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From Fairly Odd-Parents To The Garden: A Life In Animation With Butch Hartman · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
• 0:10
  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I
• 0:16
  spend half my time as an author and the other half running the centre and today we're
• 0:21
  taking an expedition into the world of animation because we have with us as a guest
• 0:28
  Artman. Now I'm sure that people listening to this will have at some point seen one of your cartoons.
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  So perhaps you'd like a bit about your background as a creative and your journey into animation.
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  Well Julia, I love your accent so much. I'll do whatever you tell me. So what would you like?
• 0:48
  What would you like to know first? Where should I start? Let me guess. Did it start as
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  a little butchered school doodling away in the margins of his books when he was talking to his
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  maths? You must have been hovering over my shoulder. Yes, absolutely. I think with a lot of artists
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  and a lot of kids. A people who grow into adulthood doing art, it absolutely starts when you're a kid.
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  And I started doing it when I was a youth. I remember one of my most vivid memories I was in
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  kindergarten and our teacher told us to draw a picture of her. Draw a picture of me. So all the
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  kids are drawing a picture of the teacher. And I thought nothing of it. I just drew it and my
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  teacher started raving about it. I'll never forget this. And she starts raving about it and kind of
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  got my attention and their pictures. And she actually went out in the hallway and showed the other
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  teachers that she loved the picture so much. And I realized my little tiny mind at that point.
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  I realized I could get attention from adults at that point. And so I thought, well, if I could just
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  keep drawing, I could get attention. So I actually kept drawing because I liked it. And then I loved
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  cartoons here in America. We had Saturday morning cartoons. So I'd watch cartoons all the time and I would
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  try and draw them. There was no way to freeze the television image at that time either. You couldn't
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  stop or pause. So I would draw as fast as I would draw Fred Flintstone and Scooby Doo as fast as I could.
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  Learned how to basically practice off television. All my other friends are outside playing baseball or
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  playing sports. But I never had any interest in that. I just wanted to be inside drawing all the time.
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  So were you also reading comics at the same time as watching the cartoons on TV?
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  Oh, yes. I love comic books. I'm a huge comic book fan. I have a bunch of comic book drawings
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  behind me here that I've done on my own. But I'm a very huge fan of characters like Spider-Man and
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  Superman and Batman and those kind of characters. And I love what I loved a lot about those that
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  wasn't just the drawing, although I would always criticize the artist, you know, as a little kid.
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  But I love the storytelling. And that's what I really fell in love with. And I think
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  every artist should know that no matter what you do as an artist, you're always telling a story.
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  Whether you're writing a story or painting a picture, there's always a great story to be told.
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  And people love stories. All of us do. Right now, you and I are telling a story. So people love it.
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  And if you could tell it well, you'll really, I think, be very successful.
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  Okay. So let's tell the story of that little boy in the classroom.
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  It leaves the classroom. What happens next for him?
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  Normally I got beat up by the other kids. But then after the beating, I would go, now I'm kidding.
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  I would, no, I lived in, I grew up in Michigan here in the States. And I loved art. I didn't,
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  but I wanted to get on television. I wanted to be in the TV world with all my, on my heroes
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  that I love so much. But I didn't know how to get on television. It's all very untouchable.
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  When you're a child and when you're in Michigan, especially, how do I get in there?
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  I found out about a college in California called California Institute of the Arts or Cal Arts,
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  for short. It's founded by Walt Disney back in the 70s. And they actually had a character
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  animation class at that school. So I got to be 18 years old, didn't know where I wanted to go
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  to college. And one of my friends was actually going to that college and once you come to this
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  college and I looked into it, he had to submit a portfolio of art to get into the school. It was
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  very high level school of art. And so I had to get what they call a realistic portfolio. I had to
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  show my realistic drawings, like human figures and animal figures and things. So I'd go to the
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  Detroit Zoo in the dead of winter because you can get in for free. I'd go into the Detroit,
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  I'd be like the only one in the zoo and I would draw the tigers and pandas or pandas. I'd draw
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  whatever animals were in the zoo. I would draw them and ended up coming up with a portfolio that
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  got me in. I got into the school and I went in 1983. I went to college in California.
