Imaginary Worlds - Designing Bojack's World

Episode Date: May 3, 2017

Lisa Hanawalt had finally established herself as a freelance illustrator when her friend Raphael Bob-Wakesburg asked to borrow one of her drawings to pitch his animated series Bojack Horseman, which eventually ended up on Netflix. To Lisa's surprise, she eventually found herself in Los Angeles, overseeing a crew of dozens of artists as they tried to build a consistent world around her drawings of animal people -- which in some ways weren't that different from the stuff she used to draw as a kid. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. You know when people keep recommending a show to you that you're just not that into? That's what happened with me and BoJack Horseman. So in case you don't know, it is an adult animated show on Netflix where animals walk around like people wearing human clothes. But then there are also regular people, too, and nobody makes a big deal out of it. Now, that part I really liked. I actually thought that was cool. And I love Will Arnett, who does the voice of BoJack Horseman, but I just didn't like the character.

In the show, BoJack Horseman is a washed-up sitcom star. He used to be on a show called Horsing Around, which is clearly a parody of Full House. And now he's filthy rich, but miserable. Like I said, I just didn't care about him. Anyway, Jose, I improvised that line. I mean, it was written, but I gave it the old Bojack spin. But after the second and third season, I noticed that BoJack was making all these top ten lists of critics, alongside great dramas like The Americans.

People whose tastes that I respect were urging me to give it another chance. So I did, and I was hooked. And I can see now how it took a couple of episodes for the show to really get its groove. But eventually it became one of the most poignant animated shows I've ever seen. Take this scene from season two, where BoJack breaks up with his girlfriend, a network executive who also happens to be an owl. Lisa Kudrow does the voice. Well, I'm sorry that things have been so hard for you.

But that doesn't give you the right to be shitty to me. I can't be around someone who's just fueled by bitterness and negativity. Well then, what are you doing here? What happened, Bojack? Same thing that always happens. You didn't know me. Then you fell in love with me. And now you know me.

You know, it's funny. When you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags. I'm going to go into the show more later, but first I want to talk about how it was created. Now, I'd read a few profiles of the showrunner Raphael Bob-Wakesburg because he's a young man with an old soul who seems to understand what a midlife crisis is like. But I was actually more curious about the artwork because it wasn't cartoony or intentionally crude like a lot of other cartoons. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The style was semi-realistic and there was really a personal touch, like the flair of an artist. And that is how I came across Lisa Hanawalt, the creative director of BoJack Horseman. I was really happy to see that her artwork looked just like the show, which means they really sought her out to establish a visual style. But the themes in her work are very specific to her. Like she did a web comic about a moose woman, which means, you know, she is the head of a moose in a woman's body, but brown hide for skin and wears, you know, regular human clothes. And she's an artist who cannot stop making prosthetic fingers. And that apparently is based on a real obsession that Lisa went

through. Obsession is a common theme in her work. Or like there's another watercolor web comic about a bird couple. And the bird woman becomes so obsessed with decorating this new house with plants, she loses sight of her partner literally and figuratively. And when the couple finally reconciles, the final panel shows them hanging out and cooking together, but naked from the waist down. And yeah, they're human from the waist down. But that's another thing I like about her work. The subject matter is very adult, but the drawings have a childlike charm to them.

Lisa told me that her style really hasn't changed much since she was a kid. Like actually, if you look at the art that I was drawing when I was six years old, when I really started to draw a lot, it looks pretty similar to what I draw now. It was like, you know, bipedal animals walking like people and dressed like people and wearing patterned sweaters and Hawaiian shirts. To me, the story of her career is really about the question of how do you scale up? On one hand, it's a challenge that every creative person faces. You realize you're good at something, but then you have to figure out how to do that thing for a living. But then you have to figure out how to do that thing for a living.

I mean, it was rocky at first because I went to art school and I studied studio art and I did a lot of ceramics and photography and large scale paintings. And so I kind of thought like, oh, when I graduate, I'm going to have gallery shows and that's how I'll make a living. But, you know, of course, that doesn't happen very easily and it doesn't happen right away. So I just started making comics. I was doing a web comic with my friend Raphael, who's the creator of BoJack. I was doing pet portraits for people, like I would trade a pet portrait for a pack of beer.

And some of my work was put on a blog, and an art director saw it, and I got to illustrate this book that Kristen Schaal made with her husband, The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex. That was like my first big illustration job. And it just kind of slowly happened. It was really, really slow progress, honestly. I would definitely see some differences

between the artwork she was doing back then and what would eventually become the style of BoJack Horseman. On the show, regular humans outnumber the animal people three to one. But she doesn't love drawing everyday humans. You know, there's something grotesque about drawing a human face because it's so specific and especially drawing myself. Like I never know how to draw myself. Like my hair changes a lot. You know, it's better if

you can simplify the way you look into kind of a cartoon character. But that never came naturally to me because I like to draw somewhat realistically. So drawing animals, it kind of makes the emotions more general. Like, you know, if you draw a moose, it looks like every moose. If you draw a person, it looks like a very, very specific kind of person. And with that come a lot of preconceived feelings about what that kind of person is about. Now, she does like drawing the bodies of her characters. But the nudity isn't sensational. More often, they're just going to the bathroom

or trying on new clothes that don't fit. I'm going to use like a $40 word, but it's desublimation, where you're sort of like getting back into the muck and mire of what makes you human, you know, like playing in the dirt and getting messy and making poop jokes. And it's like, I'm really into that

when I'm making comics. And even the way she draws the heads of the animal people is very matter of fact. Like she's obsessed with horses, but she doesn't romanticize them. Every time I ride, I go, why do I like this stupid hobby? Like, I wish I didn't like this because it's so dangerous and I'm so likely to break my arm and then I won't be able to draw. It really is likely to wreck my entire life. So that should give you a good sense of what her style is like. And it took a while, but she finally established herself in New York as an illustrator. But like every artist,

she always worried when the next job or the next gallery show would happen. And then she got an email that changed her life. It was from her old high school friend, Raphael Bob-Wakesburg. I think it was in 2011, he sent me an email, said, I have an idea for a show called BoJack the Depressed Talking Horse, and it's kind of, can I use one of your horse drawings of one of your guys? And I was like, yeah, sure. And then like six months later, he's like, so I showed your drawings to Michael Eisner.

I was like, oh, what? The Michael Eisner? That Disney guy? And yeah, he was working with this production company called Tornante that is owned by Eisner. And yeah, it just very slowly developed from there. I actually, I read that you said no initially. I did, yeah. Well, I had just finished working on a children's book that took me like six months and it was really heavy. And I didn't want to jump on board another huge project. And when they first came to me, they were a little bit vague about what they expected of me. And I'd never worked in animation before. I didn't really know how to do character design. So I was just like, nah, this is too much of a thing. It's just like, nah, this is too much of a thing.

But then they came back six months later after, you know, going through a couple different artists and not quite, honestly, they couldn't quite get the horse character right. So she moved to L.A. to become creative director on the show. Now she's scaling up to a level that's kind of scary. I mean, they're building a universe around her drawings that involves a lot of questions from writers and designers about how this world works. It involves a lot of questions from writers and designers about how this world works. I've always been kind of a lone wolf in, you know, working alone, freelancing, doing my own thing, not having other people really tell me what to do aside from art directors. But working in animation is such an incredibly involved team project. Like everything you do affects the pipeline of like 80 other people immediately.

How she adjusted is just after the break. Before getting back to Lisa Hanna-Walt, I want to give you more of a sense of the show. So Will Arnett does the voice of BoJack, and the character almost reminds me of Don Draper or even Tony Soprano, in that his character flaws are so all-consuming, he sabotages himself and hurts anyone who gets too close to him. And I'm sorry, okay?

I was drunk and there was all this pressure with the Oscar campaign. But now, now that it's over, I... No, no, BoJack, just stop. That's Aaron Paul doing the voice of BoJack's permanent house guest, Todd. He's a regular human, but he's kind of an emotional hybrid. You know, he's the classic man-child. Someone or something is stealing our food. So I made a giant papier-mâché Todd head to scare it away.

Think it'll work? If I made a giant papier-mâché me head, would you stop eating my food? BoJack's enabler is his workaholic agent, a pink cat named Princess Carolyn, played by Amy Sedaris. Yeah, probably. Listen, dummy, I want to make sure you're all set for your first day with Diane tomorrow. Is she going to ask me a bunch of personal questions? The woman we're paying to go write your memoir? Yeah, probably. Alison Brie plays Diane, who's BoJack's biographer and friend. I really blew it, didn't I? I mean, maybe you could have been a better role model when she was young.

