those characters with them. And when they get a little older, probably three or four, then I’ll start showing them my personal characters. They’ve seen Chucky and the gang and still form and they loved them. So it’s what’s cool about it is, they did a study years and years and years ago about how kids were drawn to Mickey Mouse like, why Mickey is still a popular character today?
“It’s because back in those old days, they were using very basic round, geometric shapes to design the characters,” Cook said. “As the character evolved, and his design changed over the years, people would still be drawn to the character because how safe he looks, because of the round edges. But if you put the modern Mickey next to the classic Mickey Mouse, they’re always going to go for the classic Mickey because it’s simpler. It’s more friendly-looking and it’s been proven.”
Inspired by an early Disney rabbit
While Walt Disney (1901-1966) is forever enshrined for creating Mickey Mouse, Cook was first taken with an earlier animated animal Disney came up with in his 20s, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
Michael Cook is a 33-year-old native of Oswego, Ill., a western Chicago suburb.
“I poured myself into these cartoons and I just loved the animation of the ‘20s, and I also loved Oswald,” Cook said. “First of all, because it was a character who looked like Mickey that wasn’t Mickey. I had heard of Oswald my whole life. I mean, I had a book — Disney’s Art of Animation — that told the whole story of Walt Disney’s career and one of the first characters that he ever made was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, but unfortunately, it got stolen from him and because he lost the rights to Oswald, that’s how he made Mickey Mouse.”
Oswald was created by Disney and Ub Iwerks for Universal Pictures, according to https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Oswald_the_Lucky_Rabbit. First appearing in the short film Trolley Troubles in 1927, Oswald is notable for his ability to disassemble and reshape his body parts at will. He is credited for pioneering “personality animation,” which refers to cartoon characters displaying identifiable emotion. In Oswald’s case, he was often depicted as haughty, feisty, and overzealous, which typically led to comical misadventures that put the rabbit’s trademark luck to the test, the Disney fan site says.
Walt Disney created both Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in the late 1920s.
Due to a financial falling out with producer Charles Mintz, Disney abandoned the Oswald series alongside Iwerks and a few other loyalists. Together, the remaining team would independently create Mickey Mouse, Oswald’s successor. Oswald would remain with Universal, and continued to appear in short films through 1938 before fading into obscurity.
In 2006, The Walt Disney Company would acquire ownership of Oswald and the Disney-made cartoons. The character would see a resurgence thereafter, beginning with the 2010 video game Epic Mickey, which depicts Oswald as a long-forgotten actor with a vendetta against Mickey. Since then, Oswald has appeared in merchandise, theme parks, and various animated projects.
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit made his screen debut in September 1927.
A cheerful anthropomorphic mouse, Mickey made his first public appearance in Steamboat Willie, on November 18, 1928. When Cook started college, nobody really knew about Oswald. Later, the character became popular, and he loved it.
“They didn’t have sound, they didn’t have color,” he said of the old cartoons. “They have to really push the performance of the character and get the personalities to come alive without those major selling points. They did, and the Oswald cartoons are some of the best gems of silent cartoons out there. So when I saw them, I was just like, oh my God, I love these characters. And I want to do something in this realm and I realized there really weren’t that many chickens in animation.
“And if there were, they were kind of like, you know, the side characters,” Cook said. “I really hated that and being from the Midwest, I’m surrounded by chickens and cows and pigs, and all sorts of farm animals in some of the parts of Illinois I’m from. So we’re going to take a chicken and we’re going to name him Chucky, and we’re going to have a lot of fun.”
At first, he designed Chucky in black and white, silent and stylized like the 1920s Oswald aesthetic.
“I wanted to go old-school, the old-fashioned way — like I wanted to have music playing in the background. I wanted to make them silent cartoons,” Cook said. He met a former recruiter for Walt Disney television animation, Conrad Montgomery, and Cook pitched him Chucky Chicken and he really liked it.
Mickey Mouse, who made his debut in 1928, has long been the face of Disney around the world.
“However, he said you got to have a voice and you gotta have sound, and you gotta put color in them,” Cook recalled. “So, unfortunately, that version of Chucky Chicken kind of disappeared after meeting. However, we did do one cartoon called ‘Wake-Up Call,’ which is on YouTube today, that is in that style and that was right before I met Conrad and I showed him Chucky.”