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  But the best part about that was I got into an atmosphere of people
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  who were doing exactly what I love to do. And I would have other animators, other writers,
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  other actors. They were all kinds of artists there. And I always tell people if you want to get
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  into your chosen profession, start hanging out with people that do what you want to do. Do what you
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  love. Because if you want to be a baseball player, you don't hang out with hockey players. You
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  hang out with other baseball players. You hang out with people that do what you like. You want to
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  be a musician. You hang out with musicians. I wanted to be an animator. And my dream was to work
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  for Disney. And I've never worked for Disney. That's the only place I've never worked. But I worked
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  everywhere else. But I ended up learning the craft of vanishing and drawing and art and all that
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  type of stuff. And the main thing about that school though, it had connections in the industry.
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  It had people that were in the industry coming and going. You could always meet them and talk
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  with them and get in your head. How do I do this? So if you want to learn how to get into any
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  industry, again, get connections in that industry. Yeah, hang out with the people who are hopefully
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  going into it as well. Yeah, exactly. If you can. Yeah. So, okay. You do make that transfer into
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  the industry. And perhaps we should talk about some of your major products. The one that I know
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  best, because my kids watched it, is the fairy of parents. Fairly odd. Yes. Yeah.
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  I'm finding that out. Does that come fairly late on? How do you started working on others?
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  What was the running order of? Well, the way. Oh, that's a great question. The way it worked for me was
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  I was in the animation industry. I got in the animation. I was in school in 1983. In 1986,
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  I left school and got into the animation industry. I got in as a character designer,
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  which is basically like, if you're going to cast a movie, what sort of a, I think my picture is
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  frozen there. No, I'm still here. Okay. But if you want to, let's say you want to cast a movie
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  or an actor, what you want to do is you want to have auditions and you want to get different people
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  to come in. But as a character designer, that's what you do is you have people. You draw different
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  characters. You draw, you know, if there's a bulldog or a cat or whatever, I'll draw several
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  different versions and that'll be the one the producer chooses to be in the show is this cat
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  lazy, energetic or whatever. So I got in as a character designer and then I learned how to do that.
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  I learned how to do backgrounds, which is set designing. Basically, I learned how to do writing.
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  So by the time the fairly odd parents rolled around, I knew how to do everything. And that's really what
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  I was, I was very, I benefited a lot from my, about 15 years in the industry and then I sold my
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  first show, which is the fairly odd parents. Yeah. That's absolutely brilliant. And it shows the,
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  you know, it's not instant success. You have to do your time learning the tricks of the trade.
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  So people are wanting animation. It's much better to have a realistic expectation. You've got to
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  do, you've got to do the graft. Well, there's that there's a price to pay and with everything.
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  And that's not a bad price to pay. The price you pay benefits you. It's like going to the gym.
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  You know, everybody wants an amazing physique, but you can't get it unless you put the work in.
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  You know, you can't eat donuts all day long and think you're going to look amazing. You have to
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  go and do the work. You've got to set a certain lifestyle as well. I had to really realize that,
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  you know, I can't just go to where I've got to get up early. I've got to be ready. I've got to be
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  creative because my job, every animator's job, every writer, artists, whoever, their job starts with
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  a blank piece of paper. And I have to fill this piece of paper with something that someone's
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  going to pay me for at the end of the day. And that really is what the challenge is. And people
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  don't realize that. People go, well, I just want to, you know, draw pictures and set up my desk.
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  Well, you can do that. You can totally do that if you're good at that. Great. But I encourage people
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  to get more out of themselves. You're not just an artist. You're a storyteller. You're a producer.
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  You could come up with your own show as well. I love, you know, a lot of people want to be like
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  someone who sells a show like you said. I want to sell my own show, but they don't know what goes
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  into it. It's so much more that goes into it than just drawing funny pictures.
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  Yeah. So obviously animation by nature of the freedom you have to draw anything you can imagine.
