Skullduggery – Brian, Derrick & Ed

Posted by Steve on 19 April 2010 | 3 Comments

Tell us about your sci-fi web series.

Ed: Skullduggery is an animated series adapted from an unpublished graphic novel by Brian and Derrick Belanger. It tells a good guys vs. bad guys tale featuring classic monsters in outer space. The show takes its visual cues and inspiration from a wide range of sources such as pop art and Hanna Barbera adventure/sci-fi cartoons of the 60s and 70s.

Where did the idea/concept for your web series come from?

Brian: Derrick and I had just self-published a trade paperback collection of our comic series Twenty-Three Skidoo! . While it got great reviews, the sales just weren't there. I was sitting at my desk, thinking I need to come up with a story that I'd enjoy working on AND appeal to a mass audience as well . Suddenly, I thought Classic movie monsters --- in SPACE ! The core concept and characters just pored out of me after that. From there, I gave Derrick my notes and sketches and he created an entire universe out of it.

Derrick: I liked the idea of having the most powerful corporation in the universe run by a vampire. Vampires are inherently evil, unless you include the current Twilight saga. The idea that a government would be so corrupt, they'd allow a vampire to run the wealthiest corporation in the universe and turn a blind eye to it, intrigued me. As for our heroes, the traditional Robin Hood story of the outlaw as hero is part of both British and American culture. After September 11th, the idea of a freedom fighter got turned on its head. Nowadays, Robin Hood would be called a terrorist. I wanted to right that notion and show you can have good guys rebelling against a government.

Name some of your sci-fi influences. Any favorite movies, TV shows, novels?

Brian: For storytelling and style, the biggest influence is Phil Foglio; for nuts n' bolts animation it's Alex Toth's work with Hanna-Barbera. From there, it'd be the collective works of Alan Moore, HP Lovecraft, Robert Anton Wilson, Spider Robinson, Harlan Ellison, Matt Howarth, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Stephen King, Richard Matheson, Grant Morrison, HG Wells, Brian Michael Bendis, J. Michael Straczynski, John Christopher; the entire run of Doctor Who (my favorite all-time series). Babylon 5, the original Land of the Lost series. The 60s and 80s Twilight Zones.

For movies, it would be everything they showed on Creature Double Feature on Channel 56 in Boston --- from the Universal horror movies like Dracula and The Mummy to the 50's atomic films like Them! and The Thing From Another World, and all the great Godzilla films. Anything by Ray Harryhausen! Heavy Metal: The Movie. TRON --- one of the most beautiful-looking and sounding films ever. All the great Alex Toth / Hanna Barbera series like Jonny Quest and Space Ghost --- Skullduggery owes a HUGE debt to Alex Toth.

Derrick: Naming all the sci-fi influences would fill several pages. Influences specific to this show include the works of Alan Moore, Robert Anton Wilson, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, and Isaac Asimov. For Television, Dr. Who is our main science fiction influence. Star Wars, 2001, and Dark City probably are the sci-fi films that are most influential. I would also include Marvel and DC comics and various stories and archetypes from world mythology as having an influence on us. I could go on and on (especially if we included influences from other genres).

Ed: My biggest influences are not so much sci-fi, but just filmmaking and storytelling in general. When it comes to sci-fi I tend to gravitate towards work that is very much grounded in the real world or might be referred to as speculative. The film Children of Men was a great example of that and such a fine film with relevant (and terrifying) messages about globalization and effects of migrating populations after disaster. Another realm I feel drawn to is something that has a rock solid and rich mythology to them, such as the recent Battlestar Galactica series I also love the incorporation of the occult and surrealism, as in The Illuminatus Trilogy novels.

All that said, I think it's a very exciting and influential time for new sci-fi output. There is a new generation of filmmakers and other kinds of storytellers who have grown up with all kinds of genres and seen bottom fall out from under the blockbuster philosophy, and as a result have put story, character, and canon before anything else. Personally, I think we've seen this in the Star Trek reboot, and we might have a amazing surprise in store for us with the coming Tron sequel.

Tell us about the technical production of your show. What camera & equipment did you use? Editing software & hardware? For visual effects, etc?

Ed: Skullduggery was essentially created using a combination of 2D and 3D digital animation, sometimes now referred to as 2.5D. However, refining our production process took some practice. We first spent a good amount of time storyboarding all shots. In some cases, shots could be transferred from page to screen, but more often than not they needed to be revamped for the camera. From there, I edited what was basically an animatic. Storyboard images were cut together in Final Cut Pro with the recorded dialogue tracks to get a better sense of timing, and what worked or need to be rethought.

The third part of the production process was then really the most intensive. Brian had to illustrate all artwork for characters, sets, and props. He frequently had to shift his approach, given that some shots only require a handful of still pieces, while others involving detailed character movement required illustrated assets for every frame of the shot (30 frames per second, multiplied by the length of the shot). We also spent many hours in director/actor sessions, discussing how characters need to move or look, and Brian churning out quick thumbnail sketches until we got it right before doing the finals.

As Brian finished artwork, he handed digitized versions over to me for the animation, and I plowed ahead. Almost everything was animated in After Effects, and then cut together in Final Cut Pro. One of the fun things about working this way, was that there were often little happy accidents and challenges that would actually make some shots even better.

The final step was doing the sound mix. Since none of us owned a sound effects library, we had to turn to what was out there and free. Nearly everything came from FreeSound (www.freesound.org). A huge thanks to the people who create and upload these valuable assets! In fact, I just heard the creepy drone from opening Skullduggery title screen in something else the other day.

Can you tell us any interesting facts or trivia about your show? Any funny stories?

Brian: Patch's outfit is a nod to Berni Wrightson's Captain Sternn. I always figured Sternn finally got his comeuppance and parts of his body were used to make Patch. Also, look for a Heterodyne trilobyte sigil from Phil & Kaja Foglio's Girl Genius series when Barlow smashes the alarm in episode 1.

Derrick: Originally, the show was to have the feel of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon show. Kane and his cronies were to be goofier and we even considered having musical segments.

Ed: Just that some of my favorite stuff in there happened unintentionally and in a pinch at the last minute. The part when the tip of Vincent's sectioned sword gets stuck and he has to shake it just happened in the moment and by tweaking animation. It got a laugh so it stayed.

We had committed to a very strict deadline to be finished with the first episode, and found ourselves having to trim the script a bit, as we were looking at a lot of additional art and animation hours. For example, TJ the security guard has a bigger scene at the beginning. There wasn't time to complete it, yet it made her appearance toward the end confusing, as we hadn't yet seen her character. The solution was a digital version of old Hollywood tricks. We took the set of the main jail cell, color corrected and reblocked it, and then added existing character artwork and a Guard On Duty sign. And bang, there was TJ who clearly was a guard on duty. When in doubt about character identity, put a sign over their head.

We also never addressed how the alarm would turn off after Patch and crew blast through the wall. In the animatic I had a placeholder sound effect for the alarm that just ran out arbitrarily. I think we all forgot about it. Of course, letting the real alarm run for another 3 to 4 minutes was a bit much. It suddenly made sense to have Barlow smash the control panel, which offset another issue. I wasn't totally happy with how he lunges at Patch. It felt awkward. Using the cutaway to the smashed control panel fit so well and became a nice springboard to lead into the action sequence.

You can find Skullduggery online here and on Twitter.

Skullduggery - SciFinal Page

More images from Skullduggery below: