animation – nate funaro

Big Mouth Season 6

Now that Big Mouth 6 has been out for a few weeks, I wanted to post and send out some thank you’s to the fantastic crew that built yet another amazing season.

This is actually the first Big Mouth season that we made 100% remotely (not in person / in the studio at all). Hard to believe you can make an animated series fully remote with everyone in different places. It’s a weird thing to hire people and work with them for a year and never even meet in person! We started this one back in January 2021, everyone still in their homes…

I remember Big Mouth 6 was a nice “break” for the crew. After us figuring out and producing the Human Resources season 1 episodes (which tended to be all big, filled with lots of new characters and locations) the crew was beatup and tired! Not only was it the work of figuring out a new show but it was also a much more complex series. When they came back to Big Mouth S6 – they already knew all these characters and what to do with them. It was returning to an old friend. No one ever thought Big Mouth was easy but it definitely felt a little easier compared to Human Resources when we got back into it.

Ok on to some appreciation for the many people who make this …

Big Gratitoad to all of the EPs – Mark, Jen, Andrew & Nick, writers team and Titmouse crew who put this together. Thank you Lioi, Rico & Andy, Henri, Bryan, Alex, Ross, Ybarra, Kelly, Pablo, Glenn (and stacks of other people who I won’t drag out a list a names here with). Shout out to our incredible design teams, board teams, dial editing, compositing, animatics, editorial, checking, timing, and production teams. These people make this show look good!

Thank you to all our partners at the studios in Korea, Konrad and the whole sound team at Margarita, our friends at Light Iron, our track team at Syncmagic, and all our record studios.

Appreciation for Chris, Shannon, Antonio and Ben for creating and running one of the best studios in the business where we can make this wild show. Lastly, thank you to all our partners and friends at Netflix – Moon, Porter, and the entire creative team, Mike K, Talar, Amy and the production team, David, Lauren and the post team, localization / globalization, marketing, and the army of everyone else at Netflix who helps put this thing out in the universe!

Thank you, thank you, thank you – everyone who works on this show – you make one of the best shows out there and we appreciate you all and the work you do to bring this thing to the fans year after year.

Animation News Last Month’s Wrap 10/6/22

Lots of news in the last month – did not include much of the Disney / D23 announcements (there were a ton). A couple unionizations, some layoffs, and a bunch of Justin Roiland projects. Here we go!

If you missed it, the Solar Opposites Halloween Special is up on Hulu…

Paloni Show! Halloween Special! set to stream on Hulu on 10/17
More Roiland stuff on Hulu! Should be good nonsense. Props to my friends who have been slammin n jammin on getting this out.

Production workers vote to join the Animation Union at Bento Box

Harley Quinn renewed for Season 4 with new showrunner (Sarah Peters)

Lightyear had a decent launch on streaming considering it was up against Stranger Things

Rango Director Gore Verbinski shops his Netflix feature around town

Pinocchio live action getting some mixed responses

King of the Hill not going to be at Fox
Sounds like it could very well find a home at one of the streamers, just won’t be airing on Fox

Pixar releasing their first longform series on Disney+ starring Will Forte
Wondering how this will look compared to their features – I’m sure it will be classic Pixar high quality stuff

More layoffs / restructuring at Netflix Animation

Rick and Morty Season 6 premiere getting some good numbers

Emoji Movie creating some competition for the Queen’s funeral

Disney Parks attractions first looks – Coco, Frozen, Moana, Zootopia, Villains
Lots of parks news and lots of new attractions based on Disney properties

Netflix debuts Entergalactic trailer and key art

Great cast for the new Andy Samberg Digman series at Comedy Central
Have some friends working on this as well over at Titmouse – looking forward to seeing it

Tooning Out The News Animators Vote to Unionize

Animation News Wrap 9/2/22

Here’s the cornucopia of animation trades news over the last month. Lots of HBO Max drama…

Emmys Individual Achievement Winners – Netflix almost swept it this year (lots of Arcane wins)
TV Academy Reveals Emmy Winners In Juried Categories

Good take from CNN on how Netflix is changing business models – this explanation is directly related to the changes at Netflix animation
Netflix is not in deep trouble. It’s becoming a media company

Dreamworks sets the Kung Fu Panda 4 Release Date (it’s March 8, 2024)

Love Death and Robots renewed for Season 4

Tubi orders Adult Animated Comedy Series from Julien Nitzberg about drug dealing bears – there’s not a ton of Tubi originals yet, so maybe they will start to have a presence in original animation

AMC shows off some ‘Pantheon’ trailer and key art finally – We have been making this at Titmouse and I haven’t seen much of it, so it’s cool to see how it’s turning out. Some definite Ghost in the Shell vibes.

Streaming views surpass cable for the first time (from Nielsen) – Everyone knew this was coming, so here we are at the crossroads where streaming is beginning to pass cable in scale

Ok, we have to talk about HBO Max here … lots of big changes this last month.

