It started in 1995 as a weekly comic strip in the Ohio University student newspaper, "The Post". In 2003, it appeared on Komikwerks.com as a webcomic. 2006 saw publication of the 128-page graphic novel. Now, 'The World of Quest' was just announced as one of the new Saturday morning cartoon series that will be premiering this November on the Kids WB! block of The CW TV Network.
"Without trying to sound too cliché, it's been a dream come true," says creator Jason Kruse.
World of Quest is a clever, colorful comic filled with lots of irreverent humor and great comic timing. It concerns the adventures of spoiled Prince Nestor, who is forced to enlist the assistance of the great warrior Quest in order to save his parents from the evil Lord Spite. Naturally, much comedy ensues - especially since Quest is not exactly a straight-laced do-gooder.
"He's not really heroic - he's more of a jerk, basically, like Wolverine, Batman, those guys," says Kruse, who also cites comic strips like Calvin and Hobbes as major influences on his work.
Certainly, this success has been a long time coming for the former New Jersey resident Kruse, who has been working on his passion project for the better part of 12 years now. Starting with the Ohio University comic strip, he later turned World of Quest into a student film during his 2 year post-graduate study at Cal-Arts, Los Angeles. And although his time at Cal-Arts put him "heavily into debt", he feels that the experience and training he received there "was totally worth it."
It would certainly seem so, because when he presented World of Quest to Shannon Denton, co-founder of Komikwerks, at a Pasadena Comic Convention in early 2003, the response was enthusiastic from the start. Denton and Komikwerks co-founder, Patrick Coyle, asked Kruse to do a stand-alone issue for Komikwerks, and several months later, 'The World of Quest' issue "Prison Break" was published in November 2003. 2 days after "Prison Break" went live on the Komikwerks site, Denton called Kruse to say that he was taking a couple of properties in to pitch to the Vice President of Creative Affairs at Warner Animation, and could he pitch World of Quest to him? Kruse said, Sure! - and by the next week, Kruse was in the VP's office himself pitching his work. The VP "got it rolling, got writers on board, then they took it to the WB, and it's been in development ever since."
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After making the deal with the WB, Kruse went on to successfully publish a graphic novel of World of Quest. But still, no word from the WB about whether his project had been picked up. Eventually, Kruse got hired to work on the CG animated movie "Barnyard"; but as time went by, that movie had him working such crazy hours that he was unable to do any further work on World of Quest. Kruse recalls how he would get home at night after work, say, "Goodnight fellas" to his roommates, and then "literally go right to sleep." After "Baryard" premiered, Kruse decided that he had had enough of CG movies; and so he accepted a job offer in Boston to work as an animator at "Helix", the company that does all the Nintendo hand-held video games for - yep, you guessed it - all the Pixar films. Apparently, the man just could not escape CG movies - though, thankfully the hours were better this time. "Working on 2D Gameboy games is much more fun for me," Kruse admits.
At last, about a month ago, Kruse finally got the call that The CW was going to put 'The World of Quest' on that 2007 Fall Schedule as part of the Kids WB! block, with an order for twenty-six 11-minute episodes. Naturally, Kruse was over the moon - but unfortunately, he wasn't allowed to say anything.
"It was hard to have this huge news and not be able to tell anyone for a month," says Kruse. "But ever since the news broke, the work for the show has just been pouring in." Currently, Kruse is hard at work on designing 'The World of Quest' promotional artwork for the WB, is launching a promotional website at WorldOfQuest.tv, and has also begun work on a second graphic novel. "My life has gotten so much busier."
Not that he's complaining. On the contrary, working hard on his dream project is exactly the type of work Kruse wants to be doing. And now that things have eased up enough in his daily work life, Kruse is finally able to get cracking on that second graphic novel of 'The World of Quest'. Currently, his goal is to have that out in a year or so.
As for the show, Kruse says that the overall story will be very similar to his original story; but because there are so many episodes, they have had to create some new stories. Fortunately, though, Kruse was named as a Creative Consultant on the show, and has been able to work closely with the lead writers. "They've been very good about running everything by me," says Kruse. "I say what I like, what I don't like, and hopefully they listen."
Well, it would certainly appear that they have faith in his judgment, for he is even writing his own script for an episode. Yes, after years of working hard and doing time in the trenches of the animation world, it appears that Kruse has finally made it.
"You know, it's been a long process, but so far it was worth hanging in there for."
We think so too, Jason Kruse.
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