The guys (Kareem, Ken, and Pat) continue to tackle the topic of adult animated series. Tangents include Batman and Vegeta’s sexual aptitude, Ice-Tas a VO actor, whether “stunt casting” hurts a series, and more.
Show Notes
Intro: Duration: roll into the discussion [from edited recording]
A new crop of diverse creators that grew up on the The Simpsons is seizing these opportunities to push the boundaries of a form has often been perceived as crude or juvenile. Collectively, they are transforming a once narrowly-etched genre into one of the most elastic and vital art forms of the 21st century. Hirsch, the creator of the Disney Channel’s critically adored Gravity Falls who signed an overall deal with Netflix last year, adds, “Now that animated content has been freed from the need of appealing to everyone, I think we’re going to see a fast evolution that’s been long overdue.”
From https://time.com/5752400/adult-animation-golden-age/
Topic 1
- Main point –
With the streaming wars in full swing, Netflix’s competitors weren’t far behind. Apple nabbed a show from Bob’s Burgers creator Loren Bouchard. CBS launched a production arm, CBS Eye Animation, to develop shows, while HBO Max ordered a reboot of The Boondocks, its acerbic ‘00s comedy centering on a black family living in a mostly-white suburb.
Hulu, too, got aggressive after seeing how well its own licensed content like Family Guy and Rick and Morty performed. According to a representative, a third of their subscribers watch at least one animation title a month. So last year, they ordered a new show from Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland, entitled Solar Opposites; in February, they signed up for a four-series slate of Marvel stories, with a set of creators that includes the comic Patton Oswalt. “Hulu viewers love adult animation,” Craig Erwich, Hulu’s senior vice president and head of originals, told TIME. “Given the circulation and the hunger, it’s a very fertile ground to launch originals.”
“Serious Stakes”
- In 2018, the global animation industry was worth $259 billion—and according
- to the data provider Research and Markets, it’s projected to reach $270 billion by 2020. And as the adult animation field grows, it has continued to diversify in myriad ways. “You can only watch the same show with the same perspective so many times before you get bored out of your mind,” Hirsch says.
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the first animated feature film in the Spider-Man franchise, used a groundbreaking comic-book-derived visual style to bring to life a black-Latino Spider-Man. Primal, on Adult Swim, received critical acclaim for its unconventional narrative approach that completely lacked dialogue. Kenya Barris (black-ish) and the rapper Kid Cudi will team up to create Entergalactic, a musical-visual adaptation of Cudi’s upcoming album, on Netflix.
- And Amazon’s Undone uses rotoscoping—a visual technique in which animation is layered over live-action footage—to explore the mental health battles of a young Latina woman, voiced by Rosa Salazar, who may be suffering from schizophrenia. “We’re not keeping a comedic arms-length by having talking animals, or making it absurdist at the top,” says co-creator Kate Purdy, who was also a producer and writer on BoJack Horseman and who created Undone with Bob-Waksburg. “These are very real people who have very real relationships with serious stakes.”
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