About Babylon Park

Jump to Flushspace with this wicked sci-fi spoof! Nothing is sacred as a one-to-three-man animation team tackles one of the most intricate sci-fi epics of all time and blends it with the most controversial animated comedy of the last decade. Join “Nuke `Em” Sherman, Lerdo Martman, G´Kile, and Delendi Teslabari in their fight against the Shadowmen.

Babylon Park is an animated parody of the television epic, Babylon 5, with a bit of the pop culture fad of South Park thrown in for good measure. At first it was only a snarky comment on Usenet in 1998. It was expanded into a website with the core group of parody characters being drawn in Adobe Illustrator. Starting out in a vector format was an accidental boon since it was perfect to import into a little program called Flash (version 3). Several sites at the time had started adopting it as an animation platform (not exactly what Adobe had planned originally, however a few years later it was the kind of thing wholeheartedly embraced by Adult Swim) and it was perfect to begin animating Babylon Park — at 12 frames a second. The Spoohunter cometh (just in time for DragonCon 1998).

Soon after, I received an email from a group in Atlanta, Georgia, requesting the right to create an animated short based on the website. Seeking a collaborative partnership, I agreed to their offer on a provisional basis which is way more trust than any right-thinking person should grant over the internet without a more thorough due diligence. But I was young and stupid and sent them copies of the design and concept files, offering what support I could give. Ultimately, the leader of the group told me they were not interested in creative collaboration and more interested in taking full control, so the contract was terminated.

I finished out 1998 at VorCon with the premiere of “Episode 000” (now titled “Episode Zot: 420 on the Septic Line“). “Episode Zot” served as an introduction to the characters in several “clips” from never-made episodes.

For DragonCon 1999 we produced “Frightspace.” In “Frightspace” the stars are in perfect alignment for the Moldy Old Ones to conquer the galaxy and the Babylon Park crew must stop them — with nukes. Lots of nukes.

With the advent of the shows Crusade and Voyager in 2000, we felt it was our duty to roast them as well. Our final video release in the series: “Spoosade versus Forager: Grudgematch” pitted Captain Gidiot against Captain Painway to determine which franchise’s storyline was fit to save Earth from a nano-bot plague.

Nice Things People Said About Babylon Park

“Sweet! Sweet! Sweet!” – Peter Jurasik (Londo Mollari)

“This is by far the BEST South Park spoof I have seen!” – Lloyd Kaufman, Troma Studios

“(laughter)… it sucked! (more laughter)” – Jeffrey Willerth (Kosh Naranek)

“That was awesome — where can I get a copy?” – Patricia Tallman (Lyta Alexander)

Awards and Recognition

  • On April 5, 1999, Babylon Park won the Sci Fi Site of the Week from Scifi.com (this was before the channel thought wrestling was a valid programming choice).
  • Babylon Park got a shout out, thanks to Wayne Alexander, in the Official Babylon 5 Magazine (August 1999, page 10).
  • “Grudgematch” won a Silver Trophy in Animation at the 2001 Telly Awards. The episode was submitted as a Non-Broadcast production amidst 11,000+ television industry entries. Special thanks to Jeffrey Willerth at Erthbound Entertainment for his phenomenal and tireless support!