Profile: Naughty Cat (prime variant)

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NC was created initially around the late 80's by a small animation house named Vermillion Teleproductions. He takes the form of a black, anthropomorphic cat, rendered in a thick-line style with a simple shillouette. His original role was as an instructional PSA mascot.

The character of NC has been shuffled between many retools and two studios (Vermillion teleprod. and Zeniscope prod.). Many attempts have been made to try and 'mass-marketise' the character, with the most overt being in the 90's with the 'hip and with it' (*not really) cartoon series 'Lunchroom Chaos'. However, NC himself, instead of being diluted by these retools, actually seems to have solidified. Many aspects of NC seem to carry over unprompted, including the tone, floppy ears, shillouete, etc.

NC prime's tone is normally somewhat sardonic, snarky or deadpan, but never unjustly cruel. He has developed a slightly weary (but not too much) worldview as a result of his (their?) cumulative experience, which includes some deep philosophies, though those are really not the point of NC.

Since prime was animated on a tight budget, he can be seen to exhibit animation errors (frame skips, z-indexing, etc) that carry over into their real-life form, as a roger rabbit-type construct. He prefers floppy ears over perked ears.

A seeming side effect of the mechanic that has solidified his form is that he exhibits metafictional awareness. This is honed further from experience.

The 'Safety Zone' room

Safety Zone was the main format for NC prime as we find him. The room is not fully furnished and almost like an animatic prototype, consisting of four gradient walls, a rotoscoped director's chair, and a 'fake' TV that does not work. The walls cycle gradient colours on loop and reverberate with a hollow sound (as if they were drywall erected cheaply in haste). Only the chair and TV have shadows and there is no clear light source. The chair creaks.

In the room there is one door, still with cel artifacts, that leads into a spartan school hallway. The hallway and the room at the end vary but normally is something related to Flurp, who also was an anthropomorphic PSA cat mascot, smaller and more cheerful, and original planned user of the space.

NC sometimes can summon diagetic visual effects within the room but this is the exception.

Addeneum: Doughlas Finster ('Doug')

Doughlas Finster was the creator of and one of NC's core prod group, being an animator at Vermilion. He happens to be normally dry. If he is seen in person, his appearance would be aged, but youthful. He shares NC's distaste for forced retools. His voice is accidentally preserved in some SafeZone reels due to mic bleed. In skidoospace this voice is interactive and behaves like they are literally out of frame in the production room.

Addeneum: 'Roger Rabbit' constructs

RR constructs are pretty much like what you see in the implied movie; characters that are literally cartoons to life. They can inherit animation errors, tone, and anything else that would make them 'them' in the context of how they were animated in the first place.

If skidooed out of their home media and left with nothing to do, RR constructs would 'fade' back into their home media where they would then lie dormant again.