Dec 9, 2016

Netflix to Produce New Adult Series "Pacific Heat" in Australia

Original animation from Australia is rare. Even more unique, however, is Australian animation for adults. Working Dog Productions, the country's prolific and mostly live-action comedy production company, is bucking the trend with its new series Pacific Heat, a Netflix original available online in the US, Canada, UK, and Ireland

. It tells the story of an elite undercover Special Forces unit called "Pacific Heat," but the team often operates outside the law. Viewers may initially see Archer as the inspiration for the adult-only "Pacific Heat," but it was actually born out of a radio play by the same creators several years earlier.

Co-creator Rob Sitch, who also voices Special Agent Todd Somerville and other characters, is a major force in comedy television, film, and radio in his home country. Non-Australians may recognize Sitch's work and that of other creators Santo Ciraullo, Tom Greisner, and Michael Hirsch from the films "The Castle" and "The Dish." Sitch told Cartoon Brew how "Pacific Heat" was conceived, why he was worried that it was just a reworking of Scooby-Doo, and why voice actors worry less about animation than radio.

Cartoon Brew: Where did the idea for "Pacific Heat" come from? I did a radio play for a couple of years on [Australian radio station] TripleM, and it was a daily radio show. We did probably hundreds of episodes. It's a huge production with only a few voices and for only 10 cents. But we always thought of a home for the show, and animation was one of those homes.

Interestingly, and this is a lesson I wish I had learned a long time ago, the script determines the animation. The animation does not dictate the script. So you have to adapt the animation to the script. It had to obey gravity, it had to obey proper dress sense, the city had to be realistic, etc. So we didn't have a lot of freedom in our writing. We had to be quite detailed, and we were a little surprised at how detailed we were.

What was involved in conceptualizing and storyboarding the show? Rob Sitch: We did the animatics. I watch "South Park" quite sadly. I wish I had just drawn a circle with a couple of eyes in a dream. I feel like I could have done it much faster. This is because all the characters needed to be dressed in clothes that fit. So I had to pick out their clothes, their guns, their shoes. I didn't think I needed to do that, but if the boots didn't fit or something, I would kind of pull it off. I mean, this is a cartoon, but I'll put it this way, if it doesn't look right, it's distracting and it throws the viewer off.

There are a lot of obviously Australian or "Aussie" expressions and jokes in this film. How do you think that will translate to international audiences? We are not trying to be global. We are not trying to be global, because in animation we accept whatever world we are given. Our only concern was our own voice. If it is not a Scandinavian crime drama, in a way it is not worth watching (laughs). So I think the kind of people who are into animation are quite global.

Is there anything that you felt you couldn't avoid, being an animated series for adults, that if you want to make it for 14 year old boys, you can make it for adults, and if you don't want to make it for 14 year old boys, you can make it for adults. I mean, they see you coming. The best thing to do is to make it absolutely adult oriented, so that even 14 year olds will be willing to watch it with you.

Are there any animated films that you refer to for inspiration? Rob Sitch: Interestingly, we wondered early on if we were just developing Scooby-Doo. But as our style developed into a very realistic style, we began to differentiate ourselves from Scooby.

Were there any scenes in the first series that were particularly challenging? Rob Sitch: Actually, the guns are important. The criticism we used to get was that it was a bit cartoonish, which is ironic. In cartoons, guns and bombs are splattered all over the place, and that can look cartoonish. That was more important than I thought.

And another challenge was that we had become accustomed to worrying about different accents and what part of the world they were from and what part of the individual country they were from. My voice is twice as animated as it is when I'm in the voice studio. Some of my voices sounded like they were in the same zip code, even though they were supposed to be 1,000 miles away. But when they were animated, they sounded like they were in different worlds.

Pacific Heat's 13-episode first season is shown on Foxtel's The Comedy Channel in Australia and on Netflix in the US and elsewhere.