July 24th, 2021 
Jackson Murphy 
It’s Day Two of San Diego Comic-Con @Home 2021! Animation virtual panels continue to dominate. Here are the Saturday Highlights:
Popular voice actor Eric Bauza opened up the HBO Max Looney Tunes Cartoons presentation by doing a Bugs Bunny & Marvin the Martian scene on Zoom! So far there have been 40 “LTC” episodes of over 80 shorts and according to Bauza, “We’ve barely scratched the surface.” Executive Producer and showrunner Pete Browngardt shared his thoughts on the reaction to the series so far: “I’m always afraid [that] everyone’s gonna hate everything I make. Any kind of positivity was really welcomed and felt good. Halfway through I started to realize how proud I was of everyone’s work on the show. I really thought that if these things could go out untouched then I think people would react and feel positive about what we were creating. It makes me feel good that I made good choices…” A new back to school “Looney Tunes Cartoons” special drops on Thursday August 19th. A Halloween one may be on the way too.
A LOT of big news from The Simpsons panel. First, Al Jean explained how the shorts (mostly starring Maggie) came to be. “Jim Brooks wanted to do original shorts for different Disney+ entities like Marvel… the first one was Star Wars and we have one… with Bart as Loki and Lisa as Thor.” The first real short in the modern era was the Oscar nominated “The Longest Daycare”, which was released in theaters in July 2012. As director David Silverman explained, “We got that one done very quickly because it had to be out for Ice Age 4.”
Now come the major reveals: Matt Selman says the Season 33 premiere Sept. 26 on FOX is “the most musical episode we’ve ever done. Almost wall to wall music. It’s like a Broadway musical of an episode. All original songs.” Kristen Bell provides Marge’s singing voice. Jean then announced that, for the first time ever, there will be FIVE segments during this year’s “Treehouse of Horror” episode. One was shown in its entirety, featuring Maggie and special guest Maurice LaMarche.
Selman then said that around the end of November, “there will be a two-part epic love letter to prestige crime dramas” and popular streaming series – featuring “a dream guest cast of streaming acting superstars”, including Timothy Olyphant and Brian Cox. And to wrap it all up, as the gang played virtual Pictionary, none other than Matt Groening appeared to take part in the fun!
Disney TV Animation packed its hour-long slot. First a new clip from upcoming series The Ghost and Molly McGeeAmphibia and The Owl House with creators Matt Braly and Dana Terrace, respectively. (I met them both at the last in-person New York Comic-Con in Oct. 2019). “Owl” art director Ricky Cometa joined them.
Then a host of voice actors (including Bill Farmer and Brenda Song) appeared for a special Amphibia/Owl House crossover table read. Wendie Malick, the voice of Eda on “Owl”, even did her lines from a recording booth. She talked about her character: “She just dances to her own drum. The fact that she has called together this little family… this little group of friends… that are so strange and so wonderful… it’s just such a great example that there is a place for everyone out there. And she prides herself on not being a conformist. And particularly for young people – but for adults too – that’s such a reminder that… everybody needs to figure out what makes you tick. What makes you uniquely you? And who can you find that will celebrate that? And how can you spend time with those people who empower you?”
Warner Bros. and HBO Max are gearing-up for the premiere of Jellystone! this Thursday July 29th. Before showing a clip from an upcoming episode, creator C.H. Greenblatt discussed the show’s origins: “WB came to me and said ‘Do you wanna play with the Hanna-Barbera characters?’ And I said, ‘Yeah! Of course I do!’ The original idea was that we were gonna create a bunch of shorts, similar to what they were doing with the Looney Tunes shorts.” Greenblatt began flushing out the world and soon unleashed “a little universe of Hanna-Barbera characters. Some are very familiar. Some are kind of re-mixed so they can fit a more modern sensibility.” He later added, “You’re not gonna really mess with who Yogi Bear and Top Cat are. They feel very much like the kind of characters you remember.”
Craig of the Creek is one of Cartoon Network’s most popular animated series. It has also been Daytime Emmy nominated for the past two years in the Outstanding Children’s Animated Series category. Co-creator Ben Levin talked about how “COTC” has grown over the past three seasons. “Everything’s evolved exponentially. We just had this basic idea when we made the Pilot and everyone who came onto the show added a little bit… and expanded who these characters are.” Season 4 is coming soon!
Central Park recently earned Primetime Emmy Awards nominations for voice performances from Stanley Tucci and Tituss Burgess. New episodes from Season 2 are currently streaming on AppleTV+. Co-creator Loren Bouchard calls Josh Gad’s busker Birdie “a bit of a magical character”. Gad, the two-time Annie Award winning star of Frozen, is also a “CP” co-creator and had this to say about Birdie: “We thought there would be something really fun about a narrator who’s not quite great at his job… who also may or may not have definity to him. And he represents the purity of love… devotion of love as it pertains to this very special family, The Tillermans.” “Central Park” has already been renewed for Season 3.
Nickelodeon’s The Patrick Star Show (which airs new episodes on Fridays at 7pm) held a special panel featuring a cast table read of episode “Stair Wars”. Bill Fagerbakke, who has lent his voice to Patrick since “SpongeBob SquarePants” began in 1999, offered-up this take about the Star spinoff: “I don’t have a sense of chronology with him. He’s just kind of this big gelatinous, gooey mess of impulses. And he is where he is. It’s all a part of this wonderful world that morphed out of Stephen Hillenburg’s brain through [the brains of EPs] Vincent Waller and Marc Ceccarelli and plopped into our laps. What a delicious romp it all is!”
The 20th Season of Family Guy begins this Fall on FOX. Seth MacFarlane, his fellow castmates and crew members took part in a virtual trivia game to see who could get the most “FG” trivia questions right. No surprise that with 28 out of 30 correct answers, MacFarlane was the winner! Ryan Budds served as host. During a brief break, upcoming guest stars were announced, including Justin Hartley, Zachary Levi, Jay Pharoah, Mike Judge and Kenny Loggins as himself. Six minutes of footage of S20 is on the “FG” social media pages.
And to conclude Day Two was fellow MacFarlane series American Dad! New episodes air Mondays at 10pm on TBS. For this panel, fans were treated to an entire upcoming episode called “The Sinister Fate!!” – broken down into three parts. Act I is the table read with some of the cast, which was filmed over Zoom in March 2020. Act II is the animatics. And Act III is the color treatment, though it’s not the final version. There’s no music and only some temporary sound effects. Overall: very cool!
There are three more panels tomorrow to wrap-up SDCC@Home 2021. Look for coverage right here on Animation Scoop!
- INTERVIEW: Strap In For “Mars Express” - April 30, 2024
- INTERVIEW: Jeff Fowler On “Knuckles” And “Sonic 3” - April 22, 2024
- INTERVIEW: “Inside Out 2” Director And Producer On Pixar Sequel - April 16, 2024
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