Please tell us about the projects you worked on before making ‘Jimmy And Baby’. How did you start, and how did you learn to make films?
I've done animation ever since I was a kid, just making silly stuff to entertain myself. Gradually I would make more and more elaborate animations and eventually started trying to do short films with stories. Over the years I've worked on projects for Adult Swim, Rick and Morty, Gravity Falls, Scott Pilgrim, and Adventure Time to name a few.
Jimmy and Baby was a co-creation between me and my partner Michelle Larney. Our first project together before Jimmy and Baby was a video for the TV show Smiling Friends titled “Smiling Friends Employee Training Software Walkthrough.” Similar to Jimmy and Baby, we came up with a flexible environment and simple structure to allow us to go wild with jokes. The concept for this video was to create an employee training simulator for the business the characters work at on the show. Once we established how the video would start and end, we came up with as many silly gags, characters, and ideas as possible. The loose structure allowed us to put in any other funny ideas we came up with during the animation process.
Tell us about ‘Jimmy And Baby’. How do you describe it?
Jimmy and Baby is a pixel-animated slapstick comedy heist adventure following two young members of the Frog Mafia. Tasked by their boss to steal a diamond, Jimmy and Baby’s antics lead them on a wild journey through hell. One physical gag leads to the next, taking you on a non-stop silly, chaotic ride.
Please tell us about your favorite filmmakers.
We're both super inspired by Chuck Jones. His use of smear-frames in The Dover Boys in Pimento University inspired us to make our characters more elastic and really push how they moved on screen. His Looney Tunes shorts, specifically Bugs Bunny, have so much personality and charm. The physicality and expressiveness of his animation make the characters feel like they actually exist. We strived to make Jimmy and Baby feel like real, living characters despite doing silly impossible things. Some other big inspirations are Max Fleischer, Paul Verhoven, James Cameron, Satoshi Kon, David Lynch, and David Cronenberg.
If you were given a good budget, what would be your ideal project?
A full-length Jimmy and Baby film. We want to take Jimmy and Baby on a grander, longer journey with the same silly, cute, and chaotic energy but with more worlds, characters, and jokes.
Describe how you would ensure that production is on schedule. What steps would you take?
Haha I'm really not very organized when working on a project. I just try to work as hard as I can and hope it gets done on time.
What was the hardest part of making ‘Jimmy And Baby’.
It was mostly a pretty smooth experience doing the animation and making the gags work well but we did run in to some trouble when we had to find a new person to help develop the sound design. The music had already been finished, but none of the sound effects had been done. We ended up working with our other writer Dave Supplee who had never done sound design on this level. We all collaborated together to create a vision for how this world would sound like. It took a bit of time to get our footing and figure out the sound palette, but once we got rolling it ended up being even better than it could’ve been. The unexpectedness of this situation was the most difficult part, as we were mentally ready to release it after years of work. But after figuring out the style, creating our own Jimmy and Baby soundboard, and really nailing the comedic timing for sound effects and dialogue, it ended up being a positive experience that made the film’s vision and world truly come together.
If possible, tell us about your next work. What plans do you have for your future work?
Hopefully more Jimmy and Baby if we can summon up enough energy for another one!
Jimmy And Baby - Directed by Paul Robertson
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