Animator Aaron Augenblick discussed his love for cities. The city-based kids’ cartoon ‘City Island’ features talking objects and adorable characters. The protagonist, Watt, comes up with new ideas. In 2022, the show premiered on PBS Kids. Viewers learned about civics, economics, and geography.
In 1999, Augenblick founded the Brooklyn-based company Augenblick Studios. He served as both animation director and supervising producer of Comedy Central’s ‘Ugly Americans.’ Later, he directed and produced Adult Swim’s ‘The Jellies.’ Through his recent project ‘City Island,’ Augenblick experienced children’s animation production. To learn more about the new endeavor, read the interview transcript below.
The Knockturnal: What was the vision behind ‘City Island?’
Aaron Augenblick: This was a new venture for me. I’ve had my studio open for twenty-four years. For the first two decades, I primarily focused on adult animation: prime-time, Comedy Central, Netflix, and Adult Swim.
Years ago, I decided that I really wanted to try my hand in kids’ animation. My biggest influences included Sesame Street, PeeWee’s PlayHouse, and Garfield. I wanted to try doing my own version. My initial idea was to do a show starring all anthropomorphic objects. I thought ‘it would be fun if it was in the city.’ I’m a Brooklynite. My idea was to do the show with the city itself as the character, if the city were alive. The idea really excited me. Pretty quickly, I went from the idea of a living city to a central protagonist: an eight-year-old light bulb. He would get the name of ‘Watt’ and he would come up with big ideas to help the town.
The Knockturnal: Have you ever done animation with experimental objects before?
Aaron Augenblick: A little bit, here and there. I’ve always been obsessed with Betty Boop cartoons, Sesame Street, and Roger Rabbit. All these different shows had living objects, like a talking cat or a window with eyes.
I directed a short film in the early 2000s called ‘Golden Age.’ That was a thirty-minute movie with many anthropomorphic characters. This is the first show I’ve done entirely with all living objects.
The Knockturnal: How does the civics curriculum coincide with the show’s plot?
Aaron Augenblick:It’s really baked in. The curriculum of every story is the first production conversation I have. I have a really great curriculum advisor named Liz Hine. She wrote a civics and social studies curriculum for PBS. Before anything else, I have a long chat with Liz regarding civics, topics like social studies, geography, city planning, and economics. I love to discuss philosophy.
The episode ideas come from these conversations. For example, geography is the idea that a world exists beyond your own home. Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a picture of the town on a gigantic map? We always start with the curriculum and an idea that we want to express. Then, everything else comes from that. So, we come up with actions for characters or a location from that world.
The Knockturnal: Have new professional relationships or alliances in the TV/media world risen from this project?
Aaron Augenblick:Yeah! I met the woman who greenlit the show when I attended the School of Visual Arts. We stayed in touch over the years. Then, I came up with this idea. I pitched it all around and PBS was really excited about it. There’s an example of a relationship.
All the same people that do all of our shows at Augenblick Studios generally work together. I have a core team of the most talented artists. They are all creative directors. Most of our creative team all worked on ‘City Island.’ I already had an artistic team in place even though this was a different type of project. Augenblick Studios’ team shares a lot of the same talent. The writers and voice actors are all mostly people I’ve met before on different projects.
The Knockturnal: What difficulties arose during the production of ‘City Island?’
Aaron Augenblick: The most challenging part was our first season. In the first season, we’re basically building it from scratch. It was a very fast production schedule because we wanted it out before the year’s end. Essentially, we made twenty episodes in very few months. This is a fast amount of animation to create.
The Knockturnal: As a follow-up question, how did you handle such a fast production schedule?
Aaron Augenblick: Well, staying organized was the most important thing. We stayed as organized as could possibly be with scheduling and staff. We had lots of meetings to keep everyone on the same page.
As regimented as a production schedule is, there is room for experimentation. It’s important that we’re excited and fired up about our work. Our production group is really positive about the work that they’re making. It’s important. It was the best way to approach the challenge of quick production.
The Knockturnal: What animation projects do you have planned for the future?
Aaron Augenblick: We have a lot of projects! I definitely want to make more ‘City Island.’ We’re talking to PBS about possible other shows that we might work on together. We have multiple shows that we developed, which are at various production stages. You’re going to see a lot of exciting projects coming out this year.
The Knockturnal: Okay, thank you so much for meeting with me today. I found it fascinating to talk to you.
Aaron Augenblick: Yeah, it was great talking to you. Definitely check out the show. I’d love to hear what you think. If you have three minutes, check it out.