But also, she never really had a chance. This is what our celebrity culture does to people. So what you're saying is everything is society's fault and we as individuals never need to take responsibility for anything. Uh, no, not exactly. Bojack falls for Diane, but she ends up with Mr. Peanutbutter, a buff golden retriever voiced by Paul F. Tompkins. And Mr. Peanutbutter has no shame about the fact that he copied BoJack's sitcom and achieved the same amount of fame and fortune by being a total hack. Well, I recall one time on Mr. Peanutbutter's house. Think he's talking to me, pal. You know, the guy whose show invented the two dates to the prom

story. You may have invented it, but I think our show perfected it. So those are the main characters. They're all invented by the showrunner, Raphael Bob-Wakesburg. Designing them and accepting them as part of her world has been a bit of a process for Lisa Hanna-Walt. Like, this is her reaction when I told her that Diane is probably my favorite character because she's a public radio-loving nerd struggling to fit in with shallow Hollywood. I like Diane, too. She's she's complex. I get really angry at Diane sometimes, but I do like her. Why do you get angry at her? Just because I love Mr. Peanut Butter so much. And I just feel like Diane doesn't always appreciate him. You know, like how he wants to surprise her. And

every time he surprises her and she gets mad, I'm always like, oh, why? Like I like I'm like, Raphael, why is she such a like she's such a stick in the mud, like she's such a sourpuss about it. And he's like, well, she says she doesn't like that. So he should respect that. I'm like, yeah, but she should learn to like it because it's a lovely thing that he's trying to do for her because he loves her. So we disagree about that. he's trying to do for her because he loves her. So we disagree about that. By the way, one of the romantic gestures Mr. Peanutbutter does is he steals the D from the Hollywood sign to impress Diane.

And from that point on, Hollywood is now referred to as Hollywood. Diane! Diane! What do you think? Wow, Mr. Peanutbutter, it's kind of a lot. I don't really like to be on camera. It's also very telling what people's reaction to her is. Like sometimes if male viewers are like, oh, Diane's a bitch.

I'm like, okay, well, that is very telling. That's funny. Actually, my reaction is I've dated a lot of Diane's. Good. You have good taste. Thank you. But I also, I mean, I love Mr. Peanutbutter. I mean, I feel like he is, the way he's so unburdened by self-doubt.

Yeah, I know. It's kind of refreshing. Like at first you kind of hate him. Like in the first couple episodes, you're like, oh, what a ding-dong. And now, I don't know, I just love him. I know. I wish I could be more like him, you know, in the way that. Yeah. Yeah, me too. So feeling a sense of ownership over the characters was one challenge. But making the show was a much bigger one.

Honestly, we really hit the ground running. It was sort of like, OK, you got to make this show in seven months. And we're like, OK. And then I didn't know what I was doing. And we didn't even have time to like really hire people. We just kind of got whoever was at the animation studio already working on different shows and kind of got them all together. And I mean, it happened, but like it was it was it was insane. Now, back when I was an animation storyboard artist, I remember my coworkers on the design team used to scoff at having to work with traditional illustrators. Their biggest complaint was that illustrators couldn't design characters

that you could turn around and draw from every angle. Lisa had a slightly different problem. The biggest problem was the patterns that I draw. People were turning them, but when the animation came back, the patterns weren't tracking, which is, you know, they were popping. Like, the character turns and suddenly the plaid is just in a totally different position on the coat like that kind of thing I still draw patterns and give everyone a huge headache but I have a little bit of a better sense of how to do it now and you know keeping them away from the arms and legs helps and there was like definitely a day

where like I could tell you know one of the people on production was like just angry at me and I couldn't tell why and then I figured out it was because I had too many patterns that she was personally having to deal with. And I was like, you know, you can tell me. I'm not trained in animation, so I don't know when I'm really dicking you over with a decision I make. Figuring out the logistics of this world was a little more fun. We don't draw tails on the show, and we decided that early on. And even when, you know, in season one, episode three, there's a ton of lemurs.

And I was like, well, the tail is really a big part of the lemur. So let's try one with a tail and see how it looks. And Raphael was like, yeah, no, I don't want any tails. But we did have a scorpion DJ character in season two. And, you know, scorpion, like that tail is really like a defining feature of a scorpion. So I was like, we need to have that in there. So we just kind of, you know, skewed logic a little bit. We're like, OK, it's coming out of his back.

