Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1469966
SUMMER 2022 25 To a certain extent, any decision to spin off from a successful animated franchise feels like a no-brainer. You have an estab- lished brand with characters, stories, and sensibilities that have proven popular with audiences, sometimes for years on end. With fans expecting new content, why wouldn't you shake things up by telling a longer story, adding new characters, or building a separate series around support- ing characters from the same universe? On the other hand, cynical viewers have been known to sneer at any attempt to capitalize on an estab- lished franchise. "Spin-offs kind of get a bad rap," says Steven Knudsen, a former Background Artist with the Netflix series Big Mouth who is now the Art Director of its spin-off, Human Resources. "Either it's too much the same as the original, so it feels like a bit of a cash grab, or it's too different and it doesn't feel like it should be connected." Fresh approaches can lead to new characters and storylines that, if they prove popular, help energize an original show. Look no further than the TV universes gener- ated out of one of Nickelodeon's most iconic franchises. In the prequel spin-off Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years, a 10-year old SpongeBob SquarePants and his underseas pals get the CG treatment and head for summer camp, while the weirdness quotient is ratcheted up in The Patrick Star Show, in which a younger version of SpongeBob's best friend Patrick hosts his own freeform "TV show" from a television-turned-bedroom attached to his family home. Co-Executive Producer Marc Ceccarelli points to Nobby and Narlene, breakout characters created for Kamp Koral. Narlene has appeared on SpongeBob SquarePants, and "the cross-pollination has actually made the classic show more interesting and given the writers more tools to play with," he says. "Any new hook you can have to come up with new ideas, it's embraced, and it's great that Nickelodeon allows us to expand this universe and not have it be hermetically sealed. We can try new things with it." Narrative structures, for example. The traditional structure of a show like SpongeBob has been jettisoned for The Patrick Star Show. Since the "show" of the title is the product of Patrick's off- beat brain, writers can mess with the format and play around with different styles of animation. "The lid is off with that one," says Co-Executive Producer Vince Waller "With [Patrick's show] being more of a variety show, the structure allows us to pivot quickly from one idea to the next. It's kind of liberating." Then there's the possibilities for a new look. Although Kamp Koral isn't the first time that SpongeBob, Squidward, Patrick, and Co. have been rendered in CG, the notion of building a continuously running series in CG still filled Ceccarelli and Waller with "nothing but trepidation" because, as they noted, "we knew all the limits that were there." They worried they might get stuck trying to bring life to characters who often look like they're standing robotically and communicating with tiny mouth move- ments before they walk to a new place. Instead, they got the opposite. In a CG show, the producers note, collabo- ration with the animation team is even closer than it is with traditional 2D board artists. The characters created out of polygons with voices coming out of them go through multiple iterations until they emerge beautifully rendered. "It's liter- ally like opening a Christmas present," says Waller. "You just don't realize how in-depth the look is. Everything is so tac- tile and so beautiful." OUT OUT Spin-offs breathe new life into established franchises with fresh characters and original storylines. Summertime at Kamp Koral includes underwater campfires, catching wild jellyfish, and swimming in Lake Yuckymuck. BY EVAN HENERSON The Patrick Star Show and Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years images courtesy of Nickelodeon. SUMMER 2022 25