Last week we sat down with the creators and voices behind the hilariously over-the-top stop-motion series “Crossing Swords.”
The show’s creators, Tom Root and John Harvatine IV, whose credits include the incredible Robot Chicken series are back with a new season of their satirical animated show that is much funnier than it leads on to be.
Season 2 is about Patrick (Nicholas Hoult) as he returns to the castle with the rescued Princess Blossom (Maya Erskine) only to find it under siege. With the help of his friends and family, it is up to Patrick defeat the assassin and save the realm from those conspiring to overthrow the monarchy.
Some “friends and family” include his brother Ruben and sister Coral (voiced by Adam Ray and Tara Strong) and Broth, Patrick’s best friend (voiced by Adam Pally). Some other voices include Luke Evans, Yvette Nicole Brown, and even Seth Green, whose also credited as creator.
We had the chance to sit down with all three creators, as well as some of the voices behind the show. Check out what they had to below!
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The Knockturnal: Congrats on Season 2! Can you guys tell us a little bit more about what we should expect?
Tom Root: Yeah! Well Season 2 is more of our Hero’s tale, Season One was all about him [Patrick] learning that his aspirations were. Nowhere close to reality and Season 2 is about him learning how to exist in this new in this world he’s found himself in and being a little more realistic about it. And none of that sounds very funny except I can promise you it’s very funny.
The Knockturnal: So where did the idea for the show originate?
Root: Well, we knew that we wanted to make a show that looked like this, essentially before we even knew what kind of story we wanted to tell and… you know. Harv, what is it you like about the look of these peg characters?
John Harvatine IV: Well, you know I like that they’re so simple. I think one of the challenges, one of the things that was exciting to us was publishing how do you make a show that has characters that are so simple that we can tell stories and make them so emotive. So when we were screwing around, thinking about things we thought were funny, the thought of peg people, from when we were kids, having them in adult situation was really humorous. So as we were talking about it we threw it up on the whiteboard and started drawing this map of all these fantastic places that these peg people go into, And the jokes were just falling off the table it was it was too much to capture. But that’s really where it started, just Like laughing at this whiteboard of all these cool settings that these dumb little peg people could go to.
The Knockturnal: You guys have a lot of jokes you guys have a lot of jokes that go like very out there they go, they take it pretty far. How do you guys know not to take it too far and how do you know where the line is?
Seth Green: It depends on the show, quite frankly and with a show like “Crossing Swords” part of the draw is the fact that it’s going to go beyond what you can film in live action. The kind of stories that we can tell, the jokes we tell, the circumstances and the way we set them up make it funnier and more acceptable than it could be if it was a live action shot. Or even if it was conventionally animated. By having these armless, legless, flat, clearly painted wood peg people brought to life through stop motion and then used for the benefit of telling comedic stories. The whole thing just works very very clean, to the point where it’s not often we’re saying is this too far.
The Knockturnal: Awesome! That actually brings me to my next question. I had a question about the stop motion itself. Obviously you guys know how to work with stop-motion. Did a lot of the comedy and cruder humor come during writing or did that come while you’re actually filming it?
Seth: A little bit of both. All of the jokes are written very meticulously written in detail. But you do get opportunities when you’re putting it together, or adding the props, or painting the puppets themselves or especially when the animator gets a hold of it cause their task is to bring something new to it. Not only make this thing look like it’s alive, this “inanimate object” look like it’s alive, but bring some extra things to it. Is that fair guys? You’d say all the jokes get written in the script but then everybody’s got the job to enhance is throughout the process.
Tom: I would say what people don’t realize is that the animators are essentially our actors, or one half of the actors. Our “actor” actors are just the voices and then our animators are performing the voices on the stages and so the animators can make something really funny or the animators can make something really terrible. And so we hire the animators that make stuff really funny.
Seth: It’s also knowing what the task is. We’re not attempting to make dramatic work. Everything is trying to make it funnier.
Tom: Yeah, so actually a lot of stuff that can be okay on the page and seem a little funnier when that the cast records it and if we see it in storyboards can get really funny on stage is when the animators figure it out and how they’re going to perform it physically. So there is a lot of room for that. But like Seth said about the meticulousness: this is an art form where you kind of mathematically (because of the 30 frames per second), you have to plan it out so specifically and time it for the audio track before you even get started with the visuals. that you don’t have a ton of latitude to improvise. So a lot of the comedy’s already baked in before the animators even get a hold of it.
But, yeah so that is the answer to your question.
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Check out an exclusive clip from Season 2 premiering December 10 on our instagram.