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  Fits really well with stories which have a real core of fantasy, magic, dragons, unbelievable creatures,
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  you know, that stuff. Was there any ones that you felt as growing up were inspiration on the
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  style that you adopted? Because obviously there's lots that you enjoyed. Was there one way you
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  thought, yeah, that's the kind of direction I'm going in? Oh, well, you know, I was very influenced
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  by Saturday Morning Television. You know, I really had a huge respect and admiration and love for
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  Disney films, animated films. I loved lots of comedy, lots of sitcoms and things like that,
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  comic books. But I really, my drawing style was really influenced by Saturday Morning,
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  Hanover Barra, like the Flintstones, Scooby Doo, the Jetsons, Johnny Quest. There was a bunch of
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  great Hanover Barra, you know, the super friends shows that I grew up watching really got influenced
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  by that. And I ended up going into the television animation industry because to me, the movie industry,
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  to work at Disney, you had to work on movies at the back of the time, back at that time you had to
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  work on movies. And you would, if you worked on a movie, it was like a four-year gig, you'd work on
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  a movie and be the same story for four years. You would do maybe three or four scenes in the movie,
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  five scenes, whatever, six scenes. And you'd do that movie. I am a much more hyperactive person.
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  I wanted to tell more than one story. So working in television, I got to tell one story every week.
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  I could do a different story every week, maybe every two weeks, and that to me was a lot more fun.
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  Presumably, it's a collaborative process once you get into making a series that is not just you
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  on your own drawing everything. Oh, everybody. I mean, you have, you know, you've, you've, you've
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  never set the end of a television series and seen the list of credits to go by. There are hundreds,
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  maybe sometimes it's dozens, but sometimes it's hundreds of people that work on these things.
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  For my series in Nickelodeon, my, my multiple shows I did, we had dozens and dozens of people
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  helping us. I could never have done it alone. Now, there is a visionary at the top that was me for
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  these shows. I'd say, here's what I'm thinking. What do you guys think? And they would go, well,
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  maybe this, maybe this. Okay, what if we did this? Because when the network comes you and says,
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  we want a three hour special, we want a three hour special. Yeah, we want to air over the course
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  of three weeks, an hour, hour, hour. Okay, what kind of story is that? How do you tell a story like that?
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  What's the beginning, middle and end? You know, how do you keep the audience interested?
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  We got to sit on and talk about that. And then once you get that down, okay, what are the characters?
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  What are the designs? Who's the actors? You know, can we get this celebrity to be in all that sort
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  of stuff? So it'd be, it really starts taking off at that point. Yeah, so lots of people listening to
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  this are actually writers or people aspiring to go into the industry. Good. I'm interested in the,
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  so you start a sort of structural discussion about the kind of story you're telling before you
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  get to character design or yeah, it all starts with what we call the premise. And you know,
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  what what back in Nickelodeon what we would do and most studios do this, you will come up. They'll
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  say buy your show from you, which is a gigantic thing. If someone sells a show, that's a humongous
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  accomplishment. Number one, but number two, you have to learn how to not only make your show well,
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  make it on time, make it good and play the political game in the studio. There's politics to go
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  into it as well. You might have someone who bought your show and why as a huge champion versus an
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  executive, but then that executive leaves and another executive comes in and they might not have even
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  had anything to do with your show. And they could care less about it and they want to get you
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  off the air and you're like, no, wait, our shade. So there's all that that goes on behind the scenes
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  as well. But the creative process starts with we would do a premise. Okay, what's our premise today?
• 12:03
  Timmy Turner. He's a little boy. What's a relatable thing a little boy goes through? Okay,
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  just want to get a haircut. Okay, that's funny. Kids don't like haircuts. So he wishes because he
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  has magic fairies. He wishes for indestructible hair. Oh, that's really funny. No one can cut his hair.
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  Then what happens? Okay, what about if nothing can cut his hair? At first, it's really amazing
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  because it looks beautiful, but then the hair gets so out of control it takes over the city.
