Alright Holla Forums you've been tasked with making a cartoon show about a catfish and an iguana

Alright Holla Forums you've been tasked with making a cartoon show about a catfish and an iguana.

You've been penned for the 4pm timeslot on your first premiere. You've gotta make something that you know will catch on.

What do you make with what you've been given?

Comfy slice of life comedy with a pet iguana and a catfish who resides in a lake by his owners home. Together they discuss their days, their lives as a whole, fears, and meaning of the universe. Also jokes like out of a buddy comedy.

...

The iguana is a girl and the catfish is also a girl.

The show is close to a slice of life. However, there is a distinct progression and a clear ending I will now explain.
The main idea is that to follow a couple of seemingly unrelated people, animals, objects, concepts, which through manipulation over the course of an episode come to resemble either in form or in non-physical features the iguana and the catfish.
For instance, what at the start of the episode was a tree becomes, through a series of transformations which are detailed within the episode, a sculpture figuring the iguana and the catfish in a loving embrace. In another one, the catfish is caught, and eaten; what remains is a picture of her and the fisherman who caught her.
Over the episodes, many such items or characters are introduced.
By the end of the series, every item or character has been produced. They are brought together in a room where a cartoonist proceeds to draw them, one after the other, while the credits roll.

Hire a bunch of cheap hipsters from California to make the show and make sure it gets picked up by Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon.

Got excited and made some very VERY rough sketches. What do y'all think?

Looks pretty cool fam.

bro/10

Very 90's. I dig it.

Sketch of Dr. Lamarck.

Another sketch.

I like it.

Well, it would be about a powerful and modern criminal organisation of anthropomorphic characters ran by a supervillain, HYDRA or Cobra style, with a kind of Pinky and the Brain tone for the main characters, who are one team of goons for the organisation, an incompetent ones at that.

I'd make the catfish a sneaky, deceptive master of disguise (play on the catfishing thing) and the iguana is kind of the slow-witted but pure of heart muscle. They'd spend their time between fighting antagonists and pulling of heists and hits, although the hits obviously couldn't involve killing, so they'd use slapstick and the kind of strange creativity Sam and Max used for violence. Perhaps this could also be where Iguana's personality comes in, he's told to take someone out but just has a nice, dumb chat with them and convinces them to change their ways or get out of town or whatever. This could also be a way of sneaking in the moral messages of the episode without being like Arthur.

In terms of antagonists, I'm thinking three groups, first is other criminal organisations which contrast and conflict with the main guys, maybe a Prohibition era mafia type gang that sell illegal fizzy drinks (kid show). Second is the law, which would basically range from cops-and-robbers stuff to superhero parody characters, and I'd use real but license-free characters if I could. Third is other teams within their organisation, who aren't so much villains as the other guys are, but will continuously fuck with them, like replacing The Catfish's rope coil on their zipwire gadget with a bagel or tying The Iguana's shoes together.

A fourth antagonistic group could come into play later, something similar to the Legion of Doom or Illuminati, who want total domination of the criminal underworld and so they'll crush all the opposition, which allows for the last series of the cartoon to have the organisation and their two natural enemies, other baddies and the goodies, have the obligatory 'join forces to defeat the much larger threat' thing.

Really liking it, pal!

Keep going

Since you got dubs, I'll try and come up with a few more ideas… Maybe some more characters and some development arcs. It might all be a bit tropey (hate that word) but I tend to write in ingrained tropes but try to mess with them a little rather than just painting-by-numbers. I'm terrible at naming characters, though, so they probably won't be named beyond something glaringly obvious right now. Obviously you've got your two main characters, Catfish and Iguana, but they've got to have a bit more going on.

