“Robot chicken“Don’t be the first stop-motion comedy show with commercial toys for sketches, but the show has now been longer than anyone involved in what could ever have expected. For co -creators Seth Greenthe original driving force for what would become ‘Robot chicken“Be a fairly simple wish.
“We didn’t intend to make a show, and in particular were not going to do a show that would last long,” Green told IndieWire for the 20th anniversary of Adult swimming Animated skis comedy -show. “My partner Matt Senreich and I tried to find out how to do just animated skis comedy with toys. I thought it was really fun. “Twenty years later, and” Robot Chicken “is still popular. It has over 200 episodes, has parodated everything from “Sesame Street” and “He-Man” to “Star Wars” and “Pokémon”, and received two Annie awards and Sex Emmys.
The world looks very different from when “robot chicken” began in terms of pop culture and parodies’ condition, but also the state of STOP motion as an art form and the technology available to do so. By the time the show started, it had just been a major progress in a unit that enabled animators to look at the sequence of frames that they had just shot in real time and switched back a couple of frames so you could have a symmetry of action. At that time, “Robot Chicken” was produced by Shadowmachine (the studio that would continue to make Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning “Pinocchio”) before eventually switching to an internal studio founded by Green and Senreich.
“We have been lucky enough to do the show for such a longer time that we have been able to find out many things,” Green reminded. “The technology has improved when it comes to the cameras we can use, computers that we can use. We have calculated how we make our dolls easier and how we build sets that we can reuse over time. We can only build new systems or take advantage of new technology to be able to do something to the pace and pace for the price they gave us as we needed. “
Although “Robot Chicken” now uses 3D printing for doll production and has larger and more ambitious sketches, the breath remains in the original shorts, with commercially available toys off the shelf still a core element in the sketches. For green, the most important thing is that the sketches feel tactile and real. “STOP motion gives you access to an interpretation of your brain because we use real film lenses and real film lighting,” said the co-creator. “Your eye sees a real structure, a real physical thing, the actual shadows.”
The feeling of changing with times while they remain so close to what it was in the beginning is integrated into “robot chicken”, not just in terms of production for the stop movement animation But also the approach to pop cultural parodies. Compared to 2005, when Green said the authors struggled to source toys or prove to their lawyers that something existed for parody, the emergence of Youtube and social media means that nothing remains niche anymore. But even in the time since the show first has the premiere, we have seen the increase in superheroes such as the dominant film form, the emergence of anime and a huge change in what defines popular culture. For green, this has only made it easier.
“When the show first started, many things we talk about were quite unclear,” Green said. “So the pulp reception and general knowledge of many of these pop icons just make it easier for us to make it jokes about it.”
Yet it is not like the emergence of Marvel means that Green and his team want to be relevant to the new trends in the film world – on the contrary. According to Green, what makes “Robot Chicken” different from other skis comedy -such as “Saturday Night Live” that they do not go after current events. Instead, they look at what is stuck with them from childhood, what they remember most about some franchises and TV showing and their questions about what happened the next.
“We like to explore what is exactly, take everything you know about a property and then ask a question that is perfectly reasonable to ask,” Green said. “There were lots of deliberate messages, animated or otherwise, in things from when we were children. It was even more common in the 80s, but regardless, regardless of its good intentions, we remained with questions. That is what we are trying to answer in the show. “
“Robot Chicken” can of course deal with topical substances. But the increase in social media means that anyone can make an animated parody in the style of the show, especially in STOP motion. As Guillermo del Toro once said“It’s the only technique that a young animator can do with very few resources on his own.”
“We are definitely aware of the fact that many people can beat us to send with a joke,” Green said. “Our show takes about a year to really get it from script to screen and someone can just shoot something on their iPhone, so we really have to make sure our jokes are not the joke that everyone else thinks about.”
It has actually been a good long time since “Robot Chicken” has been able to come with several episodes at a time in a consistent schedule. The last time we had new episodes was back in 2022, and when Green sees it, it may well be the last episodes ever of the show. “I can say with some certainty that I don’t think we will ever do a whole season of” robot chicken “. I don’t think we will ever make another 20 blocks of the hour. What I expect we will continue Making half an hour’s special offers that are dedicated to a specific property. “A big reason for this is that, as Green puts it, is that adult swimming has become” less and less important for the business toad “, regardless of success.
The latest “Robot Chicken” special, which coincides with the 20th anniversary, is a parody of Discovery Channel, especially reality shows such as “90 -day hubby.” Although it may not be exactly what fans can expect, Green sees this as an opportunity to prove to money people that the show is worth staying and continuing to handle different aspects of pop culture. “I look at what ‘South Park’ has done with their special offers,” Green said. “They have been really effective, and each individual special has made money for the parent company and marketing for their streaming platform. I think this is where we should start to fit in. “