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  That's great. Okay, that's funny. Okay, and then you just kind of go into that sort of a thing.
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  All right. And then you have to write a script and you have to make sure it's funny and make sure
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  the actors are funny. And you know, by the time the actors get into record the show, you've already
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  been working on the script for months. So an actor comes in and they want to add funny things to it too.
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  And if they do, if it's funny, I was told the actors, if you can add something funnier than what we
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  have, I'm all for it. But if it's just something different, we don't, you don't get to do that.
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  We worked on the script for a month. Do you do have the voices then do the animation or
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  where around? Oh, no, no, we always do the animation first. And they're doing it to them. Oh,
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  no, I take it back. I take that back. Oh, everyone's going to kill me. I said the wrong thing. We do
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  the voices first. Yeah, then we animate to the voices. I apologize. I said that wrong. Yes,
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  we do the voices first. Then we animate to the voices. For sure, there's some kind of crude,
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  I'm not that crude, but some kind of previous kind of thing that they're aware of.
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  A little bit. Yeah, sometimes, sometimes the actors need it. Sometimes they don't.
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  You can have a storyboard ready to show the actors. If you're doing a movie, they most certainly
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  have a storyboard usually. They'll show the actors. But and they'll have a script. All the actor
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  really needs a script and maybe a drawing with the character looks like to kind of into it.
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  But once the character, once when you were going to show as long as I did with fairly odd
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  parents, that show ran for 18 years. By the time, you know, 10 years in, they didn't need
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  storyboards anymore. They just knew the characters so well. They didn't need it anymore.
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  So I would imagine that it's a mixed picture, but for you as a writer, is your
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  or creator, is your instinct to start with a character or a premise? So, for example,
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  you know, the fairly odd parents, magical, godparents, is I can imagine where that came from?
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  Whereas something else might be, I've got an idea for a really good like a little character
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  who will hold the show. Well, the main thing you have to realize when you're coming up with any
• 14:21
  character is will anybody will anybody care about this character? Why would anybody care?
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  Like right now, if I ask you to name me or maybe one of your top five movies, give me one of
• 14:30
  your top five movies, and it doesn't have to be the right movie, just tell me what you're
• 14:33
  talking about. I still think redemption. Shaw Shank Redemption is a fantastic example. The reason
• 14:38
  you love that movie, first of all, it's a great story, it's a fantastic story, but the characters
• 14:42
  in that movie are great, you know, you've got Andy Dufrein and Morgan Freeman's character Red.
• 14:47
  Those, those are the characters we follow through the story, and you love, you care about those
• 14:51
  characters, you care about them. And at the ending, when they hug on the beach, you know, I'm
• 14:55
  giving it away, but you haven't seen it by now. Sorry. But when they finally reunite in the beach,
• 15:02
  you just you start crying. It's like, thank God, you know, it's an amazing story. And that,
• 15:07
  that story grabs you because the people there's stakes in that story like, what are the characters
• 15:11
  going through? What's at stake? What's the risk? What do they have to lose? That is a story that
• 15:16
  really grips you. Like I could, I could tell you this like Star Wars, for example, the very first
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  Star Wars movie, great movie, because you have Luke Skywalker, he's the young idealistic kid,
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  you know, he's innocent, and then you have Han Solo, the kind of grizzled smuggler guy, and the
• 15:30
  princess who we think is just this, you know, helpless female, but she's really a kick butt girl
• 15:35
  who doesn't take any junk, you know. There's great characters in that show, and that's why you love
• 15:41
  that, because how many other sci-fi movies can you name that you can't even name characters from?
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  So, I can't name characters from, because my
• 15:49
  I'm, there's a million films. His galaxy quest. Oh, fantastic film, fantastic film. Yeah,
• 15:56
  the characters are funny. Yeah, it's probably the best Alan Rickman role ever.
