It is another day in the beating heart of Hollywood. At one of the daily creative meetings in Acme Filmworks’ conference room, Drew Carey is playing with a new digital camera, taking a point-blank self-portrait of his eye. Outside the window, a man balances on a ladder, painting the side of the building.

Janet Perlman, an animation director for one of the games in Drew Carey’s Green Screen Show, is on the speaker phone.

“Is Ron there?” she asks, referring to exec producer Ron Diamond.

“Yeah,” he answers, as he fingers through his laptop files.

“You always sound so happy,” she says.

“Yes, dear,” Ron answers, with the hint of a smile.

The Green Screen Show, premiering on The WB network (8:30pm, October 7), has a star roster of animation talent working on its games. It’s not likely that the average viewing audience will appreciate the unsung artists toiling behind the scenes, frame by frame. The live actors are always center stage, as far as publicity goes.

Janet Perlman is the animation director for the game “Shakespeare” in Drew Carey’s Green Screen Show. All images © International Mammoth Television Inc. and The WB Television Network.

Still, it’s fun to realize that animators like Benoit Feroumont, Marv Newland, John Dilworth, Bill Kroyer and Cordell Barker are working on some of the improv skits, and that names like Frédéric Back and Raoul Servais have floated through the air. Studios such as Tippett and Aardman have also expressed interest, but their schedules haven’t allowed them time to play. This was the case with Eric Goldberg during the making of the pilot episode, but he has since been able to contribute some beautiful ink-on-paper animation. The directors bring a range of techniques to the show, everything from hand-drawn, CGI and Flash animation to stop-motion, cut-out and puppet animation.

Among its other attributes, the Green Screen Show demonstrates clearly how quality TV animation can be done, in a variety of styles, on a TV budget. Moreover, while animation directors from around the world are participating, in some cases much of the actual animation is done at Acme. For example, one of the games, titled “How to Clean a Fish,” is being storyboarded by Daniel Guyonnet, an independent director in France. Yet the animation is being done in-house at Acme with former Disney and Warner Bros. animators. It’s the antithesis of the current American model for producing animation whereby production is usually shipped overseas.

Earlier in the week, in an editing session with Diamond and senior editor Jeff Malmberg, the two were deciding how to stitch together coverage of the taped live-action performances. While retaining its humor and pacing, each game has to be whittled down into a manageable, appropriate timeframe for the animation directors to use. For one particular game, there was some hesitant discussion among The WB executives whether it was going to work. Diamond and Malmberg kept editing the improv for the game in question, feeling confident that once the animation is in place, it would be seen as one of the stronger segments.

Because there is no real model for how to produce a series such as the Green Screen Show, there has been a huge learning curve for Acme during the first half of the season. As Malmberg assembles the live-action footage, expertly juggling frames, checking for continuity, entire gags may be sacrificed out of editorial necessity. The resulting skits are continually refined, even after the rough animation begins to come back from the directors. The process is subtle, because so much of the source material is worth keeping. As Malmberg excises one funny gag, Diamond assures him, “I promise we’ll put it back in. We’ll find a way.”

Time constraints have been the biggest challenge for production, on all sides. There has been a quick turnaround between the network greenlighting the show and getting it on air. As it is, there is a very narrow window for studios and independent animators to propose visual treatments, be awarded work on a game, and deliver the final animation.