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dotBoom is a puppet show about web designers who hate themselves. It’s a darkly comic semi-sitcom following the trials, tribulations, and calamities of the staff of dotBoom, a fictional web design studio in Toronto. It was created in Brian Hogg’s basement over the period of 18 months, in his spare time, in his basement, on a shoestring budget and with a cast and crew of volunteers. Despite that, dotBoom garnered substantial praise, a committed audience, and became quite well known online.

The simple goal of dotBoom was for Brian Hogg – initially by himself, with neither crew nor cast to help him out – to create a television-quality sitcom for no money. The measure of success was whether the product would be if viewers would see it as a professional product, done not by a person new to nearly every aspect of the process – indeed, Brian actually learned how to build and perform puppets, how to build sets, how to direct, film, and edit, just to make the show happen – but by a large crew of seasoned professionals. And by every measure, we were successful in this respect. The first season of dotBoom, produced in 18 months, resulted in nearly 7 hours of produced content, and dotBoom was honoured as a finalist in the 2007 Webby Awards for Best Comedy in the first year they awarded honours for online video. We received a ton of online press, and also mainstream attention, both on network television and in newspapers.

Season one followed the team at dotBoom through a particularly grueling year, starting with the company landing a new project, and ending with that project nearly destroying not only the company, but everyone in it. A comedy that often skewed to gallows humor, it also contained moments of surprising heart and sincerity. The main characters went through substantive changes over the course of the season, in ways that were, despite the occasionally fantastical nature of the stories, true, and human.

In addition to the fine writing, performance, and production values we wrangled out of an empty wallet, we’re also quite proud of the guest-stars we featured: in the first season, dotBoom was host to a number of well-known web celebrities, such as Leo Laporte, Meriln Mann, Kevin Rose, Alex Albrecht, Jesse Thorn, Yury Baranovsky, Ben Jones, Amber MacArthur and Dan Klass. The show was made better by their appearances in it, and we were honored to have them aboard.

dotBoom is emblematic of the spirit and energy of Hoggworks Studios: we make big things for small budgets, and the results we get are profound. We look at challenges not as things to shrink from, but to embrace full-on. We don’t stop for a moment to worry if we CAN do a thing, we wonder only HOW we will do the thing. And then we do it, with an unwavering dedication to quality and creativity.
What we did

We did everything. dotBoom is produced 100% by Hoggworks. We conceived of the show, wrote the scripts, designed and built the puppets, designed and built the sets, performed and voiced the majority of the characters, directed it, filmed it, edited it, and promoted it.

Credits

Designed by Brian Hogg. Built by Brian Hogg (puppets, sets, credit sequences), and Madelyne Hilker (puppets). Site design by Nadine Lessio.

Full cast listing is available at: http://www.dotboom.ca/cast.php
Watch the show here: http://www.dotboom.ca/