• 16:01
  Oh, he's so great. He's, I have an Alan Rickman impression I can do. He's, he talks sort of
• 16:06
  like this killer. I mean, John McLean, you know, but Mr. Potter, but I, I think that's a great
• 16:15
  movie, too, because the characters are great. And that's why, because again, like I said,
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  for Star Wars, how many other sci-fi movies have been made that no one cares about? Doesn't matter
• 16:23
  about the ships or the effects, it just matters about the characters. And if you can add good
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  effects around it at the same time, that makes a great story. Yeah, something that's just situational,
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  so well. Well, Harry Potter, Harry Potter is hugely popular because people love the characters,
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  you know, they love the characters. And there's a lot of other stories about kids with powers and
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  things like that that, for some reason, just didn't resonate as well, because the characters
• 16:50
  aren't that great. There's even low-budget movies with great characters that people love,
• 16:53
  like Napoleon Dynamite. Have you ever seen that movie, Napoleon Dynamite? I haven't
• 16:56
  known. That movie was made for like $400,000. And I think they made it over a weekend,
• 17:02
  but it made so much money, because it's hysterically funny, because the characters are funny in it,
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  you know? The one for me that's a bit like that is Billy Elliot, which kind of then
• 17:12
  being an independent kind of filming film. Yes, but now it's a stage show. Because it resonates
• 17:22
  with audiences, because they love that character. Wizard of Oz is another one. You love
• 17:29
  their own magical land, but you love the lion. Come on, put them up, put them up, you love that,
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  and you love the 10 men and the scarecrow and Dorothy. I mean, they're just wonderful characters.
• 17:39
  Well, I think it's clear that we're really about characters here. That's, I mean, that's
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  the way I've written it. Well, it has to be. It has to be. I'll point out Spider-Man,
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  because I'm a comic book nerd. There's a million superheroes out there, but for some reason,
• 17:54
  Spider-Man resonates because he's a kid. He's not an adult. He can't pay his rent. He
• 18:00
  lives with his aunt. He's got homework to do. You know, he's got problems. And oh, by the way,
• 18:06
  he just so happens to have superpowers, you know, which is a, which at the time was a twist
• 18:11
  that had never been done before. Yeah. I mean, I've been very fond of the Spider-Man films,
• 18:15
  but probably my favorite sequence is when the Toby McGuire character puts his costume in the
• 18:20
  washing machine and watch everything go pink. And you think, yes, I've been there. That's totally
• 18:26
  funny. Exactly. It's great. Like, what the heck? It's really funny. Yeah. Because before,
• 18:30
  before that time, all the superheroes were billionaires and people, other lives were together,
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  and everything was perfect. And oh, by the way, they're super handsome, super, you know,
• 18:39
  I'm talking about it. Yeah. So to add some added dose of reality, it always helps, I think.
• 18:45
  So, um, thinking about one of the big of differences, which I'm not aware of so much,
• 18:51
  is the technical demands of what you're doing. And obviously found the whole kind of creation
• 18:58
  of the way they make cartoons has changed so much over the course of your career from sort of 2D
• 19:06
  and now this sort of motion capture world, which I think has really been driven mainly by the gaming
• 19:12
  making games, but also, you know, high budget films, but it's now getting cheaper.
• 19:17
  For you, what do you think? How's this affected your storytelling, if at all?
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  And what do you feel people should be thinking to expect in the future? A mixed culture,
• 19:28
  are we going to be going more and more cartoon real? And kind of that odd thing like that tinting
• 19:34
  that, um, oh, yeah, yeah, you know, um, I think there's some amazing technology out there. I sort of,
• 19:43
  I sort of put it this way sometimes. It's like, it's like the way cars are built. You know,
• 19:47
  a car is designed to get you from point A to point B, right? But you can get there in a very
• 19:52
  fancy way, like a Tesla, or you can get there in a very basic way, like a pickup truck from
• 19:57
  1950. But the car, it's all designed to do is to transport you.
• 20:03
  Stories are the same way. You can do it in a very fancy way. You could do it like Pixar,
• 20:07
  you could do it with, um, you know, all the bells and whistles of a Pixar movie.
