Atomic Cartoons on adapting Oddballs from YouTube to series

Fans of YouTube’s TheOdd1sOut will recognize the character of James on Netflix's Oddballs, a new series animated by Atomic Cartoons. Following the bizarre and hilarious adventures of James (a humanoid white blob), and Max (an alligator), this 22-minute series is as imaginative as it is laugh-out-loud funny. The YouTube channel's creator, James Rallison, joins the series as co-creator and also provides the voice to the blob who shares his name. 

We sat down with Atomic Cartoons’ Alex Cichon (supervising producer) as well as Hallis Blaney (animation director) to discuss their roles on the production. Read our full interview below to learn about their experiences working during a pandemic, animating 2D rigged characters in Toon Boom Harmony, and the perils of lip-syncing a crocodile.

How would you describe your role in this film and what did a typical day look like in production?

Alex: I would describe my role in this series as overseeing production — scheduling, the budget, and talent management on the show. I worked closely with the creators and the line producers to make sure the show was meeting the creative bar we set, and staying on schedule and on budget.

On a typical day, I was on Zoom all-day, in meetings and problem-solving. People tend to bring me some of the higher-level problems and I worked through it with them, trying to find the best path forward.

Hallis: Every morning, I would usually check in with the production staff. As animation director, my day involves a lot of checking in. So I would check in with the production staff, the production manager, the line producer, and production support. 

It would be a very quick chat in the morning to let everyone know what my plans for the day were, and then they could let me know if there was anything more pressing; if there was anything that I should be aware of. I would bring up any flags that I thought they should be aware of, just to make sure everything was running smoothly. 

Then I would check in with the animation supervisors who worked directly with me. We have our own Google Chat for the whole team as well. As my schedule permitted I would usually scan through it to see if there was anything I needed to be aware of. 

We tried to really prioritize communication on the show. Every production needs really good communication. But especially because we were working almost entirely remotely for the entire production, communication was even more important, not just to make sure that the show was running smoothly but also to make sure that everybody on the show was doing okay.

When we’re all working from home during a pandemic, you can kind of get into some dark places, or you can feel pretty alone and isolated. We really wanted to make sure that everybody was feeling okay, their mental health was doing okay, and building that trust so that they felt comfortable bringing up any mental health issues they were having. We always wanted to try to make sure that if anybody needed a little break, or needed some extra support, that one way or another they got it.

I would also do lots of reviews. Depending on what stage of the production we were in, we’d review designs — with the supervising director, the show creators, the art directors, the character designers, all those people — to see what would be in the show. Or if there were any problems, anything along those lines. Later on, we would be reviewing actual episodes to see if we could catch any problems.

What did the creative brief for this project look like?

Hallis: For the animation and the design teams, it was: “Make it funny.” Funny was most important. When I created the animation guide for the team, the two questions were: “Does it look good?” and, “does it look funny?” And if it looks funny, it looks good. 

A lot of shows have really rigid, specific rules. And that’s great for them. Our show was a lot more loose than that. That’s why the very subjective direction of “Does it look good? Does it look funny?” was something that I really emphasized. Of course, that is such a subjective description that I’d go into the specifics after that; of what it takes to make it look good and be funny.

We really tried to break the model; push the designs, push the expression, push the poses to be really extreme. We had a really broad range for what was acceptable on the show. It’s more important to make things look good than to make them look perfect. There’s charm in imperfections. There’s not really much charm in really safe, obviously cut-out animation. 

The default poses that the builds come in were just the starting point. We never wanted to see those in animation. If you took screenshots of Max the crocodile’s head and face at various points in an episode. On another show, you would say: “That’s ten different characters.” On our show that’s just what Max can do because it’s funny or it’s really extreme.

What did the planning stage of this project look like?

Hallis: I came in after the show had already been conceived, so we were ready to roll into animation. But a lot of the early stages of animation were spent on trying to match the spirit of TheOdd1sOut while also making a fully-animated cartoon. 

