July is stacked with even more must-see animated titles, including the return of Star Trek: Prodigy (now on Netflix) and the US debut of Psi Cops.
TV, where we’re highlighting some of the best premium animation projects on streaming or direct-to-video aimed for teens and adults. This monthly column not only provides an overview of the new animated series to check out, but we’ve also collected some of the finest creators and voice talents in the medium to give updates, or introductions, to their series.
in Season 1 inside Starfleet this time around, as cadets learning how to work as a more formal team. However, they’re whisked away by Admiral Janeway on a mission that will continue what they started on the“It was threading the idea that now they’re in Starfleet and the adult world,” Kevin Hageman says of this season’s arc for Dal and his friends. “And while that’s exciting and cool, it’s not as cool as when they used to have their own ship and could go on their own adventures, right? We didn’t want Season 2 just to be in the adult world because we felt that started to take away the youthful tone.” “We followed the idea of the interesting story that could happen with the kids into the adult world,” Dan Hageman continues. “If you’re on a Starfleet ship, you have to follow all orders and you really have no wiggle room to have too much fun. But then we go, ‘the kids are going to learn something from the adults, but the adults are going to have to learn something from the kids.’ And that’s something that Kate always talks about, that we can learn so much from the next generation and from children as they have a lot to teach. So that was a message we wanted to get across. We knew we had to have the kids have some fun and get them into shenanigans so they essentially dragged the adults into the world of shenanigans.” Throughout the second season’s 20 episodes, the Hagemans say the team of Dal, Gwyn , Jankom , Rok , Murph , and Medusian Zero will all be tested, grow, and come to rely on one another even more. “The stakes are always big. But now that they’re in the adult world, things are getting bigger and bigger and bigger,” Kevin says. “Yes, we have these funny characters, but we always treat the threat as serious.” And that threat is Season 1’s returning character, Asencia . “It was such a joy to bring her back,” Kevin says. She’ll join fellow Season 1 castmate John Noble, who voiced a very different version of the Diviner. “To have him come back and not be the main villain now, that was beautiful and interesting and cool,” Kevin teases. “And then, we felt because of all the politics or because of the father/ daughter relationship from Season 1, we also wanted our monsters. We wanted something very simple for kids to go:are the bad guys. Villains come in all shapes and sizes, so it’s fun to have just that visceral monster also.”GKIDS continues to platform some of the most creative theatrical animated films from around the world. From French directors Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach and Felixx ., Skybound Entertainment reached out to the pair to have them pitch a new series in the genre space they could produce with them. Batchelor tells“A show about paranormal investigation that’s a comedy is like limitless and fun,” Batchelor says. “We put together a short writers’ room that was basically circling around world building. It was just a bunch of creative, hilarious people talking about every possible paranormal stupidity out there. But we found that because Chris and I have worked together comedically for 20 years, when it came to actually writing the scripts, it was hard to onboard people without them having the vision of what the show is. So, Chris and I ended up writing all 24 episodes, which was a little intense. But now that it’s out and it exists, we feel like if we get a second season, it would be really easy to bring writers in, because it’s out there to see now.”also has a really unique look that is both hyper realistic when it comes to gore and carnage, but very cartoony when it comes to character design. Batchelor says, on all their projects prior to this one, they were heavily involved when it came to producing their online shows. They carried that through to the show’s overall look and design. “We like janky, bad 3D, but we wanted to kind of grow it up a bit, mature it a bit, and we landed where we did with,” Batchelor says of its signature look. “It was very much with the intent of separating the look from what is popular and going on right now. It’s so hard to be seen, and I think that, with new people coming to it that are familiar with other styles, it’s a little bit like, ‘What is?’ But once you watch a few episodes, you really get into it. It’s a fun mix of 2D and 3D, and it absolutely comes from our personal art style.” Nielsen adds, “One of the reasons that we gravitated towards the janky 3D in the first place was that we can get these characters that are sort of photo real, but they live in that uncanny valley of weirdness. It gives you that natural look and then you have the ability to push things that are way too stupid. Really, it’s a 2D show, but it’s got the ability to go full 3D.” With a 24 episode order, the duo said they had to hire a team to help them produce, design, and voice the series. They curated an in-house creative team to do all the character designs and the backgrounds in the overall scope of the show using a number of fresh-out-of-art school animators who could be mentored in their unique style. Working with Wind Sun Sky Entertainment and Oddfellows Labs, the pair said the show was a huge learning curve for them in figuring out how to retain their improv vibes on the page, maintain it the recording booth, and then eventually in the edit, where they really went to town in honing the jokes and comedy for all it was worth.has become a huge hit in Canada, and they’re hoping it translates to the U.S. Adult Swim audience. “Bart likes to say we have a high inner conversion ratio,” Nielsen laughs. “It’s a slight learning curve, but once you kind of get our vibe, I think people respond really well. We started really enjoying having a back and forth with the audience and that helped us grow quite a bit.” When asked what their best calling card episodes of the season are, Nielsen cited “Murder House” as one of their strongest. “It’s a haunted house that drives people to kill. It’s a very Stephen King sort of vibe,” he teases. “But it fully follows the stupid plan to investigate this thing. There’s some great moments of physical absurdity in it. And it’s just a real encapsulation of our brand of silly.” Citing the episodes that blew up on TikTok, Batchelor says “The Facility” and “Faith Healer” are real crowd pleasers. “In ‘The Facility’ they investigate a facility of psycho monkeys. It’s so simple,” he laughs. “And ‘Faith Healer’ is where they go purposely to injure themselves to see if this faith healer can do what he says he can. They’re such simple concepts and such simple investigations, you get what they’re doing right away. And then how they’re doing it wrong becomes apparent within the first 20 seconds. These guys are morons.”Matthew Inman. He is The Oatmeal, and has been sketching and writing fascinating stories, hilarious human observations, and science explainers in his own comedic voice since 2009. But it took until this year for his work to get developed into an actual series, the Netflix animated originalthat he spent years trying to figure out how to adapt the standalone The Oatmeal comics into something else. But it wasconcept of placing God inside a cat’s body, mixed with a personal story, that actually triggered a series idea separate from the game. “In my early 20s, I was seeing this girl and she had this really, really weird cat,” Inman shares. “He looked strange and he sounded strange. He was an odd shape and behaved erratically. So, her parents were super religious and they became convinced he was possessed by the devil. They actually had an exorcism for him. So in my notebook of a million ideas, I’ve always had this ‘God and the devil trapped inside a cat body’ thing.”) was brought in to help develop the premise with Inman, which evolved into the idea of an arrogant God being punished by his peers in heaven by getting sent to Earth to be humbled by his flock. “We just thought there were so many possibilities of where the storytelling could go and the commentary we could have on humans and how stupid we are,” Kosakowski laughs.devil, actor Tom Ellis. “What’s funny is that Matt and I talked for a long time about our overall vocal perspective,” Kosakowski says of their hunt. “We talked and talked and talked at a grand scale about what God could sound like, so we had kind of a vocal motif that we were looking for. When we came to Tom and we started listening to him in a bunch of different roles, he just seemed like he had amazing comedic timing. And he had this beautiful, velvety Welsh accent, that was very addictive the first time you heard it. Then, we started meeting with him and talking and did not realize until then that he’s one of the funniest people that we could have ever considered.”’ animated style retains Inman’s familiar, exaggerated, comedic cartoon style. Inman says, “In terms of style, I always wanted it to look like The Oatmeal because I like the way that looks. And I learned that you have someone doing the art direction who can really mimic your style and the line work around your characters. We worked with Brian Sheesley, who’s been in animation forever. He just looked at my comics and could very clearly figure out how to clone it. Then, that would get passed down to all the artists so you can create this style.”as a series they modeled their story arc serialization after. “We tried to thread the needle, where you’re following God Cat’s journey of trying to refind his empathy for humankind and his interaction with this family does that,” Kosakowski teases. “We wanted it to feel like the episodes live on their own individually, but build towards this big crescendo at the end of the season.” “And we structured the show in a way that there’s a lot more storytelling we could do on the second or third season,” Inman hopes if audiences respond well.Fans of the Marvel Comics character, Hit-Monkey , had their dreams come true when the well-dressed Japanese macaque with wicked martial arts moves got his own adult animated series on Hulu. Aided by his ghost mentor, Bryce Fowler , Hit-Monkey moves from Tokyo to New York City in Season 2, where he takes on assassinations for hire. There’s also a massive supernatural threat coming to take down the city, so the stakes and action are bigger than ever. Comedian Leslie Jones and actress Cristin Milioti join the cast as personal motivators for the pair, as they all coalesce into the weirdest found family in Manhattan.September 6, 2023 | 11:48amJuly 3, 2024 | 3:10pm
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