I started working on The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants in the fall of 2016. They were still figuring out the overall look of the show. I was tasked with coming up with a process for creating George & Harold's comix in a way that worked for both print AND animation. Originally some panels were to have some limited animation, but they opted for some Flip-O-Rama style frames, and even that was phased out eventually. It was a trial and error process, and it involved everyone from the storyboard artists, directors, designers, and post-production. The comics in the first few episodes were rough, but eventually they grew to be some of my favorite projects to work on.
I was a Visual Development Artist on the show, which meant I did a bit of everything. In my previous job, I was a Character Designer. I enjoy VisDev because of the variety of assignments. I contributed character designs, character concepts, illustrations, and at one point, was a hand model for a whiteboard segment 🤣.I tackled the first comic solo (with input from the bosses of course). "The Frenzied Farts of Fanny Flabulous", for the pilot episode of the series, resembled the traditional Tree House Comix from the books. It included some semi-animated panels, which would make it difficult to translate to print. Eventually, the print idea was shed and the focus remained on making them work for TV.Â
The premise is- George writes and Harold draws a comic each episode, the plots and characters related to the main story. This was right up my alley. I had been making comix since I was a kid, publishing my first at 16 years old in 1994 (stay tuned for THAT!). I wanted to capture the energy and comedy of a young punk in these drawings. Semi-trolling. Mostly just entertaining myself. The process broke down like this-Writers write the episode, Peter records his track, storyboard artists layout the panels and composition. I would draw and ink the panels over the storyboards, then on to coloring. The editors/post would work their magic and it would all come to life on your streaming device!