When you’re making a very small, originally one-person YouTube cartoon, you don’t have the bandwidth or the resources to fully animate everything. TheOdd1sOut is very pose-to-pose, with minimal animation. There’s been more animation recently, but it essentially switches between pictures. 

For a Netflix TV show you can’t get away with that. You want to make it a fully animated show. So in Oddballs we did lots of tests trying to capture the snappiness. A lot of the notes we’d get early on said: “This animation is too soft, this animation is too slow.” Our team came from shows that had softer, slow movements. 

We also had interesting discoveries on lip sync with the character designs. You couldn’t just use the standard lip sync method for a character who’s all white. Suddenly he’s got white teeth in his mouth and it pops compared to a different character’s design. A lot of time was spent on that. We wanted to make it feel hand-crafted and not stiff and flat. 

Alex: From my perspective, it felt like a lot of the pre-work was focused on staying true to James Rallison’s series and transitioning that into a fully animated series that works for a 22-minute Netflix streaming series. Keeping true to the sensibilities while plussing it up in certain ways. 

How familiar was the crew with the TheOdd1sOut YouTube series before starting production?

Alex: I’ll be honest, I wasn’t familiar with it. I think the first one that I watched was one of the Subway’s rants, which are pretty iconic now. But the biggest kick I got out of it was, when we started crewing up, how many people were not only familiar with it but were huge fans of it. And not just fans of the show but fans of James. 

It was interesting. I hadn’t worked on a series that had an existing cult following before going to series. It also made me feel maybe a little old, because as we were crewing up, a lot of the younger animators that were coming fresh out of school were huge fans of TheOdd1sOut. One of our line producers had teen kids that were extremely into the series and had a bunch of the merch from before the show. It was a unique experience to see that. 

Hallis: I had a similar first experience. I found out about the show once I was told about it. When we were crewing up, there was a line where anyone over the age of thirty or even in their late twenties was like: “Oh, I’ve never heard of this, I’ll check it out.” And then people in their mid-twenties and younger were like: “Oh yeah, James? TheOdd1sOut? I love that show!” And I agree with Alex — it made me feel a little bit old.

Alex: I would say working on this show kind of opened me up to a lot of YouTube series in general. It’s cool to see how things trend. There’s so much that goes into YouTube. It is like a broadcaster, so it’s interesting to see what trends, how long it trends for. It’s fascinating.

What were the challenges in adapting a short-form YouTube series for Netflix?

Alex: The challenge was trying to keep that magic from the YouTube shorts and the feeling of James’s voice, and making that work for a full-length episode. It felt like it came together pretty quick.

Hallis: Definitely! We had really good leadership above us, like the people who helped develop the show with James — Ethan Banville and Carl Faruolo. Those two are both very experienced in animation for TV. They got us into a good spot, writing scripts. And then Sarah Soh, the supervising director, is fantastic with storyboards. So we were in a really good spot from there. 

Trying to find that animation style was the big challenge for us. Just trying to keep that really snappy, energetic style. A personal challenge was the lip-sync. Whenever we were in doubt, we’d say: “Let’s see what James did, and see if there’s anything in old episodes of TheOdd1sOut that we can take and bring into the show.” But he never did lip sync on the YouTube show. That’s why we had such a discussion about it; it’s the first time we’ve seen this character talk. 

What techniques and programs did you use to make this series?

Hallis: There was a tiny bit of After Effects thrown into the compositing process if need be, but for the most part we did everything in Toon Boom Harmony 20. As far as techniques go, we used the standard animation techniques that we use in Harmony.

Something that was new for most of us was he heavily relied on the Master Controller tools. That’s a more recent feature in Harmony. We used that mainly for lip-sync because we needed to have a little bit more flexibility with the mouths, especially because it’s such a dialogue-driven show. Also, Max is a crocodile, and that mouth is very complicated. We used a Master Controller for special poses on Max where he does the more extreme things that we see from time to time. 

How would you describe the process of rigging and animating the characters?