Walt Disney was working at Universal and he was brought on by Margaret Winkler, who was a distributor of Felix the Cat and Coco the Clown in the late ‘20s, and at the time, Disney was working on cartoons with Ub Iwerks, which he called the Alice comedy.
Winkler got married to Charles Mintz and back in those days, the husband took over all of the business affairs of the women. Mintz took over and he didn’t like Disney, Cook said. Disney came up with the rabbit character and pulled a name out of a hat, which was Oswald, Cook said. “They did 26 cartoons through Universal, and at the time Mintz just really didn’t like Walt, and Walt wasn’t that fond of him. He basically went behind Walt’s back and brought all of his animators to the Mintz studio, had them sign contracts, and Mintz basically stole almost all of his Walt’s animators away from him.”
Freddy Fox and Luca Bacon in “Chucky Chicken.”
Mintz also said he now owned Oswald the rabbit, and told Disney he could accept that or hit the road, which is what Walt did.
“He’s talking with his wife on the train saying, I don’t know what the heck I’m going to do,” Cook recalled of Disney saying. “The legend goes that there was a mouse that scurried by on the train and lo and behold, inspiration struck and before they got back to California, Mickey Mouse was drawn. So it’s a very interesting story. It was a perfect example of like all things working together for good. He lost his starring character; he could have been very cushy at his job, but he took that risk.
“It was like, you know what, screw you — I’m going and doing my own thing, which is why Disney is so protective of Mickey Mouse,” he said. “Every 20 years, they try to lobby Congress to get the copyright extended. It should have gone in the public domain back in the ‘90s, but continue to lobby, and they continue to keep him under the ownership of Disney. But I just think it’s such a really unique story and knowing all that as a kid, finally being able to see the Oswald cartoons on DVD, and realizing, oh my gosh, this is super cool. I had to be a part of that 1920s world, which is how Chucky was born.”
As soon as Universal found out what Mintz did, they fired him and replaced him with Walter Lantz, who was the creator of Woody Woodpecker.
Portrait of an artist as a young rooster
They say, write what you know, so Cook injected a lot of his personality into Chucky Chicken, he said.
“I’m a happy-go-lucky, friendly kind of guy. Very socially awkward, loyal,” he said. “Chucky is the kind of guy who is clever. What’s really cool
Chelsai Chicken is Chucky’s girlfriend, who’s a natural dancer, gymnast and loves learning about cultures around the world.
about Chucky, he was a little too much like Mickey and he was kind of really boring, but as much as I love Mickey Mouse, unfortunately, a lot of those cartoons back in the day, they were more artistically pleasing and innovative — with the combination of animation and music — but they weren’t terribly funny. At least not the Mickey Mouse ones.
“It wouldn’t be until they got Donald Duck and Goofy on the scene and Pluto, that the sense of humor was really injected into it,” Cook said. “With Chucky, what we wanted to do was we wanted to do something very different with him. And I struggle with Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a highly functional autism. I’m on the autism spectrum and very highly functioning. So we decided to give Chucky Chicken a few of those Asperger’s traits.
“He’s very analytical and he blabs on a lot,” he said. “If he’s very focused on a certain love of his — which is making movies. He loves to make movies; he knows everything about making movies and sometimes it can be a detriment to him and some of his relationships.”
“He’s a fountain of worthless knowledge unless it’s applicable to the subject that you’re at,” Cook said. “He just
The pig Luca Bacon was named after “The Godfather” character Luca Brasi.
knows a lot about everything. He can be very socially awkward, but he tries his best. He’s a really good friend, who’s very loyal. When he gets really freaked out or worried or scared, he freezes. So, his friends have to constantly like try and help him get out of that frozen state. And when he does, he’s able to conquer his fears and plow forward and just win the day.
“He a very funny guy, you know, he’s very clever, he’s very witty,” he said. “He stands up for his friends, he stands up for what he loves and whom he loves, and he’s just a wonderful guy. And it’s really cool to be able to see a character like that on the screen, because if I was a kid with Asperger Syndrome and I saw a character like Chucky — somebody who deals with the same things that I do, I’d fall in love with them right then and then it’s not just me, I’m not alone. That’s kind of one of the things that we wanted to do with this character was to really let anybody who has you know Asperger’s or any kind of autism or any sort of mental disability — that they’re not alone.”
