Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1544997
How do you tackle animating a cultural phenomenon? Equal parts inspiration, creativity, and experimentation. opposite page: Among the new monsters created for Tales from '85 is the Gourd Queen, born from a science experiment gone awry; this page: Staying true to their live-action counterparts, the animated versions of the characters were joined by a new character, Nikki (top right). At the end of 2025 , fans said goodbye to Mike, Eleven, Dustin, and all the other characters they'd fallen in love with over the near decade since Stranger Things dropped. Now, with the new animated version, Stranger Things: Tales From ' 85, those characters are back. Not only that, but they're the age they were right after Season 2 of the live-action show. "It's like I get to hang out with my friends again," says Showrunner and Executive Producer Eric Robles. This feeling of being reunited with the Stranger Things kids was a touchstone for Robles and the rest of the team as they developed the look, feel, and story for Tales From '85. But they also had to make it feel different and special—a tricky task for a production coming out less than five months after the original had ended. Season 3 of the live-action show saw a huge time jump from where the story left off in the Season 2 finale. Robles and his Co-Executive Producer, Ian Graham, decided to set the new series in the gap between those seasons, which presented a fun narrative challenge for the writers: create a unique and compelling story that fit in with what Stranger Things had established without introducing anything that fans would expect to have been addressed later on in the original. With the main characters, this meant that the writers had to take them from where they stopped at the end of Season 2 to where they began in Season 3 without overshadowing the character development of future seasons. "There were definitely times where we would get excited about emotional arcs or physical things that could happen to the characters, and then we'd remember, well, at the beginning of Season 3 , that hasn't happened [yet]," says Script Coordinator Elise Bradley. SUMMER 2026 21