Lots of shows were to be pulled from HBO Max abruptly – 36 titles, with 20 titles being originals

Then we heard about more cuts from HBO Max – including a stack of Batman & WB projects, as well as the JJ Abrams Batman project

Cartoon Network creators then jumped in to blast Discovery’s decision (and handling) on removing these shows from HBO Max…
Fungies creator Stephen Neary “slams” HBO Max
Summer Camp Island creator Julia Potts reacts
Infinity Train creator Owen Dennis calls out HBO Max

So at least after all that, John Oliver called out HBO Max over pulling the series (no clip – not exactly surprising)

Ok that’s enough of that – I’m sure there will be more HBO Max stuff next time.

And closing this out on a lighter note – some footage of the lost American Sailor Moon pilot has been unearthed. It’s great and terrible in all the best ways.

Ok that’s it for this time. Stay frosty.

Animation News Weekly Wrap 7/31

Hi animation friends – trying a new thing this week where I collect some animation news stories from around the trades over the last week and plug it into this easy to quickie read format. Enjoy!

For the Rick and Morty fans – Adult Swim announced the premiere date for Season 6 (I’ll save you the click – it’s September 4)

GDT’s stop motion Pinnochio is looking magical – if you haven’t seen the trailer yet (it’s also below here and it looks incredible)

Good review on Deadline for DC League of Super Pets

And some early weekend BO results for DC League of Super Pets that look positive

And the power of the Minions keep going … Minions Rise of the Gru is the first animated film to pass the $300M mark during the Covid era

South Park is celebrating and doing a 25th anniversary pop up shop + experience that is touring the world! Hollywood date for the experience is set for August 20 (likely in that weird empty lot at Hollywood and Vine they use for pop ups / Halloween mazes)

Sad news – Paul Coker, Rankin/Bass Production Designer and MAD Magazine illustrator has passed away at 93. (Here’s a bonus link to a pinterest board of Coker illustrations)

I’m slightly biased and excited about this news for my friends – Brutus Pink (creators of Big Mouth and Human Resources) have renewed their deal with Netflix through 2026

That’s it for now. Have a great week everyone.

Big Mouth 7 and Human Resources 2

It’s hard to believe we are already making Big Mouth season 7 – it was not that long ago we were sitting in an office talking about the rules of how the Hormone Monster (he wasn’t called Maury yet) appears into scenes, who can see him, does he have super powers?

Well we figured all that out along with lots of other questions and slowly a big world started to evolve, which is even bigger now with the world of Human Resources. Here we are years later, now starting to work on Big Mouth season 7 and Human Resources season 2 – we are excited for the fans to see what we have been cooking up!

Lots of new characters, new nonsense, and new adventures (that we can’t talk about yet) coming for our favorite friends and monsters in the Big Mouth universe.

Thrilled to be doing many more episodes with such a fantastic crew. Here’s to Big Mouth 7 and HR s2!

Human Resources Season 1 Launch

The wait is finally over – Human Resources season 1, the show we have been working on, produced entirely during the pandemic (remotely), launches today! It’s all about the monsters – we get to see more about their lives, their jobs (and clients), and all their coworkers (and the associated work drama of course).

It’s probably our best looking season yet, and the one we are most proud of. We loved making this series and hope everyone who watches, enjoys it as well.

It is a very tough thing to make a new series, so I want to show some love for everyone who made this show come to life…

Big shout outs and thank you to the Human Resources crew – phenomenal writers and script team, killer dialog editors, the powerful director crew, an amazing storyboard team, the ninja animatics editors, our fleet of expert timers, beastly design teams, our talented comp department, an absolutely badass production team, our eagle eye checkers, the unstoppable accounting crew, and our last line of defense – the incredible post editorial commando group. I could not imagine a better team I would want to have made this series with. You guys made this all happen!

Muchas gracias to all our teams at Margarita Mix making this show sound the best, to our relentless recording engineers, the fantastic crew at Light Iron, and of course our hard working overseas animation crews at Yeson and Yearim making some outstanding animation.

Appreciation to Kevin and his team at Chromosphere for designing / building a stunning main title sequence.

Thank you thank thank you to our incredible partners and execs at Netflix getting us what we need, all the brass at Titmouse who clear the way for us every week of production.

And a big big BIG thank you to the Executive Producers / creators of this show – Mark, Jen, Andrew, Nick and Kelly – they are the best EPs in the biz! Lastly, thanks to Anthony Lioi – the magic man, and the guy who makes all this animation sparkle and come together. I would have thrown in the towel years ago without that guy.

I could keep going – it would be an endless sea of thank you’s. So many people worked to make this show come together. Without rambling on – thank you to each and every one of you guys – big love, appreciation and gratitude that you were there with us on the journey make this amazing series.

Human Resources Season 1 came out today! Watch it on Netflix! Enjoy!

Human Resources Series Trailer

Last week Netflix released the full trailer for our new Big Mouth spinoff series – Human Resources! It’s hard to believe the series is almost here – we are a little under two weeks away from the premiere.

New humans, new monsters and we finally get to see what life is like for a hormone monster (and all the other monsters) working at the office. And yes, the hormone monsters can be gross to work with in an office environment.

The cast this season is amazing – we were very lucky to get to work with such incredible talent (you will see a slice of some of them in the trailer).

