Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1343869
F E AT U R E left and opposite page: Development images and episode stills from Kid Cosmic. Images courtesy of Netflix. 40 KEYFRAME The story follows Kid, a 9-year-old boy who lives with his grandpa in a junkyard out in the desert. He has long fantasized about being a superhero, and in the wreckage of a spaceship crash, he finds five stones that bestow superpowers on those who possess them. As aliens from around the galaxy invade earth to get these ancient cosmic artifacts, Kid is thrilled to have special powers so he can save the planet and all mankind. But his wide-eyed ideas about being a superhero smash headlong into the shatterproof wall of reality. "There's this certain age when you're a kid when you have these really lofty ideas," McCracken says. "You think you can pull [them] off, but when you get into reality, it doesn't manifest that way. I think that's what separates Kid Cosmic from other kid hero shows. The humanness of it. Kid's allowed to be himself. … He can make mistakes." Due to circumstances beyond his control, Kid isn't the only one who winds up with a cosmic stone. There's teenage Jo, based on McCracken's older sister who introduced him to The Beatles and Monty Python; Rosa, a strong-willed 4-year-old with a maniacal laugh and oddly excellent comic timing; Papa G, channeling Willie Nelson's laid-back outlaw attitude while caring for Kid in his parents' absence; and Tuna Sandwich, a cat. "Cats were my best friends growing up," McCracken says. "Of course, we're going to put a cat on the team, because that's what a kid would do, and what use is a cat going to be?" To Tuna Sandwich's credit, he's very useful—in his own way. That seems to be the point of each character, how their less than hero-worthy qualities become assets as they discover their individual superpowers. Not only are they quirky in personality, they're unique from one another in the way they look. For this, McCracken worked closely with the show's Character Design Supervisor, Steve Lambe. "In past shows I've worked on," Lambe says, "it was about throwing as many fancy design elements into a character as possible, to make them look interesting. One of the great things I've found working with Craig, is that he believes in finding that one special theme to a character, and then building the rest of the design around their story. Kid desperately wants to be a superhero. We could have made his costume look amazing, like something out of a Marvel movie. Instead it's a mishmash of all the leftover items found in the junkyard he lives in. And none of it fits quite right. His costume is an extension of his personality." The characters, which are crafted in classic cartoon style, provide a visual contrast to the settings. The show's Lead Background Designer, Chris Tsirgiotis, explains, "Craig wanted … a very believable place filled with the little details that one would typically see." Tsirgiotis also worked on Wander Over Yonder, and says that McCracken has always given him great creative freedom, "So keeping the setting in mind, I decided to go with a more realistic treatment rather than a very stylized or flat graphic look." According to Background Designer Maryam Sefati, most shows she's worked on flatten parts of the design to push this cartoony look Tsirgiotis describes, and it was a fun challenge to figure out how to use realistic camera angles. One method that was especially helpful, she says, was the use of 3D models for spaceships, cars, and some of the main locations like Mo's Oasis Café. Not only did these models help speed up the work, they resulted in details that were more accurate from different perspectives. In addition, the Kid Cosmic team looked at a lot of classic illustrators to explore techniques to convey the feel they wanted. Lambe credits Golden Age legends such as Charles Schulz and Hank Ketcham for the "simplicity, fluidity, and economy of their lines," while Tsirgiotis was influenced by the "sketchy and loose but well-drawn inking style" of European comic books. "Because so much of the inspiration for the show's style comes from comic books," Tsirgiotis adds, "we decided early on that the line would go hand in hand with the color on the backgrounds. That's another reason for the looser, quickly drawn line quality. I also wanted to give the backgrounds a little bit of a gritty feel that would help evoke the dusty and worn quality of locations set in the desert of the American Southwest." McCracken credits Background Painter Mabel Ye for the unique painting style that helped achieve this look. "When color is used subtly," she says, "it helps linework and texture really sing. Chris' linework is gorgeous, and I hoped to highlight that with a more understated painting style. I enjoy treating digital mediums with traditional techniques. In this case, instead of relying too heavily on texture layers or overlays, texture is created by individual 'scratches' during the painting process. Similarly, instead of using opacity, colors are blended by controlling the density of scratchy brushstrokes."