Fresh on the heels of their two 2018 Tongies nominations (Best Series and Tongaler of the Year), we caught up with Something’s Awry, the production company behind the new Scooby-Doo Mystery Cases series for WB Kids.
Something’s Awry is a family business out of Landenberg, Pennsylvania. Brothers Kris, Kurtis, and Nik, along with their mother Amy, handle everything from writing and producing to animating and editing. The team first landed on Tongal in 2012, and since that time, have gone on to win countless Idea and Video Projects for brands such as Disney, LEGO, Mattel, and My/Mo Mochi Ice Cream. Their work is known for its smart humor and sharp editing, but we think this new Scooby-Doo series is one of their strongest showings yet!
It all began in late 2016 as a Concept for a new series, which moved into Pilot development before Something’s Awry got the green light to produce the rest of the 12-episode Series for the WB Kids YouTube channel. The first episode, below, was released on YouTube a week ago and new episodes will be airing online every week after. But, you can also download the Scooby-Doo Mystery Cases app on iTunes and Google Play to watch them a week earlier than everyone else!
The following interview was given by Amy Theorin of Something’s Awry and lightly edited for clarity.
Marissa: From Ideation to shooting the Pilot to writing and animating a total of twelve 90-second episodes, this series was over a year in the making. How does it feel to finally have the episodes unleashed on the world?
Amy of Something’s Awry: There was never really a final “pencil’s-down” moment with the project so it’s hard to say whether the fact that it is over has hit us yet. The episodes are being released throughout the year so we actually have not seen them online! As far as production went, we just kept going through the process and checking things off the to-do list until suddenly there was nothing left to check off and we were just like “huh, that’s weird.”
M: What drew you to this project in particular? Are you fans of the old Scooby-Doo cartoons or the newer live-action films?
SA: My children grew up with Scooby-Doo and we have always been fans of the series, more so the older cartoons probably. We felt the project fit well with our strengths and our animation style and who wouldn’t want to write for Scooby-Doo?
M: Something’s Awry is a family business. Outside of the core members, did you bring on additional collaborators to help you create this series? If so, what roles did they play?
SA: Yes! This project really took a whole team of people to bring to life. Of course, we had our core family team members who played various roles: Kurtis wrote all the episodes and directed the live action parts, Kris did all the storyboards, animation, editing, sound design and special effects for each episode, Nik did all the casting (15 kids from hundreds of submissions) and I produced the series, booked all the locations, hired crew and communicated with the team at Warner Bros. and Tongal.
All of our stop-motion sets were built by the team at White Horse Studios, an artist local to us who creates miniatures. In addition to our wonderful child actors, we had a fabulous live action team that handled on-set filming, sound, set dressing, hair and makeup, craft services, wardrobe, and paperwork.
Lastly, we hired our marvelous narrator John McCann through Voices.com and utilized the talents of our go-to composer Nick Angeloni who created custom music for each episode. This was particularly challenging because in true Scooby-Doo fashion each episode has plenty of pratfalls, chase scenes and very specific ‘beats’ that he had to hit each time. They all did a great job!
M: Each episode is bookended by live-action scenes of children making up their own stories with the Scooby-Doo action figures, and stop-motion animation is used to illustrate their imagination at play. This is such a clever conceit and you seamlessly brought the two elements together! Who came up with this idea and, as you’re mostly known on Tongal for animation, what was it like directing children?
SA: It has been so long I can’t really remember who came up with the initial idea, though I will give credit to Kurtis for making it seem seamless in each script. We did feel it fit nicely with the premise of giving the viewer a glimpse into the imagination of the children. And yes, we are mostly known for stop-motion animation on Tongal but we actually have a lot of experience working in live action and with kids so it wasn’t that difficult once we were on set and had everything organized and ready to go. All of our child actors did a great job and were easy to work with - I think because we really make an effort to keep the experience fun for them.
M: Which scene or episode from the series are you most proud of?
SA: It’s hard to pick. We got to do the classic Scooby-Doo hallway of doors scene which was great. There is also a scene where Shaggy and Scooby ice skate in circles around the monster until they cut a hole in the ice and he falls into the pond. We felt that was very much with the Scooby-Doo brand of humor and the delicate music Nick did for the scene makes it even funnier.
M: I know stop-motion is your forte but were any scenes particularly difficult to pull off? Did you need to learn any new techniques along the way?
SA: Our main issue was more in the amount of animation we had to do than having difficulty with any particular part. Though the project lasted for over a year, the majority of animation was done over the course of a few months.
In addition to the stop-motion animation, we used a technique of animating real images of the figures in a two-dimensional format in order to create shots that are far more dynamic than they would be otherwise. This is our largest project to date and we have to give Kris a lot of credit for getting all the animation, VFX, sound design and editing done on time. Normally a project like this would have a team of animators, editors and VFX people working on it I think, but he did it all while going to college full-time!
M: When you’re not busy working on Tongal projects, what do you do for fun?
SA: We like to travel, go to shows, play games and watch lots of movies!
M: What can we expect from your team next? And where can fans keep up with your work?
SA: We are very excited to have been picked to work on the Wrinkle in Time Short Film project on Tongal and we have a few other projects in the works, some of our own design and some for other toy companies.
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