• 20:12
  Or you can do it very simply with stick figures or black and white that does for some reason,
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  touches, touches people's hearts. They want to see it again. The medium to me doesn't matter
• 20:22
  as much as the story does. And, um, again, I'll point out Pixar. Pixar, who does, who tells wonderful
• 20:29
  stories, like toy stories, one of my favorite movies of all time. But then once Toy Story came out,
• 20:34
  people said, oh, that's how we're going to do movies from now on. We're going to do it with
• 20:37
  computers. That's the ticket. But how many bad movies have been made with computers? There's
• 20:42
  terrible ones, you know, out of the tent, named 10 computerized movies, only two of them were good.
• 20:47
  Eight of them are bad. No one remembers them, you know? So it's, that comes down to the story as
• 20:51
  well. Like I could say Buzz Lightyear, you're like, oh, I know that character. You know who that is.
• 20:55
  You know, um, like right now, I challenge you. This, this is going back to Star Wars.
• 21:00
  Name me one character from the movie Rogue One. You probably can't.
• 21:05
  Um, you can't, right? Because the lead character.
• 21:11
  Right, right. That's the perfect. You should give them the sort of, um,
• 21:14
  general, a single syllable name, and then I forget them. I know exactly. So, I mean, you'll,
• 21:20
  you'll see that, um, character is the most important thing. And, and I'm, I'm all four doing
• 21:26
  things in new mediums and making them look amazing, like the Matrix, the one that movie came out,
• 21:30
  the new technology they had in that. And, um, you know, uh, just doing a Jurassic Park when that
• 21:37
  came out, um, the way that it was in that at the time was groundbreaking. It's wonderful to have
• 21:41
  new technology. But at the end of the day, it comes down due to people care about these characters.
• 21:46
  You know, back to the, back to the futures, another example of a great story with great characters,
• 21:50
  you know, Marty McFly, you went ahead with him and the doc. What a great relationship they had,
• 21:55
  you know, and they're just funny. Yeah, very much an old couple that they're living great.
• 21:59
  So you've hinted that it's, um, a tricky industry to be in as many of these very
• 22:05
  intensively competitive industries are, um, if someone's out there in their bedroom thinking,
• 22:13
  I'd like to try my hand at getting into that industry. Can you give them some tips about how to,
• 22:17
  you know, build up their defenses for what they might meet?
• 22:22
  Oh, absolutely. Character qualities that help.
• 22:26
  You're, you're, okay, your, your best defense is being good at what you do.
• 22:29
  If you're good at, if you're good at what you do, that is 80% of the battle. Because if you
• 22:35
  have a product, you see, the thing is you're going into an industry that's going to pay you
• 22:39
  something. And, and I know it's all about the art and, you know, I, I meet a lot of artists go,
• 22:43
  I don't need to make any money. I go, well, that's fine. Okay. I hope you don't, I hope you do
• 22:46
  great. Good for you. But you want to do it in the industry and be an artist in the industry and
• 22:50
  be a storyteller and get paid for it. You've got to come up with something of value that people can,
• 22:55
  pay you for. And, um, you know, even Pablo Picasso got paid for his paintings, you know,
• 23:01
  people get paid for their art and don't ever feel guilty about it either. A lot of people say,
• 23:05
  well, it took me five minutes to draw this. No, it didn't took you a lifetime of practice to draw
• 23:10
  that. That's why it only takes you five minutes to draw that. Your, your talent is valuable. Your
• 23:16
  gifts are valuable and you can get paid for them. But make sure you're good at what you do and be
• 23:21
  ready to learn and be open to learn. Do not be a pre-madana. I will hire a less talented hard worker
• 23:27
  than a super talented pre-madana any day. If you're, I don't care how talented you are,
• 23:32
  if you're going to make my life miserable, I don't need you around. I need someone who wants to
• 23:35
  learn and who's open and will do what I ask and grow in the process. Be ready to grow. You don't
• 23:42
  know everything. Also, get out of your comfort zone. If you're living at home or just you haven't
• 23:48
  left your hometown, but you want to be in the industry, you need to go with the, or the business
• 23:54
  is, you know, you need to go to New York. Maybe it's Hollywood. Maybe it's, they're doing things
• 23:58
  in Georgia now. Maybe it's, I don't know where the industry is that you want to do, but go there.
