Aug 25, 2022

Animated Horror: Series Creator Talks Aesthetic Rules of FX's "Little Demon"

FX's newest adult animated feature, Little Demon, premieres tonight at 10 p.m. ET/PT on FXX before being released tomorrow on Hulu.

The show takes place in rural Delaware, where reluctant mother Laura and her daughter Chrissy do their best to lead an ordinary life. The problem is that Chrissy's absentee father is the real devil, and when he learns of his daughter's existence and shows up to foster a relationship with the girl, his motives are predictably suspect.

"Little Demon" was created and written by veteran acting screenwriting trio Darcy Fowler, Seth Kershner, and Kieran Vala. The series is produced by FX Productions and Shadow Machine, with the latter sharing animation with Atomic Cartoons and Red Door Animation. Executive producers include Fowler, Kershner, Vara, and Dan Harmon; series voice actors Aubrey Plaza, Danny DeVito, and Lucy DeVito; and Shadow Machine's Monica Mitchell, Corey Campodonico, and Alex Bulkley.

Cartoon Brew to the premiere of FXX to ask about the challenges of learning animation as creators from the live action world, the graphic choices they made on the series, and how they were able to strike a balance between comedy, horror, and drama. We caught up with the show's creative trio ahead of the show.

Cartoon Brew: Tell us about your group's showrunning process. Also, this being your first time leading an animated series, can you talk about some of the challenges you encountered: Darcy Fowler: We had worked together on a number of live action pilots, so we had a lot of experience leading production. Also, working in the same room with (Dan) Harmon, we learned to break the story. One of the things that really excited us about working in animation is that with live action, once you shoot, you do everything you can in post, but if you miss something during the shoot, it's gone. In animation, it's like working in post while storyboarding.

Kieran Vara: One of the things that has helped us the most is that we have built a great team around us that has a lot of experience working in this medium. There are so many steps involved in animation, and it takes longer than live action to achieve, but until you've been through the process, you can't really understand it. So it was really helpful to have people with foresight. Coming from live action, we didn't understand the limitations of animation - the time and the budget. I think that's the biggest takeaway from this first season.

Seth Kershner: And the other challenge we faced was to make this show during Covid. Everything we did was remote. It would have been ideal if we could have been in each other's offices and go to the next room to take notes, rather than doing every single design review online. Of course, there are advantages to working remotely, but there were additional difficulties.

How did you handle the different scripts for animation and how did you get involved in storyboarding-

Kirschner: Kirschner: That's something I'm constantly learning as we go through production. In live action, the cinematographer has his own ideas and everyone works from them. Whereas with storyboard artists, everyone has their own ideas and they bring them to the meeting, so it's a little more collaborative. There is more communication and different styles of communication. Also, because our show deals with horror, comedy, and drama, there are other things to consider when boarding. Depending on what scenes we are filming, the layout will be different.

Fowler: That was one of the really cool parts. To show the artists different sequences and see how they interpret the cinematic moment. And more often than not, they come back with a different angle that we could not have even imagined or thought of when we gave them the note.

Tell us about the aesthetic choices you made for this program.

Vala: Very early on, we began working with the design team to develop the look of the series. A lot of shows that operate in the same space as us, i.e., animated comedy for adults, can be a bit more cartoonish and exaggerated in their proportions. Our reference was to use a lot of live action pieces to bring a more horror-like, realistic look and feel. We wanted to bring the show into realistic horror scenes, something that is not often portrayed in animated films for adults. In order to get the horror right, we needed a little more nuance in the characters' performances. So we wanted characters that were a little more well proportioned, and we gave them actual pupils, and sometimes color, so that we could have more access to the eyes, especially in the horror scenes.

For Laura, I wanted a Sarah Connor vibe. Someone who seems to be able to take care of business, but who makes you think she might have been a party girl at some point in her past. As for Chrissy, we wanted something really low-key because Laura is trying to keep her hidden for 13 years in the story, so we wanted to avoid anything that would stand out. And by making her a little smaller than other kids her age, we made her a great contrast to the extreme power she can unleash. As for Deville, the Mr. Rogers or Danny Tanner look was initially a joke for the pilot version. The answer was consistency.

Many of the shows that target the same kind of audience as The Little Demon are broad comedies or situation comedies, but your show feels more grounded than that. How did you play with the genre when developing and producing this series-

Fowler: We always told ourselves that the show needed to be grounded at its core, that the horror and drama scenes shouldn't be a punchline. Broken families, custody battles, mother-daughter relationships where the child is 13 and going through puberty. There are many familiar forms of horror, and as the season progressed, we began to delve deeper into important but darker stories around those themes.

Vala We believe that there are some truly fascinating characters who are messy in their own ways and in their relationships with each other. We believe that relationships are complex and even internal conflicts about identity are messy, and that is what gives the show legs and keeps it going. Satan, for example, has a plan to have a son who will help him carry out his plan, but then he takes a sudden turn when he has a daughter, and despite being the ultimate narcissist, he begins to question his own identity in a way he has never experienced before.

Were there any scenes that were particularly difficult to animate? Kershner: The bathroom scene in the pilot. It took a long time to sort out script-wise, and I had a hard time articulating what was driving the scene. It was also a really important scene in Chrissy's life, and we had to make sure we understood her and what she was going through. We wanted to bring out her inner conflicts, not just the comedic and horror aspects. Cinematically, there is a lot going on, both horror and comedy. But the nice thing about doing these genres together is that they are like two sides of the same coin. They're both about releasing tension.

That scene is also important to establish the rules of your world. This is the first time I've seen people in Little Demon's world just stay calm when crazy paranormal stuff happens.

Fowler: That was very important. We were playing a little bit with the old "every generation is saying the world is ending" trope. In the "Little Demon" world, we wanted people to be more angry about their rose gardens being sucked in when a black hole opens up in the sky, or worried about how it would affect the town's economy, or how the roads would be blocked. That sets the stage for the rest of the entire season.