Hallis: We had an incredible build supervisor, Norvan Saguiped. He was unflappable and always looking to make things better for the team. He gave us really great builds on the two main characters, James and Max. They were the most heavily built rigs just because the show revolves around them. 

We needed to make sure that they were user-friendly and well-stocked with all the things that the animators would need to work quickly and focus on the important stuff rather than fiddling around customizing builds. 

For Max especially. It might not be obvious, but any time you have a character who has a long snout, it’s a lot more complicated than a character with a hole in their face for a mouth. Even just turning their head around is a whole different thing. We went through multiple iterations with Max throughout the production. 

For animating the show, the storyboards from Sarah Soh and her team had super-funny expressions. The storyboards were so funny that we always tried our best to really match them. In a lot of shows, there are animators who are taking ten percent of the storyboards because they have to stay very conservative with the model. We were trying to go full-on matching those expressions.

Which scene in the first season was the most interesting or challenging to animate?

Hallis: The big umbrella answer would be any scene with Max doing anything complicated. Those are always the most challenging. To give a specific answer, there’s a scene in an episode called Pillow Fight Club where we have a 180-degree camera move around James standing inside a domed cage with kids on top of the cage.

That’s not really conducive to 2D animation, especially on a TV production. We did have to definitely make some cheats. But thanks to our really solid animation supervisor on that, and the compositing supervisor, we were able to pull it off and make it look quite good.

There’s a smaller thing that I appreciate, that I don’t think many people will notice. I set a rule for a specific style of animation smears on the show. A lot of times it’s overlooked, as it’s so chaotic. But then in one episode, Emo like the Wolfstank, we had a small tribute to anime in there. We did a different type of smears for the anime-style stuff. It’s a really small thing that I’m sure very few people will notice, but it’s something that I enjoyed.

What are some of the challenges and benefits that come with animating a protagonist with a very simple visual design?

Hallis: It’s very interesting working with such a simple design. I’ve worked with characters with very simple designs before, but never as simple as James. On the one hand, it feels like you have a lot of flexibility. And you do! But on the other hand, his face is literally two dot eyes and a mouth — often that mouth is just a line. If any of those few details is just a little bit out of place, it changes him completely. 

With a character who has a lot more details going on, there’s a lot more forgiveness in something being moved here and there. But the fewer details there are, the more important every detail becomes. James has a really interesting design, in that his mouth sits between his eyes in a lot of cases. Lip-sync posed a lot of challenges where, when the mouth is opening wide, sometimes it didn't quite work with the eyes being on either side of the mouth. So sometimes those eyes would kind of drift up and come closer together for certain expressions. But then you have to catch it to make sure you go back to the design.

But he also has so much range. He goes from dot eyes to full big, white eyes with little dots, big white eyes with big pupils, sometimes much more detailed human-looking eyes. Sometimes he has a nose when he needs it. There’s that extra real estate on his face to add things when necessary. 

It’s the classic thing of simplicity being often tougher than complexity. You can hide things with detail, but when you strip things away, what’s there has to carry the whole thing. The fewer things you have there, the more time you have to pick apart every little thing you do see. It’s very interesting and a unique challenge

How would you describe the reaction to the series so far?

Hallis: Positive!

Alex: Overwhelmingly positive. It was in the Top Ten for Netflix overall, and then it was trending at number one in ‘Kids and Family.’ It was doing really well. And it still is, but especially the weekend that it dropped when everybody was really excited. My nephew is a huge fan, so that’s cool. I had some old friends and acquaintances who I haven’t spoken to in ages reach out to me to let me know that their kids binged it and love it.

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• Want more of James? You can find the TheOdd1sOut on YouTube and Oddballs is now streaming on Netflix.
• Do you have what it takes to work at Atomic Cartoons? Be sure to visit their careers page, and also follow the studio on LinkedIn and Instagram.
• Ready to create your own 2D character rigs? Artists can download a free 21-day trial of Harmony Premium.