Shout out to our crew who absolutely killed it and worked together to make an unbelievable series we are all very proud of. Enjoy the trailer!

Human Resources Series Teaser

The new Big Mouth spinoff series

Finally, we can talk about this…Here is a look at our new show we have been working on for almost two years – the Big Mouth spinoff, Human Resources! This teaser does a good job explaining a little bit of the nonsense that is the Human Resources series.

If you ever watched Big Mouth wishing you got to see more of the monsters, then this will be right up your alley.

The cast on this show is unbelievable! Randall Park is Pete the Logic Rock (the Easter Island looking guy) and one of my favorite new characters.

Check out the trailer – this has been a labor of love for all of us – entirely produced remotely (from our collective homes) during the pandemic.

Human Resources season 1 – Coming to a Netflix near you March 18!

There Are No Secrets

Just so you know, there are no secrets.

Sometimes people think there is some sort of secret schedule, technology, pipeline, budget – whatever specific target you want to imagine is the root cause why a show works.

“If I could just get my hands on that budget…” Well, if you did, you would probably find a few items that were a small surprise, but it will just be a normal budget. No secrets – it’s not unlocking the mystery of production.

It’s the equivalent to saying, “If I just had Tiger Woods’ clubs, I would be much better at golf.” That’s an obviously ridiculous statement.

People visiting the studio love taking pictures of our schedule on the show, finding out how many crew we have, or writing down how many weeks we spend doing something – as if having that equation would be the secret. It’s not a secret. It’s just a solution to a problem.

Each production has problems – to critically evaluate each project and apply the correct amount of time and resources and pair the plan with the right talent, that yields the CHANCE to make something great.

Being skilled at analyzing and predicting allows you to be able to make these models tighter and more accurate. It also helps if you have put in some mileage so you have the needed references.

Applying the wrong model to a project aimlessly because it was proven to have worked somewhere else will typically yield poor results. If you happen to see this slowly becoming apparent mid production, it might be time for a pivot (if anyone will listen).

Get input from the right people when building out new projects, but don’t worry about the ‘secrets.’ If anything, it might lead you into a false sense of security.

Is TBS Taking a Big Risk on Primetime Animation?

Lots of animation is happening all over town in LA right now – largely due to Netflix and Amazon, but also now some significant / worthwhile work is happening at TBS. Clearly they are investing in animation trying to channel some of the momentum Futurama and American Dad brought to the network. TBS is launching four new, original animated shows – Final Space, Close Enough, Tarantula and The Cops. That is a big buy in for a cable network that has not traditionally specialized in animation.

Since these shows are on cable (vs broadcast tv), I’m hoping the execs can let ’em breathe a little, take some risks and try things out. All things considered, Final Space and Close Enough seem like fairly safe bets. I’ve seen a few great space show pitches over the years from really talented creators – it’s an area that still feels largely untapped (with the exception of Futurama). JG Quintel’s show is sort of a family comedy sitcom but grounded in a very JG sort of way. Both are approachable (despite being a little fringe / weird) and both make sense from a content buy standpoint for TBS.

The new Louis CK / Albert Brooks show The Cops is probably the most linear bet out of the group, but knowing Louis CK, it will push some boundaries. There is not a lot that Louis CK or Albert Brooks does that won’t be doused in social commentary and challenge some status quo nonsense. Sounds like a lot of Rick and Morty board guys are coming back to Starburns to work on this. It could definitely be a solid show based on the talent they’ve lined up, but we haven’t seen much from it yet.

Tarantula though – that’s the wild card. It is created by Carson Mell, who wrote for Silicon Valley, and also is the creator of some really weird / cool animated shorts. Looks like the series is based on his animated Tarantula shorts he made a few years ago. It’s about the adventures of a tattoo artist and the other inhabitants of a hotel in the desert. The clip they showed at SDCC is kinda far out for TBS (in a good way I hope).

In the clip (which is mostly animatic, but has some animation), these guys move around a giant magic mushroom and the psychoactive bits get into their bloodstream triggering a series of trips that seem more at home in a JJ Villard short than an 8pm Fox show. It’s ambitious and weird and I dig it.

Maybe this means TBS is trying to get into that primetime / Adult Swim hybrid-niche space. I hope so – there’s room in that area to make more great animation.

Who knows – it’s just a SDCC clip, but it looks like TBS is trying something different, and that’s a good thing. Even with Final Space and Close Enough, TBS is going after a more indie animation vibe, rather than chasing straight primetime sitcom (Seth / Groening style) animation.

TBS is obviously taking some risks here – on the actual content and making a big four series bet on animation trying to compete with Netflix / Fox / FX / etc. I hope all these shows do well – I like seeing networks trying new things (and I like seeing friends employed). It means more gigs and more (hopefully good) animation out in the wild.

Final Space is being made out at Shadowmachine, Close Enough at Cartoon Network Studios, The Cops at Starburns, and Tarantula over at Rough Draft.

I’ve included links below to the original pilot for Final Space, the SDCC Close Enough trailer, one of the Tarantula shorts (and the SDCC clip if you haven’t seen it).

What do you think about TBS buying all these shows? Think they have a chance?