• 24:03
  Yes, you can do things online now, but there's really nothing that takes the place of being
• 24:07
  interactive with actual human beings, you know, whether there's a pandemic or not. If you can travel,
• 24:12
  if you can go, definitely go and meet people that do what you do.
• 24:17
  I said one of the things that I've been wondering about as there's such an explosion of
• 24:22
  the platforms and more and more content being made, as you've noticed a shift in
• 24:29
  content becoming more regionally specific. So, whereas, perhaps, you know, I could think of two
• 24:37
  main centers for cartooning. One was obviously America, and the other one was Japan.
• 24:43
  But I think industries coming up elsewhere, or is it still dominated by those two polls, would you say?
• 24:49
  Well, that's a good question. There's a lot of animation being done kind of all over the world.
• 24:54
  There's a lot being done in Canada now, a lot being done in India, a lot being done, as you said,
• 24:59
  in Japan. The Philippines, there's a lot of animation done in the Philippines, but those are
• 25:07
  places that make the animation. The places that the animation are mostly in America,
• 25:12
  they're mostly in Hollywood, and things like that. I could be wrong. Someone out there is probably
• 25:18
  going to nail me for that. I'm sure I got something wrong there, but I know.
• 25:20
  Discussion, isn't it? Yeah. No, it is, but the places that pay that pay for projects to be made
• 25:27
  are predominantly in Hollywood, because they want, you know, these are all the platforms, Disney,
• 25:32
  Paramount, Universal, Netflix, all these companies, you know, and animation's not done overnight.
• 25:39
  You know, every animated project you see that's coming out right now was started about four or five
• 25:44
  years ago. Yeah. So it takes a long time, especially if it's a series, it takes a long time to do.
• 25:50
  Yeah. And a lot has changed in the last four or five years, of course.
• 25:55
  Oh, yes. Things always change, but we adapt. And, you know, I'm just excited because now,
• 26:01
  you know, when I was younger in the 80s, we didn't have iPhones. I had movie, like I didn't have,
• 26:05
  we didn't have camcorders. We had actual movie cameras, but it took forever to make things. And
• 26:10
  if I wanted to make a film, I had to go rent equipment, and I just didn't know how to go about it,
• 26:14
  and if I wanted to sound, and all that was really hard. But now, everyone's got a TV studio in
• 26:19
  their hand. It's called their iPhone. You can do a movie right now and upload it to YouTube in
• 26:23
  the same day if you want to. So if you're a good storyteller, you can get an instant audience reaction
• 26:28
  right now. And I always ask people, what's holding you back? Now, there really is no excuse now
• 26:32
  to not make something. If you want to make something, don't give me the excuse, you don't have the
• 26:36
  equipment. You have an iPhone in your hand. You can make something. So what's what have you got on
• 26:42
  the cards that you're making next? You were saying that you've just to me before we came online
• 26:47
  Yes. I do have a new project. I'm making a cartoon now. In fact, we just had a press release come
• 26:55
  out. I'm making a new cartoon. It's a Christian cartoon. I'm a Christian guy. And the Christian
• 27:01
  cartoon market is kind of sparse. There's not a lot of cartoons for Christian kids out there.
• 27:06
  So I had this idea a while back and it's called The Garden. It's about a little lion named
• 27:11
  Lenny and a little lamb named Lucy. They live in a magic garden or anything can grow. You can plant
• 27:17
  a trumpet. It will grow a trumpet tree. You can plant an idea. It will grow an idea,
• 27:21
  bush and plant a donut. It will grow a donut tree. And so every day they tend to the boss,
• 27:27
  who's God, they talk to the boss and they say, what's up boss? And the boss gives them a job
• 27:31
  every day. And normally they don't do it correctly. They mess it up and then they have to ask him how
• 27:35
  to do it right and through a scripture or a song that he tells them how to do it right. And it's
• 27:39
  really charming. It's Rage's kids. A kid's age is three to eight. Hey, that idea of
• 27:44
  planting a trumpet tree reminds me of the early days of Narnia when they plant the toffee.
