Top Four Viewer Questions Answered

Viewers often ask me questions about making TPD and they’re usually the same four questions. So here are the answers to the top four viewer questions:

1. How long does it take to write/produce an episode? I’m working from an outline I already created for the first eight episodes so at this stage I’m writing dialogue and actions, making sure to hit plot points, all the while trying to be funny or insightful. I can usually write a few scene sequences in anywhere from ten minutes to an hour. Then the task becomes rewriting and punching it up until I'm happy. That can sometimes take days. I always have to be aware that at some point I do have to animate what I’m writing so I can't write anything that would cause me unusual amounts of production pain and suffering down the road. Writing a scene where there’s a car chase with a Thelma & Louise ending just wouldn’t be practical for me to produce. Animating is the most time-consuming part of the process. Voicing the characters, shooting the images, editing the images and backgrounds, animating movement, syncing characters to voiceover, assembling, and rendering takes several hours just to produce 30 seconds of animation. Each episode might have seven or eight scenes that run anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute and a half or longer. I work on TPD nights and weekends which means I don't get enough sleep. I'm sure this will catch up with me at some point.

2. Where do your story ideas come from? TPD is about the life the puppets have when they're not in front of the camera. Their relationships at work. I've worked at a lot of different places. But no matter where I've collected a paycheck, the people there have always provided fertile ground for a wide range of story ideas from the mundane to the bizarre. It's like the watering hole on the arid savanna. A place that brings together a strange collection of animals, misfits, friends, misunderstood geniuses, over-achievers, sadists, lovers, well-meaning nitwits, and even thieves. The nine-to-five parade of human oddities is a shared experience anyone can relate to so it's a great source for story ideas that are universal, funny and cathartic. In a way, the people I've worked with over the years unknowingly have played this role of a second family for me; deeply flawed and beautiful at the same time.

3. Who does the voices? I voice all the male puppets and I have friends voice the female puppets. I don't use professional voice talent because (a) can't afford it, and (b) I want the characters to sound the way everyday people sound.

4. Which character is the most similar to you in real life? I've really tried to make the characters the polar opposite of their Sesame Street personas. I write the characters as an amalgamation of people I've worked with over the years and parts of myself. So there are personality traits in each character that are a part of me but none are entirely me. My hope is that they're familiar archetypes of people you may have worked with in the past or work with now. They just happen to be covered in colored fur with goofy eyes.

Watch Episode 3 - "Relationships"