INT: Blink Industries has a reputation for pushing the boundaries of weird shorts, such as Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared. What did they bring to the table that made them the right home for this specific project?
MG: The whole gang at Blink, especially our producer Ayoola Solarin, really helped to find the voice and tone of the series. They really got what Chris was trying to do, so there was always this energy on the project of ‘how can we make this more Chris’.
They were also great at temperature checking things like storyboards and animatics, and flagging when it felt like I had maybe strayed too far into goofy territory which would undercut the delicate style of the scripts. We were always in really safe hands with Blink, and we knew it. This is the company that made DHMIS which is maybe the best piece of internet age surrealism ever made.
INT: How about you, Chris?
CSA: Blink are some of the best people I have ever worked with and like Mike I have to do a shout out of my mouth to Ayoola, our producer, because she and the rest of the team knew exactly where I wanted to go and were great protectors of my precious world and they guided me along very nicely and even pushed me further than I thought it was possible for myself to go which was also very nice.
INT: If you had to describe the “vibe” of the series in three words – keeping in mind Chris’s unique way with words – what would they be?
MG: Something I learned on this project is how deceptively difficult it is to capture Chris’ style in words. So I’ll leave this up to the (Simpsons artist) himself.
CSA: Really really good.