I'm thinking maybe Catfish should be a woman, kind of like Catwoman when she's written well. She can be a femme fatale and possible love interest for a character, but she's also capable of totally independent action and is very smart and capable. Also, she's from Thailand and is capable of walking on land, she left Thailand to the nationally ambiguous setting of the cartoon in order to escape from restaurant fishermen there. That's not to say she isn't flawed, being a catfish, she can go on land but needs a water supply regularly, and prefers stagnant pools. This means that when she's doing operations, she can't take a splash and use her womanly wiles at the same time, so she essentially has to trade off her sexual powers for operations capability or vice versa.
This brings in interesting scenarios, say she's infiltrating a group of loan-sharks with the mob, who are literally sharks, so they have an acute sense of smell. She can't be stinking of boggy water whether she's going in stealthy or not, forcing her to infiltrate but also to not be as capable in a fight if things go south. Catfish is a borderline mercenary, if the Mafia offered more, or maybe even the superheroes, she'd consider going off with them. Her lookout is her.

This is why she's forcibly teamed up with the Iguana, so she has backup when things go wrong for her, and to keep her in line, following on from a mission gone south. I think that could make a neat arc for the first season, this team trying to recover from whatever losses this failed mission incurred. Iguana is a Mexican salamander, who has come from humble origins and ended up working in this organisation under false pretences, since his morals normally wouldn't allow the line of work he's ended up in, but he's got his own reasons for being in there. Iguana has dog-like loyalty to the overall organisation, and wants to follow orders to the letter. This brings him and Catfish into conflict, not least because she sees Iguana as being in the organisation at all as a result of nepotism (he's an old friend of the leader of the organisation, they're from the same town). Essentially, his good side is always there, he had a very moral upbringing by a Catholic family in Mexico (not sure how much you can mention religion in these things) and so everything he does is defined by that. Given the nature of their first task, this brings up personal conflict for him at times, since the boss wants them to go all out to fix the situation. Iguana might seem big and tough, but actually is very anxious, when in contrast, the weak and vulnerable Catfish is very confident and capable despite her handicaps.

1/2

2/2
Their boss is a Salamander (which is kind of like a mix of both characters, which is thematically interesting), who like I mentioned, grew up in the same town as Iguana. This creates some conflict for Iguana, who always feels like the boss has done better than he has despite having a similar start, which leads Iguana to worry that he's not good enough. Anyway, Salamander is a family man at heart, everything he does is for his wife and little axolotls. This goes some way to explaining away why this criminal empire doesn't actually ever kill anyone or engage in major crimes, but just steals huge diamonds and other goofy things. He's calm usually, but if things don't go his way, he's very quick to temper. In truth, he's not much better than Iguana, but just happened to have enough moral flexibility to get to the top. The arc of the first season, the mistake that is being resolved by the main guys, is that Catfish was tasked with looking after some of Salamander's axolotls, and they were kidnapped by the Mafia. Essentially, this provides some driving force, but still is light enough that it allows the show to be villain/heist/problem of the week as well.

This is where the character development comes in, Catfish and Iguana both complement each other greatly once they get over the obligatory hump of finding working together difficult, they become the best of friends and an indivisible unit, think about the character arcs of John Kennex and Dorian in Almost Human or Blake and Avon in Blake's 7 and just about every buddy cop TV show or film. Basically, Iguana gives Catfish a moral compass and a more 'human' side, and Catfish teaches Iguana that you can bend the rules if that's the best thing to do. They also complement each other in terms of their character, as a subtle comedian/straight woman act. Iguana learning to look after himself a bit more rather than always looking after others also helps him realise his own potential, he becomes smarter and gets further in the organisation as a result of gaining confidence. Eventually, this could end up with the two main characters in charge, perhaps a season before the Big Bad lot turn up.

What if the Iguana was the buff one, and the catfish was slim and slightly stooped, with his whiskers making him look like wizened old man?

Similar to Fantastic Planet and Watership Down, the series follows the two of them as friends in the anarchic world of nature, facing off against singular threats, large threats, and natural threats with philosophical undertones but int the end the general theme is the two only being able to survive the harshest conditions because of each other.

