Executive Producer Tom Hyndman, who worked on the live-action One Piece series and was a writer on the animated Harley Quinn show, discusses putting together the two-part animated special event LEGO One Piece. It premieres tomorrow, Tuesday Sept. 29, on Netflix. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: Congratulations on this. I screened part one in advance of our conversation and it’s really a lot of fun and very energetic. I know you worked on the live-action series of this adaptation of the manga. Did you ever think we’d be going in the animated direction with it too?

Tom Hyndman: I think when I was working on the live-action, probably not, but as soon as the idea of doing it in LEGO came up, it was like, “Oh yeah, that’s a very obvious direction to go in. Of course we’re gonna do this.” So, it became very clear very quickly.

JM: I’ve always loved this LEGO style of animation, whether it’s “The LEGO Movie” franchise or “Piece by Piece”, the Pharrell Williams documentary, which was phenomenal. How do you map out something like this as being LEGO CG? What are the first things you need to do to make this a successful LEGO animation experience?

TH: I think we’re a little lucky that we already kind of had all the signposts story-wise that we needed to hit. And from there, it’s just looking for those special LEGO moments. Where can we build something here that’s fun and funny, or can we push the LEGO humor here? So there were a lot of LEGO passes once we kind of knew what the story was going to be. And those kind of continued the whole process just because the fun thing about LEGO is you can never really go too far with it, which we discovered. As much as you can think of, we can probably put it in there and it’ll probably work.

JM: The possibilities are endless. You’re so right about that. So for the diehard fans of “One Piece”, where are we in the timeline? Tell us about how we get into part one. For me, this was my introduction to “One Piece”, and now I want to explore more.

TH: It’s two episodes. Each episode is basically the first season and the second season of the live-action. If we’re going by the manga, the first 200 chapters are the first two episodes. I think what we tried to do is add a little something new to it by having Usopp be the one telling the story. So hopefully the die-hard fans feel that it’s a fun new thing to watch and not just a retread of stories that they’ve seen a thousand times or read a thousand times. So that was kind of our hope with everything.

JM: I think everybody’s gonna really enjoy this, because there’s so much movement with the characters, with the various sequences and the locations that we go to. What do you love about the movement with a special like this?

TH: I think it allows to have a lot of really fun, fast jokes, keep the pace up, it never kind of drops, so you really feel you’re in it, and you’re in it for 30 minutes. And then you can take a breath, but until those 30 minutes are up you gotta be ready to go. It was definitely a tough process, because we’re basically shrinking down 8 hours of television into 27 minutes, but I think that kind of lends itself to LEGO also, the kind of frenetic energy and craziness of it. Smashing everything together almost makes it better for LEGO.

JM: Yeah, you can make points quickly with LEGO and get to the point of some things. But yeah, a lot of fans of various franchises go, “Oh, I wish you included that part. I wish you included that part.” But I think for something like this that has so much freedom to it, yeah, that all makes sense. But was that challenging, really, to condense eight hours down to 27 minutes, but feel like you had still a complete arc within that?

TH: It was tough at the beginning. But then we just found the core moments that we really knew we needed to keep. Thankfully, you have two seasons of television to kind of base everything off of, which is definitely helpful. But yeah, it was kind of like, “How are we going to hit those moments and then surround them with as much LEGO stuff as humanly possible?”, which I think we pulled off pretty well.

JM: There are great sound effects when it comes to the characters here. Did you have a lot of fun working on that?

TH: We did. There are a lot of great people working on it, just pulling sound effects from everywhere. It was a fun collaborative sound effects effort of what we can do, what’s a funny noise we can use, things like that. So yeah, definitely.

JM: And those lend themselves to the action sequences as well in the various locations. We go to a restaurant, we’ve got the water, you’ve got so much going on. What was your favorite set piece to explore for “LEGO One Piece”?

TH: The Baratie part is big and fun, and it has a lot of good, fun action in it, but a lot of great humor. So I think probably Baratie is the one that kind of stands out for me. And then the Arlong Park stuff is also really fun. I got to put a “I Think You Should Leave” joke in it, which was fun, and hopefully people notice it. But yeah, I think Baratie is probably the biggest, most fun, had the most going-on craziness.

JM: Humor is so key. It was so key to the LEGO movies, and it is so key to something like this, and even in Piece by Piece as well. Humor is so important because you’re in such a fun atmosphere of LEGO, and you want to share that joy and that quick wit with everybody, and so I’m glad that you found the humor to be an important part of this as well.

TH: Yeah, I think everybody that worked on it knew that we wanted it to be as funny as possible, and basically up until Locked Cut, we’re trying to find more and more and more moments where we could add some ridiculous humor to it. It’s definitely a big part.

JM: So you also wrote on “Harley Quinn”, which has been a huge hit on streaming, and people love that character in various forms, including animation. How do you feel that characters come alive in animation? You’ve written for that, you’ve written for “LEGO One Piece”. What do you feel about the power of animation and seeing a dynamic character like Harley Quinn, or seeing these characters in “LEGO One Piece” really come alive?

TH: I think it just gives you a little more freedom with the energy and making things over the top. You obviously still want to keep those grounded elements of all of the characters, but the fun part about animation is you can really push them to the limit. And you kind of can only do that in animation. If you tried to do that in live-action, it would probably be a little annoying. But in animation, it’s almost part and parcel with everything. So it gives you that freedom, which is nice.

JM: Absolutely. And this special also talks about dreams. There’s a scene in the first part where each character shares dreams and goals. Was animation always a dream for you? Was storytelling always a dream for you?

TH: Storytelling, definitely. Animation kind of just happened. And I’m glad it did, because it’s great, and I want to continue to work in it. I’ve always wanted to do something in this world, and thankfully, it’s worked out, which is great. But yeah, the dreams are a huge part of One Piece, and I think it’s such an important theme, especially now… This idea of coming together to help everyone achieve their dreams, as opposed to just trying to do it on your own, and the importance of that community to help you out, which is something that always kind of spoke to me about the property.

JM: Teamwork.

TH: Exactly.

JM: That’s a huge component when it comes to making animation as well. And now I think with what you’ve done with “Harley Quinn”, what you’ve done with this, you’re going to inspire kids and even adults to make things — to create things. Do you love having that kind of an impact and an inspiration with something like this on people?

TH: Yeah, it’s awesome. If I can get one person to get into this and love it and feel like they can do it, then that’s a success to me for sure.