It always feels a little silly when you work on NDA projects – you can’t really talk too much about what you’re working on, but this show was announced officially months ago so … here’s what I’m working on these days – it’s a new Netflix primetime animated sitcom from the creators of Big Mouth called Mating Season! This show is about animals telling their stories about friendship, love, relationships and sex.
We got to work with lots of our friends from Big Mouth – producing the show with Brutus Pink out of Titmouse again and it’s been a fantastic production so far. I’ll post more about the show later as more details get released – but for now, that’s what we have been working on!
Here’s the press release from Variety on the announcement:
Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to work on all kinds of different projects … the other day someone was talking about Quibi and it reminded me of this one. We did a little commercial that sold the idea of how fun short content on the Quibi platform would be.
This was late 2019 and we were animating at Titmouse, contracted by the Mill (back when they still had an LA office). The Mill would handle boards / animatic / designs and the agency communication. Titmouse would tackle all the animation, compositing, post editing and exports. Style wise it was supposed to look like Jay Ward animation and directly references Dudley Doo Right and Snidely Whiplash – only instead of the damsel on the railroad tracks, it ends up being our cowboy.
We got to work with one of my favorite animation directors, Mike Carlo, collaborating with the New York Titmouse studio. The compositing and editing were done back at Titmouse Los Angeles. Mike Carlo and I have gotten to do a few projects together over the years and he is incredibly great at problem solving and adjusting while still making the animation look fantastic (and just an all around amazing animator).
We had a tiny budget (there were just 4 of us), a quick schedule and things were changing constantly (as they often do on these things) – characters would change (the cowboy was a different character originally), dialogue changed, composited footage changed, backgrounds changed. Basically over the course of production, everything that could change, did change (often more than once). Nothing would lock until the last second and everything was wet clay up until delivery.
We also had the added challenge of delivering two different versions – landscape (9×16) and vertical (1×1). That meant separate crops, tweaks and exports – you’re doing everything twice on the back side. That was a new idea at the time that Quibi was trying to capitalize on – content that worked full screen no matter how you held the phone (vertical or horizontal).
Related side note – Back around 2003-2004 when we switched to “HD” from 4×3, we had a somewhat similar problem – formatting to keep action inside tv safe on the 4×3, while trying to populate the edges of the screen. So they ended up exporting two versions – one for people still watching on old traditional 4×3 tv’s and a widescreen version for people on what were then known as “HD” tv’s. If you watch shows from this era, you might see lots of dead space onscreen on the sides, and this is why.
End of the day, we got it done, our compositor cursing at us all the way with our last minute changes from the client. Looking back on it now, it’s maybe a little simple, but for the limited time and money (and all the changes we had), it turned out pretty great. I vaguely remember seeing this run during some tv network sports games, so it got out into the wild and saw some distribution.
One of the things I learned on this commercial (and continue to learn on small projects) is practicing flexibility. Doing things out of order and changing content constantly during production can drive you crazy – your job is to slow down, think through it, and adapt. This one was small enough that it never got out of control and I could learn HOW to adjust on the fly. We had great collaborators at the Mill who were there with us through it all. Finally, if you have a great partner to help you in your quest (like Mike Carlo was for me on this one) you can get through the craziest situations and come out with great work.
Parting thought – Funny that Quibi as a concept / company didn’t do well, but here we are all constantly watching IG / Youtube / Tiktok / etc shortform content 6 years later and everyone’s attention spans have likewise eroded. People make fun of the execution of Quibi, but it may have just been too far ahead of the curve with not enough runway – clearly the idea works on some level.
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…
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!
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!
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!
Future Worm is an upcoming Disney ‘XD’ show from creator Ryan Quincy (Out There, South Park) about a twelve year old boy who discovers time travel and teams up with a fearless worm from the future (also a special appearance by a robotic fish who explodes in every episode). They’ve got a fantastic cast and crew, and most importantly – it’s funny. All the pieces are here for a great show – and by the looks of it, they are trying some new stuff to make sure this launch is successful. Continue reading “Future Worm is Coming”
Google has thrown down the gauntlet (again) – the claim is that Youtube ads provide a better return dollar-per-dollar vs. TV ads.They are spinning this not as the destruction of TV ads, but instead as an alternative.Spend smart money on Youtube ads as a good place to spend on digital. Harmless, right?
However, this is an interesting downward spiral – if advertisers start spending more money on digital because it banks better profits, they will continue to spend more there, which leads to → less inventory on TV → less money for TV → worse content on TV → lower ratings → less consumer interest → less advertising dollars … and continuous downward spiral.You can start to see why pay TV and broadcast TV are a little stressed.Continue reading “Youtube Ads = Better Returns Than TV”
If you didn’t see this in the news, it’s not too surprising.This content creation and distribution game is changing quickly.
Twitter now has a deal with the NFL to broadcast games online.This is the latest big deal – not financially (it’s actually a smallish deal for the NFL), but this is another ‘the beginning of the end for pay / traditional broadcast TV.’ Continue reading “Why NFL + Twitter”
Future Worm is an upcoming Disney ‘XD’ show from creator Ryan Quincy (Out There, South Park) about a twelve year old boy who discovers time travel and teams up with a fearless worm from the future (also a special appearance by a robotic fish who explodes in every episode). They’ve got a fantastic cast and crew, and most importantly – it’s funny. All the pieces are here for a great show – and by the looks of it, they are trying some new stuff to make sure this launch is successful. 
nate funaro 