• 27:49
  Oh, there we go. I didn't know that. Is that a Narnia? It's in just the one incident of it.
• 27:55
  In Magician's nephew, when they arrive as well as being created, everything, that's why the
• 28:00
  lamppost grows because the queen jar this throws a bit of metal that she'd ripped off a lamppost in
• 28:06
  London. Oh, that's why it's there. Okay. And it grows into a lamppost. But also Diggory has
• 28:15
  a paper bag of sweets in his pocket and he plants one and you get this tree which goes toffee's
• 28:20
  or a carnival. I never, I never read that book. That's a fantastic story. Look at that. You can
• 28:25
  connect it now. So, but we always finish our forecast with aware in all the fantasy worlds is the
• 28:34
  best place for something. And we've gone all over the place. We've been to, you know, best mountain,
• 28:40
  best in best singer, that kind of thing. And I thought in honor of your wonderful
• 28:47
  failure parents, so we do where is the best place to be a fairy godmother? And I want to expand
• 28:54
  the definition to mean anyone who comes to a like a child with magical gifts. So it's
• 29:02
  the best place to be a fairy godmother. Yeah. Are my answers limited to the fairly odd parents world
• 29:08
  or is it limited? No, no. Any fantasy world that you could be a fairy tale. It could be.
• 29:16
  Gosh, there's something. One of my favorite fantasy worlds. Gosh, okay. Now see now my head is
• 29:25
  spinning. Okay. So I give you my mind while you're thinking. Let me hear yours. Yes. What is yours?
• 29:31
  So I didn't, I mean, obviously you think Cinderella, but no, I think that actually my favorite
• 29:37
  fairy godmother is Hagrid when he turns up at the beginning of Harry Potter with his magical umbrella
• 29:45
  and a cake. I think he basically is the fairy godmother because he's the one who comes in and says,
• 29:51
  you shall go to the ball. You shall go to Hogwarts. I see. Is my favorite magical intervener?
• 29:59
  I got you. I have two. I have two. I think the first one would be Obi-Wan Kenobi
• 30:05
  telling Luke he's going to tell Luke all about the force. That'd be a good one. Yeah.
• 30:10
  And the other one is Peter Pan. His Peter Pan shows up to Wendy and says, hey,
• 30:17
  let's fly. He teaches her how to fly and they fly to the Neverland, which I thought was pretty
• 30:21
  cool as a kid. Always loved. In fact, a lot of my flight scenes in Danny Phantom come from Peter Pan.
• 30:27
  Yeah, no, wonderful story. I mean, the original is a bit odd if you ever read it. It's very much
• 30:34
  of its time. Yeah, it's very different. Yeah. Was it of ours is different too? Yeah, there's
• 30:40
  lots of, you know, authorial comments, which you think, oh, that's a bit funny, but I think the
• 30:45
  concept goes above that, I think. Yeah, that dream of flying is wonderful. Thank you so much,
• 30:51
  Bertchen. I hope that everything goes well with the new project of the garden, but obviously,
• 30:57
  you've many more setting morning cartoon watching of these things because they are on television
• 31:03
  all the time now, aren't they? They are. In fact, if I could just show a shout out real quick,
• 31:08
  there's a brand new Fairly Odd Parents live action show on right now. It's on Paramount Plus.
• 31:12
  It's called Fairly Odd Parents Fairly Otter, and it's on Paramount Plus. Live action with animated
• 31:19
  fairies. Yes, I think you're really enjoying it. Oh, fantastic. That's a great tip. So,
• 31:23
  thanks very much for being with us, and I think it's about your cartoons. And I'm going to give
• 31:28
  you my catchphrase. I always say, my YouTube channel art gives you power, use it wisely.
• 31:38
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