Odd Todd

Odd Todd
File:Oddtodd2.jpg Odd Todd: A Day in the Life
Written by	Todd Rosenberg
Production
Animator	Todd Rosenberg

Odd Todd is a website owned and operated by Todd Rosenberg, an unemployed "dotcommer", who has created a series of humorous Flash cartoons depicting the world of unemployment, after entering the world himself.

These animated shorts, written, drawn and narrated by Todd himself, encapsulate the trials and tribulations many people felt in Silicon Valley and its impacted markets after the dot com crash around 2001.

Rosenberg's first cartoon, Laid Off: A Day in the Life, shows the frustration, despair and boredom of a man in his 30's learning about how money is "kinda important" and dates are hard to attain when you're fat and balding.

The success of the first cartoon short led to more cartoons being posted for downloading, even the opportunity to contribute through an Internet "tip cup." Rosenberg was collecting unemployment insurance at time that he put up his "tip cup", and when the New York State Department of Labor learned of the "tip cup", they sent him a letter demanding repayment of all paid unemployment benefits. Rosenberg successfully appealed this action and was not required to pay back any benefits.

Todd spread his cartoon wings away from the unemployment world and delved into fantasy cartoons such as his annual Halloween cartoon and his Christmas episodes.

A hallmark of the cartoons is Todd's pronunciation of the "ee" sound at the end of certain words (the most popular examples being "cookie" as "cook-ay", "coffee" as "coff-ay" and "money" as "mon-ay") - while Todd claimed this was unconscious in the early cartoons, once fans reported they liked it he deliberately included and exaggerated it in all subsequent works. The cartoons also feature an unlikely breakout character, an unidentifiable mammalian creature called Mep who appeared briefly in the second Laid Off short, and has made frequent appearances in almost all the following cartoons and games.

As Rosenberg's fan base grew, so did the Odd Todd website, which now includes such random material as "What's Happening?", movie reviews, his search for "Brittney Dirtor", "Daily Facts I Learned From the TV", reader submitted poetry, recipes and more. A predecessor to today's blogging craze, Odd Todd has developed a healthy (if somewhat unique) following. His What's Happening section is the most popular section besides the cartoons.

Todd has published several games on his site, most of them in collaboration with http://AE4RV.com. The (Bad) Memory Name which was produced with AE4RV had a name change recently due to a threat from the Hasbro Corporation. It is now named "Mep Match Game". Todd's most recent foray into the game world was April 2007 where he included 5 games in his annual April Fools cartoon including Mepsteroids.

Cook-ay Slots is a popular game produced for the site as it contains cartoons within the game like "Lobster and Shirley". Mepball also contains a setup cartoon. Todd continually threatens fans with a new game build in a partnership with AE4RV.

In the spring 2005, Todd worked with Canadian freelance company - One Hip Designs. Together with their design team they produced Mep Invaders. This game was copy-cat of Space Invaders and haven't been placed on the website due to bugs and content that Todd wanted to add in.

In April, 2007 Todd began collaboration with another Indie game developer, Steven Mikkelson, of http://MartianGames.com. Together they brought the blue-robed slacker, along with his friends Mep, ElfUp, and Roscoe into a 3D action game called "Cookay Blast", in which you drive around on a kitchen table collecting Fudged Striped Cookays and blasting opponents with fizzing soda cans. Cookay Blast took 6 months to create and first appeared October 23 on the front page of Todd's site.

The Odd Todd Handbook was published in 2003 by Warner Books. His cartoon character was picked up for development at Comedy Central for a half-hour television show but was shelved. Todd has since provided cartoons for Motherload the Comedy Central broadband channel and Paramount Pictures announced they optioned Odd Todd as a live-action motion picture.

Rosenberg has also produced freelance cartoons for Nightline, America's Test Kitchen, Nova and World News Tonight. He is also a commentator for NPR.

Contrary to a rumor of unknown origin, Rosenberg did not create the "Don't Regulate the Internet" cartoon. He is also not the "Odd Todd" who posts stories about porcelain dolls and tuna on 411mania.com.

Todd lives in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn with a dog named Roscoe. He broadcasts Roscoe live on Roscoe Cam. Rosenberg recently wrote a sitcom pilot for CBS and produced a 5-Part animated series about global warming for National Geographic/npr.org.