The series climaxes when the two face off against a megalomaniac alpha (of an undecided species.) who was willing to cut off the food supply from the smallest animals causing the food chain to collapse on the land.

The iguana is starving to death and can barley even move, even the lake has been affect somewhat, the catfish offers himself to the iguana so that it may survive, the iguana becomes so starved it's natural programming causes it to comply and he eats the catfish, throughout the entire eating the catfish never once complains.
The iguana survives and teaches on what he had learnt from his experiences while depressed, also having hope the younger generation may survive better.

Then 1000 years later they evolve into anthropomorphic reptilians.

Yeah that's right this whole thing was just David Icke propaganda.

...

Nice but you should invest in a scanner.

half of the story is already written

Oh wow

The iguana works as a janitor on a remote space station. Since the space station is in the middle of space boonies, he dreams of running away one day and becoming a famous bounty hunter like Slitherscale - the greatest lizard who ever hissed. While most of the other inhabitants of the space station like to hear him fanboy over Slitherscale, his boss punishes him for even mentioning Slitherscale while he's on work duty, and constantly sends him to clean and maintain dirtier and more broken parts of the space station.

Eventually the iguana runs into a secret hangar deep inside the space station, and on it an old space ship. He immediately recognizes it as Slitherscale's old ship, and his and his iguana ladyfriend decide to take it out on a spin. Their boss finds them, freaks the fuck out over what they've done, and we find out that the old boss is Slitherscale, who's been in hiding for years after his last job. Turns out he has something called "the Great Lure" on his ship, and he's freaking out over whether the Lure activated or not.

The Lure did activate, however, and soon the catfish (Mr Whiskers, a mafia boss dressed in a power suit) comes to visit them. He's an old enemy of Slitherscale, and wants the Great Lure for himself. A fight ensues, Slitherscale gets captured, but not before sending our iguana hero and his friends off into space to save them. The space station blows up, and the iguana crew now have to find a new home while being chased by the catfish mafia.

Our iguana decides to become the new Slitherscale, save his boss, and stop Mr Whiskers from conquering the world with the Great Lure.

The Great Lure summons space whales that eat entire planets and are basically Cthulhu.

Keep going.

...

She's the only type of woman on earth that's wide enough

Holy shit that sounds neat as fuck.

What can I say man, it's just the end result of the character design process.

No problem

Got anymore?

Not Bad man

Nice, getting Savage Dragon, Biker Mice from Mars and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vibe going here, or Battletoads

Which network?

Same here

CN but Disney's been looking fairly luring.

The general look for the setting would be a mix of Western and Sci Fi. So you'd end up with cowboy lizards wielding laser guns, robot horses (based on crickets and other bugs) and so on. Most lizards live on rocky and desert planets, with small settlements and farms everywhere.

The other species hanging around in that corner of the galaxy are the fishes, who always wear power armor or move around in rustic, giant diving gear filled with water. That's when they're outside meeting with the lizards. They usually live inside giant spaceships floating around the galaxy. These spaceships look like giant zeppelins, but are actually filled with water. They're also worshiping the whales, mostly because their exodus began when the whales first appeared and ate their planet.

The first part of the story would involve our iguana hero slowly learning the ropes of being a bounty hunter. He has no actual experience in the field, but has to take on the of Slitherscale. And he has to earn some cash so his friends and family can actually survive, now that their home's been blown up. Some character development here, people are angry at him for activating the lure which cost them their home, etc. So we'll end up following him and his friends as they go around exploring the galaxy, finding ruins and exploring them, dealing with notorious criminals and so on. In the meantime, they'll have a base with old Slitherscale's partner - who's now masquerading as a farmer, while secretly being an apocalypse prepper (a possible running gag would involve them going under his house, only to find more and more hangars filled with bombs, spaceships etc, with the whole "how big is your underground bunker?" deal).

Nice