Samantha Gray and Violaine Briat on co-creating High Moon Queen

In Adult Swim Smalls’ High Moon Queen, heroine Astrea is overworked and undersexed. Fighting crime with her sidekick Cougara as the city’s only law enforcers, slicing men in half is practically second-nature for her – but she has the raw charisma of an unsalted potato.

Co-created by Samantha Gray and Violaine Briat, they describe High Moon Queen as a “hyper-femme-woman” response to hyper-masculine action comedies in adult animation. The series also takes on topical issues like women’s labour and the optics of violence with quick-witted humour. 

We had the chance to discuss the production of High Moon Queen with co-creators Samantha and Violaine, as well as animators Megan Boyd and Violette Avouac.

Please describe yourselves, your role on the project, and a little bit about your careers up to this point.

Violaine: All right, I'll start. I’m Vi. I'm the co-creator and co-producer with Sam. And I've worked in the industry for thirteen years. I did storyboards, directing, writing, kind of a little bit of everything. I think that covers it for me.

Samantha: I guess I'll go next. I'm Sam, and I am also a co-creator, co-producer, and co-writer on High Moon Queen. I have been in the industry for fourteen years now and have  basically done everything from interning, cleanup animation, backgrounds, character design, storyboards, up to directing, and now creating and writing. So that's pretty cool.

Megan: Hi, I'm Megan. I was one of the animators. I have worked as a storyboard artist and director in the industry since 2015. This was my first animation job. And it was really fun.

Violette: My name is Violette. I'm quite new to this career, because I'm actually a last year's master's student right now. Previously I had animated a little bit in Burbank as an intern. High Moon Queen was my first cleanup, tie down and colour role. So it was my [entry into the industry], and it was so much fun to start off with this project.

How did you come up with the concept for High Moon Queen and decide that this was the story you wanted to tell?

Samantha: We thought, “What if a woman tells this kind of crazy story that men think they can only write?” 

Violaine: We thought about all the projects that were “super-guy-dude” that we've been made to work on. And it's like, why can't we have that for women? Why can't we be “hyper-femme-woman?” 

Samantha: Yeah. And at the same time, putting in stupid jokes that I feel guys usually just get to put in. 

Were there particular themes or elements that you wanted to explore from a feminine point of view?

Samantha: I feel there's this very big concept in society that, oh, women can just get it anytime you want, because you dress sexy. Or you want to dress that way and that just means that you can get laid. I think that's such a misconception that is not pointed out very much. 

And to put a funny spin on it, I think, is such a great way to poke light at it. We all can't always just have sex or get a relationship whenever we want. That's one of the biggest things for me that was cool to actually tackle.

Violaine: Yeah, I agree. And the power dynamics can be interesting to explore, because usually a lot of women protagonists have no flaws. You get ‘perfect’ characters like Captain Marvel. And that was actually something that we had to really figure out. 

Samantha: In our first iteration of Astrea, she was a bit darker. Her flaws were in excess, like drug and alcohol use. I like where we landed with her now. She's just really dedicated to work, which I think is also another theme that we really vibed with. 

And I think this relates to everyone. We put so much of our worth and our time into work and our careers. And then you don't put it into your social life or the skills to create a social life, a romantic life. 

We were able to do that with High Moon Queen, this woman who's a career woman and does her job excellently, but is so stunted socially and emotionally compared to her counterpart, Cougara.

I especially love the distinctly female humour. Astrea spends the pilot imagining the great-grandchildren she’ll have with a potential new boyfriend, even as she’s slicing him in half at the end.

Violaine: The pilot was tough. We were trying to set up the entire world, and characters and dynamics, in three minutes. Because we were pitching this to Adult Swim, I wanted to make sure we're hitting the drugs, sex, and violence, because it's still mostly college dudes watching Adult Swim, so it has to be fun in that way. 

Samantha: And then we had the whole drug operation. We wanted topics that were funny, and at the same time serious, but also relatable to kind of what's going on in, or what's always gone on in history. 

If you have power and control, you can manipulate and make things your own way. Even with something like drugs. I feel like the mayor is a great example of that. 

I love the mayor. The running joke that Astrea is the entire police force because, “We’re in a recession!” is so great.

Samantha: Society likes to put so much on women, right? You have to bear it all, but you have to be quiet about it. It's pretty common to hear that women work twice as hard but then don't get paid as much, or don't get the recognition. So we thought it was a funny way to exemplify that. 

There’s a lot of social commentary in High Moon Queen. The apology campaign in the third episode was a great example of that.

Violaine: Honestly, that was so funny to me. “Oh, no! You killed an angel billionaire CEO oil man!" It's so dumb.

Samantha: This billionaire said he was going to destroy the oil rig. But he didn't do it. So in the mayor's eyes, he’s innocent.

What was the production process like?

Violaine: Adult Swim is known to be a network where you don't get a lot of money to make your things, but you have a lot of creative freedom. So for us, I think [the challenge] was making sure that we could get things done in time. And that's why we hired a team. 

We hired voice actors. But then I painted backgrounds. And then Sam did some animation. But then, because animation takes so long, we had to hire. That's where we spent all our money: hiring all the animators.

Megan: I think that readers would find it interesting that you can make a whole short with a very small team and a small budget.

High Moon Queen is a whole show. It has a whole world, and it's just presented in three minute chunks. You don't have to do your giant fifteen to twenty-minute pilot to get your ideas out there. Keep it manageable and reasonable. 

What was it like using Harmony for High Moon Queen? I know there was a learning curve for Megan and Violette.

Megan: Vi and Sam reached out to me because I made a short animated film with a limited animation style. I made that whole short in Storyboard Pro. But then for this I was like, “Okay, I should learn Harmony now and actually do this with proper layers.” 

I basically set up all the hotkeys and everything to be like Storyboard Pro so I could go fast, but it worked. It was really fun to work in Harmony. And the way I work is a very 2D animation style. It's all hand-drawing everything, which worked pretty well for this project. It was a lot of fun.

The biggest thing for me was that the keyframes are different than just drawing in Storyboard Pro. But I watched a lot of Toon Boom’s wonderful Harmony Premium Kick-start videos. 

Violette: I had used TVPaint, mostly in the past, and then for 3D, Blender and Maya. This was my first time using Harmony and I watched all the YouTube tutorials. I had friends around me help me out with tips and tricks. 

Since it's the industry standard, everyone around me knew it. And it was so intuitive and easy to pick up. I think I got the basics down within a week, if not less. And then the vector-based ink drawing tools made it so easy to do the cleanup and colour. 

Vi had organized and set up all my files for me. Because I was getting my files as roughs or as tie downs already, I just had to create a next layer on top. I had my colour palette organized for me. I had my brushes organized for me. And I just had to get to work.

Violaine: Megan organized the colour palettes.

Can we expect to see more High Moon Queen?

Violaine: There are three more episodes coming up. We asked if we could tease it and they said we could. You heard it first on the Toon Boom blog!

Samantha Gray: We don't know when it's going to come out yet, but we're definitely in the works with it. These next three will definitely have an overarching story. And I'll just say that we introduced a new character.

Violaine: I mean, he was shown in the first episode. So he's making a comeback. We just saw him for a split second.

Everybody's going to have to go back and watch the pilot and speculate.

Samantha: Yeah, watch it!

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• Interested in viewing High Moon Queen? Three episodes are currently available to watch on YouTube with another three episodes on the way from Adult Swim Smalls.
• Ready to start production on your animated short? Artists can download a 14-day trial of Toon Boom Harmony.