Cook said his character and stories (created with a large team of Hollywood notables and YouTube talent) have been well accepted and received well. He sees a lot of himself in Chucky.
“I’m very passionate about animation and film and you really gotta be, to be successful in this business,” he said. “I’m very thankful that I have people on my team who are both family and friends, who are there to kind of watch my back and make sure that not only do we make cartoons that are awesome, but we make sure that we get them done.”
Cook wishes he could do some of the things Chucky can do in his cartoons, and wishes he had some of his bravery.
“Or I’d be able to get friends out of a tight spot as quickly as he does. He’s got two friends on the show, Louie Loon and Johnny Jackrabbit while he’s back here trying to lay out the game plan of what to do, they’re already like five, 10 steps ahead and causing trouble,” Cook said. “So he has to pick up the pieces and then also figure out a way to get them out of there on the fly, very resourceful like that. I wish I had that
Michael Cook is a 33-year-old native of Oswego, Ill., a western Chicago suburb and the creator of the show.
quality. I wish I was able to continually roll with the punches in super dire situations.”
His series relies heavily on slapstick comedy, including old-fashioned use of dynamite and anvils and other classic Warner Bros. tropes, according to the concept packet. “However, much like Looney Tunes, they know that they’re actors and may occasionally use meta humor and break character, to showcase their displeasure with the script, story, role, etc.”
With experience in many TV series, Cook has become known for his inventive and original character development, voice talent and storytelling. His passion and enthusiasm for projects carries over into collaboratively driving new levels of creativity in feature animation, online vignettes, television, live theater and media services, according to his bio. An early career highlight was being nominated for an Emmy as part of “The Cartoon Guy Show” created by the late Justin Barnes. Other work includes animation for local restaurants and production of a variety of online programing via his own Valley
Michael Cook voices Chucky Chicken.
Studios Media.
In 2014, he worked on “The Cartoon Guy Show” in Indianapolis, which he described as like “Sesame Street” meets “Reading Rainbow” meets Cartoon Network, teaching kids the value of art. Cook was an animator and puppeteer on that show.
For “Chucky Chicken,” he reached out to Tom Ruegger (creator of “Animaniacs,” “Pinky and the Brain,” and “Tiny Toon Adventures”) on social media, and got him to be a story advisor and production consultant.
“I still have to pinch myself. Every time I realize that the guy who made my childhood is now helping make other kids’ childhoods. So that’s really, really amazing and humbling,” Cook said. John Ortiz, who’s very big on YouTube gaming ((known online as “SomecallmeJohnny”), is doing his first voice acting for Cook. “He’s just been a huge supporter of the show,” he said. “I just asked and my enthusiasm and my passion hooked him.”
“It’s been a slow process to get the team together. The pandemic surprisingly helped us,” Cook said. “Because nobody could go out and we had a lot more time to just stay home. And I was fortunate to be able to keep people sane and keep people excited about what we were working on.”
He moved to the Quad-Cities in May 2020, in the middle of the pandemic.
“My buddy and I wanted to start an animation studio and he had lived out here for a little bit. And so he invited me out and I fell in love with it and I live in Davenport currently,” Cook said. “I just think it’s a beautiful part of the country. It’s right on the Mississippi and very inspiring and so I set up shop and set up some roots here.”
Peaks and Valleys in new home
For the animated series, the team has been working on a volunteer basis, and in March, Cook estimated how much it would cost to make a
Cook (who also voices Chucky) moved to Davenport in May 2020.
cartoon and pay everyone, and launched a Kickstarter campaign May 1. It endied June 30, but didn’t reach their $25,000 goal (raising $8,117), meaning they couldn’t receive any of the funds. One hundred and sixty-one people backed the project from around the world.
“It wasn’t like it was a total fail because we got a we did get quite a huge chunk of change, but unfortunately the Kickstarter policy is you know, it’s all or nothing,” Cook said. “So we won’t be getting a penny of that, which is unfortunate, but it was a good tester for us to see our audience and to see if the interest is out there, which it is. So we’ll try again. We’re definitely going to attempt it again, a little later on.”
If they met the $25,000 goal, Cook could pay animators to do a high-quality, six-minute Chucky Chicken cartoon.
“Something that we could then present to studios, and to people, to Netflix, Hulu and say ‘Hey, this is what we’re doing, this is what we’re working on. What do you think?” he said. Cook is continuing to work on the project, but is taking longer than expected.
