New Digital Media Studio in Pasadena Announces First Animated Project: Bunny Rappid

A new Pasadena-based animation and games company is at work on its first project, Bunny Rappid, an animated action comedy series that chronicles the misadventures of a crime fighting rabbit.

The company, Like Pizza has also launched a Kickstarter campaign to further fund a series of Bunny Rappid “Appisodes” that will combine games and serialized animation into one mobile app.

There’s also a new music video for Bunny Rappid on YouTube that features an original theme song from The Bombpops, a popular Los Angeles-based female-fronted pop punk band, “Run Bunny Run”.

“From both my experience in the industry and as a parent, I saw firsthand how kids are consuming both video and games on mobile devices and loved the idea of creating a world around a unique character who launched on mobile first,” said Nuzzi. “Bunny Rappid is a great example of the high level of production quality and effort we are putting into each Appisode, and we are so lucky to have the original song “Run Bunny Run” from The Bombpops for our first music video which illustrates just that.”

Like Pizza is helmed by former Disney executive Jeff Nuzzi, a veteran of the video game industry and pioneer in mobile content, and Bob Spang, an award-winning director and animator.

“Jeff and I are both huge animation and game fans and loved the idea of blending our industry experiences to create new episodic short form cartoons and games,” said Spang. “We are extremely proud of Bunny Rappid and its fast-paced comedy full of hilarious characters, stories and environments and hope that folks will help support the Kickstarter campaign.”

The campaign may be seen here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/likepizza/bunny-rappid-appisodes-a-video-game-and-cartoon-ma

Bunny Rappid is the first franchise to be developed by Like Pizza. The animated action comedy series chronicles the misadventures of a crime fighting rabbit, who, along with his girlfriend Mary Merewolf, pal and sidekick Nuke-o Gecko, and former mayor turned conspiracy theorist, Major Mousecles, battle the Illiminaughty, a band of bad guys based on modern conspiracy theories.

In the Appisode format, the animation and games will combine within one app; each app will contain a video channel and a game channel. Under games, there is an arcade mode and a story mode that weaves in or extends the cartoon narrative. The video channel is designed to deliver pre-rendered serialized episodes, each about 5-7 minutes long. Bunny Rappid is expected to launch in 2017 on mobile devices for free. The company also plans to distribute the animated episodes on video-on-demand networks.

Jeff Nuzzi has been at the forefront of mobile entertainment and video games. As an early hire at The Walt Disney Company’s nascent mobile division, he managed inbound licenses and marketing and eventually led the go-to-market effort for the hugely successful Where’s My Water? in addition to dozens of apps for Disney franchises such as Cars, Toy Story, and TRON. In addition, he managed Marvel titles Thor and Captain America and sports apps through ESPN.

Nuzzi joined Disney from THQ Wireless. As Director, Global Marketing, he acquired mobile rights to and managed licenses for Star Wars, professional sports leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL), SpongeBob SquarePants, Hello Kitty, Midway Games and WWE. Prior to THQ, Nuzzi held senior level marketing positions at Universal Interactive, managing such titles as The Thing, The Lord of the Rings, Bruce Lee and The Fast and the Furious; Atari, where he launched games based on Looney Tunes and Peanuts; and Fox Interactive, where he worked on high profile brands including Die Hard, Croc, and The Simpsons.

Bob Spang is not a cartoon character, but he has played one on TV. In addition to his talent as a director, writer, and animator, Bob voiced the characters Eli the Elephant, Gracie Gorilla, and several other on the Cartoon Network series-within-a-series Ant and the Aardvark (Pink Panther and Pals). Bob won the prestigious CINE Golden Eagle Award as director of the Sesame Street PSA, Grover Safari Road Safety.

Spang spent many years at Walt Disney Feature Animation where he was senior visual designer working on Tinkerbell, Mushu (Mulan) and Lumiere (Beauty and the Beast). He was also lead animator and directed Drew Carey’s Green Screen Show as well serving as the director for the Wayans Brothers’ Thugaboo.

Bunny Rappid, Like Pizza’s first project, will race onto screens in 2017.