It's not quite a tail, but it is like, you know, one of those pinchers. I recently like had a back and forth with with a director about how to draw a clam person you know they have like an entire shell around their head but like how to draw it so it doesn't look like you just stuck like a clam on top of a human body it has to be like part of the integrated into the body and she got to put her sort of mature spin on the way that she draws these animal people. I kind of like any character that, you know, is not traditionally, like, sexy, but I draw them sexy. I think that's really fun.

Like, there's something so fun about drawing a snake person and making them attractive. Like, it's easy to make a deer sexy. Come on. We all know this. And there's some sexy deer on the show, charlotte bojack's had a crush on for years before you left town you told me la was a tar pit do you remember that oh god i said so many things when i was young i thought i was so deep well do you still think it's true do i think la is a tar pit oh yeah yeah olivia wild voiced um charlotte and i even looked at pictures of ol Wilde when I was drawing her to get the eyes kind of similar to how, you know, she kind of looks like a deer.

But Lisa says there's a difference between making animals sexy versus being sexualized. Like one of her favorite characters is Sextina Aquafina, a dolphin pop star. Lisa always likes to give her the latest, edgiest fashions. Aisha Tyler does the voice. You need to capture the essence of my personal brand, okay? All upper caps, little punctuation, lots of critted bullshit about the Illuminati. And make sure to mention my preferred brands, okay? Beats by Dre, Abercrombie & Fitch, and...

Brand Finn Polish. But then this happened. I don't know. There was like one, one like table read we had or something where some executive showed up and I don't know who he was, what company he worked for.

Maybe he was just someone's friend, but he pointed to her on the wall and he was like, shouldn't you make her skinnier, you know, to be more sexy? And I was like, she's 14. She's a 14 year old dolphin. What are you talking about?

He's like, yeah, but you know, she's supposed to be sexy. So like, you know,. She's a 14-year-old dolphin. What are you talking about? He's like, yeah, but, you know, she's supposed to be sexy. So, like, you know, and she's kind of chubby. Like, oh, my God, she's a dolphin. What do you, yeah, I thought that was like the weirdest interaction of my life. But now Lisa feels like she's in a great place. And so is the show. After all that back and forth, she is proud that the show does reflect her personal style. Which is really not that different from the stuff she was drawing as a kid.

This show I feel good about now. It's like, okay, we finally, like, I figured out that I'm okay at this and that I'm not going to be fired. I think that that's like, I mean, yeah, that like imposter syndrome, I think is like super common and like totally predictable and boring, but it's a real thing. I guess if I really think about it, it's like, oh, I really did sort of create this aesthetic for this show. Like it is, I really like it when people watch it and they're like, I can tell that you drew it, you know, that that's like a Lisa Hanawalt drawing. Like that's very flattering to me. And that means that I've done my job right, which is to make things kind of look how I would want them to look if I was making my personal work,

which is really hard to do when you're working with such a huge team and you're trying to get people to draw in your style. And like it's not always possible. It takes too much time. I can't draw everything myself is the thing I had to kind of come to terms with. And that's good. Like, you know, you want input from other people. Yeah, I like getting to sort of put my touches on something that so many people see. But that kind of success doesn't translate when she gets back home to her studio. This is a problem that every artist faces. The next project is still a blank page staring back at you.

Whenever I do my own stuff, I'm like, who am I? What do I care about? I don't know. It's every time I sit down to draw a new thing, it's like I'm starting over from scratch again. I really wish that I had a consistent process or like I worked from like 10 to 5 every day or something. But I'm a very like sporadic and crazy worker. Like I'll work in bursts and then I'll have days where I do absolutely nothing. And I mean, I, you know, I'm definitely coming to terms with the fact that that has worked for me. Like I have gotten this far with that method. So maybe it's OK, but it's still, you know, I wish it were easier. Although Lisa has a quality that I see in a lot of successful artists, something that will always rekindle the creative process. Healthy obsessions. Healthy obsessions? Healthy obsessions. I'm glad you think they're healthy.

Well, that is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Lisa Hanawalt. Imaginary Worlds is part of the Panoply Network. You can like the show on Facebook. I tweet at emalinski. You can also help support the show on the crowdfunding site Patreon. Just click the donate button on my site, imaginaryworldspodcast.org, where I will also have a slideshow of Lisa's artwork.