They did a three-minute video for the Kickstarter site, which was a compilation of everything he’d worked on since 2008.
He’s been working at the QC Co-Lab space, 627 W. 2nd S., Davenport, near the Centennial Bridge. Cook inputs his designs into a computer where he uses different programs to animate them (including Adobe Creative Suite and Toon Boom Harmony), and colors them digitally. He
The pig Luca Bacon was named after “The Godfather” character Luca Brasi.
calls the process “tradigital.”
Cook works several part-time jobs, including driving for Uber Eats and doing virtual tours, and karaoke DJing. “I’m a natural born ham, so I might as well put it to good use,” he said. His ham character in the show is the pig Luca Bacon (voiced by John Ortiz). Cook named him after the “Godfather” character Luca Brasi. Luca is the only “Chucky” character without an alliterative name like Tommy Turkey, Louie Loon or Johnny Jackrabbit.
Valley Studios was named from companies Cook’s grandfather started in Oswego, Ill. (Valley Securities and Valley Construction), and his father started Valley Electric.
Cook reached out for help to Gary Camarano, executive director of the Northwest Illinois Film Office, and they’ve talked extensively over the past few months about participating in the planned 2nd-annual Northwest Illinois Film Festival this fall, as well as potentially doing some commercial work for the office featuring the Chucky Chicken characters.
“We currently are in production of a short that we’re planning to have featured at the film festival, if it’s not canceled due to Covid, as well as a holiday short that’s on schedule to premiere this December,” Cook said. “It’s been an uphill climb for us after the Kickstarter, but the entire team is working on a volunteer basis to get these cartoons done. Our prayer is to be able to get some kind of funding by the end of the year to be able to turn this passion into a true-blue production operation.”
“I love the old cartoons,” Camarano said recently, praising Cook’s talent and drive. “I love that stuff. I’m happy to see something like that going on. If we can help him, we will. I’d like to have him do something on the Illinois side.” He’s also working with Cook to produce a commercial for Whiteside County (in which the film office operates).
“It is great to see Northwest Illinois’ creative sector grow. Last year we saw a number of projects completed in the region, including three indie films, two documentaries, and filming of a major studio production,” Camarano said. “The addition of an animation studio to our region’s lineup is welcomed. We’ve a growing list of feature and short filmmakers, documentarians, media education, and talented cast and crew. Northwest Illinois is a great place for film businesses and media projects.”
Tommy Turkey is the series villain — an arrogant, tight-fisted, rude, tough old bird from Brooklyn.
Camarano is working to do a two-day film festival again at the Midway Drive-In Theatre in Sterling, this time in October with a feature film each day and other short films.
More than 170 fans of independent film converged on the Midway Drive-In for the first Northwest Illinois Film Festival on Aug. 26, 2020. Most came from the region, some from Chicagoland, and one flew in from Los Angeles, according to the festival organizer, the Northwest Illinois Film Office (NIFO). The event was a celebration of Illinois indie filmmakers, featuring 11 short films — the night’s theme was “Shorts-A-Palooza.”
“The feedback from both the audience and the filmmakers was very positive,” Camarano said. “The films were well received, the drive-in atmosphere added to the enjoyment, and everyone is looking forward to a repeat performance.”
Among the short films shown were two episodes from Moline-based Fourth Wall Films, A Bridge Too Far From Hero Street, and Riding the Rails to Hero Street.
“It was a magical evening seeing the two new Hero Street documentaries light up the screen,” said producer Tammy Rundle. “It was our first drive-in film exhibition and rather thrilling.”
Next steps for support
While Valley Studios hasn’t restarted a Kickstarter campaign, Cook is seeking financial support through their Patreon page located at https://www.patreon.com/ChuckyChickenOfficial. “Think of it as a digital tip jar where you can pledge whatever you’re able to on a monthly basis; by doing so, you’ll get access to exclusive perks like behind-the-scenes content, access to a private server where you can chat with the cast and crew one-on-one, as well as early access to our content before it’s released to the general public,” he said.
Folks are also highly encouraged to subscribe to the series YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ChuckyChickenOfficial, which is closing in on 1,000 subscribers, Cook said. You can see animated shorts, speed draws, images, and more at
www.youtube.com/c/ChuckyChickenOfficial.
