The mix of animation and live-action gives rise to challenges for the production. Animators work on set, on a Wacom tablet, creating storyboards on the fly while the live-action production is going on.

Shooting a TV series is different from shooting a film, of course, and putting a crew in place with expertise in week-to-week production was important. "TV is a much quicker pace," Ouweleen says, pointing out that the movie was shot in about 22 days, while two TV episodes are shot every seven or eight days.

Meanwhile, creative changes included tweaking the animation models a bit for the series. "They're more kinetic, more animated, a little less traditional," explains Ouweleen. The characters needed a traditional look for the film, he says, since one of the premises was that the characters hadn't been out of the cartoonist's brain since 1945. That premise isn't integral to the series, however, so the characters can be stretchier and more modern in design. Ouweleen describes the animation style in the show as "more animation-y, more out there."

For the live-action footage, the series uses more cameras and sets different from those of the film, although the scenes continue to be shot in hi-def. Overall, the entire list of changes is meant to pace the show for TV. "It was mainly to make it snappier for a 22-minute series," Ouweleen reports. "There's a different grammar for a series than for a film," he says, adding, "A film is like coffee and TV is more like espresso. It's more concentrated."

New Challenges
The mix of animation and live-action gave rise to some challenges for the production. "We're learning a lot," Ouweleen remarks. But he believes the addition of animation to the network's first live-action series had several positive impacts from a creative perspective. "The animation brings a lot of life to the series," he notes. "It's not post-production. It's not just about making sure the characters aren't floating 10 inches above the floor; they're adding a lot of creative and a lot of energy to it."

Animators work on set, doing drawings on a Wacom tablet and basically creating storyboards on the fly while the live-action production is going on, incorporating ideas generated by what's happening on the set. "It's probably pretty harrowing for [the animators]," reports Ouweleen. "It's kind of production improv. It's very opportunistic. They have an opportunity to make use of the idiosyncracies of the production."

Although this is Cartoon Network's first series that relies predominantly on live-action, Ouweleen believes it still fits perfectly with the network's sensibility, with even the live-action scenes being "cartoony," and therefore accepted by the audience. "Live-action and animation are blurring so much anyway," he comments, noting that the network is open to all forms of animation -- not just 2D, but 3D and stop-motion styles, as well -- and to live-action. "Our intended audience doesn't have a problem with it at all. They're coming to Cartoon Network for a sensibility, for a cartoon take on things, even in live-action."

Karen Raugust is a Minneapolis-based freelance business writer specializing in animation, publishing, licensing and art. She is the author of The Licensing Business Handbook (EPM Communications).