Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, the renowned stop-motion studio behind hits like Robot Chicken and Crossing Swords, is set to captivate audiences once again with their latest project, The Von Dingles. With an impressive track record that includes nine Emmy wins and a legacy of entertaining global audiences, the studio is now venturing into the world of comics with this original and exciting graphic novel.
The Von Dingles, a Kickstarter project, promises to immerse fans in a world filled with drama, humour, and insane action. The story revolves around Clark, an egg with a dream, and his quest to confront the villainous Pecker Egg. This unique and imaginative tale is the brainchild of John “Harv” Harvatine IV, the mastermind behind The Von Dingles.
The decision to launch The Von Dingles on Kickstarter reflects Stoopid Buddy Stoodios’ commitment to engaging directly with their fan base and delivering content in their signature style. Backers can expect an immersive experience with regular updates, behind-the-scenes content, and the opportunity to witness the creation of the graphic novel in real time.
As the studio embarks on this creative journey, they invite fans to join them every step of the way, from the early stages of development to the eventual delivery of the complete graphic novel in July 2024. With stretch goals and exciting plans on the horizon, The Von Dingles is poised to be a unique adventure that showcases the boundless creativity of Stoopid Buddy Stoodios and his collaborators.
With the Kickstarter now fully funded, CGmagazine took some time to chat with studio founders John Harvatine IV and Matthew Senreich about The Von Dingles, the comics industry, the future of Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, and anything else nerdy that comes up in conversation. With so much excitement surrounding this and other projects the studio is working on, it is hard not to feel the passion for everything the studio has to offer.
So, let’s start with how The Von Dingles project got started and what made you all want to get involved.
John Harvatine IV: Well, let’s see here. I guess it was about a year and a half ago, we were in between shows, so in between Robot Chicken and Crossing Swords, and we had some time off. We had some artists that were at the studio. I’ve been thinking about this project with eggs, kind of a little fever dream of what would happen if you didn’t find Easter eggs. Like, where would they go? It’s just something I was thinking about.
Then I was also thinking about this short of how their point of view would be on Halloween, you know, like if you egg a house. Not that I would, and I’m not saying you would either, but if someone were to egg a house, what’s the egg’s perspective of that? So these are just things that were rolling around in my head, and we have really talented artists at our studio. So we put that together and made it short.
Matthew Senreich: That’s only the beginning of it. That short evolved, as we’ve just been producing a bunch of stuff and staying busy. I was wondering how I could tell this story since we’re doing it in a way where we don’t have to sell it to a network or a streaming service. And, you know, my background comes from comic books. My first job was at Marvel back in 1991, to show you how long ago it was.
And I threw out the concept of making it as a comic book. We’d never really done that at Stoopid Buddy Stoodios before. So we talked about what the best way to create that was. One of the other people here suggested, have you ever done a Kickstarter to create a nice fan base for it? And we were like, this sounds like something we’ve never done, and I think with Stoopid Buddy, we like to do things we’ve never done before. So, yeah, it all came together. Amazing.
How did it work as a studio doing The Von Dingles as a comic book versus animation?
John Harvatine IV: Yeah, you know, we’re still in it. So, this is still new to us. It’s different but also similar. In animation, we work with artists and writers, so the language is very similar. I think for me, the hardest part is just the story structure and figuring out how we tell the story and how much time we have to do it.
That part was a little bit new to me. What do you think, Matthew?
Matthew Senreich: Yeah, for me, it was an interesting conversation. I worked at Wizard Magazine for a long time, and it was always about watching other creators make comic books and talking about what they were doing. I know a lot of people in this industry, and it was tough for me to decide how to make a comic book. Was it talking to friends and putting it through a company like Image or Oni, or did it make more sense to go the independent route and just figure out how to do it ourselves? It’s always been our company’s way to do it ourselves.
I can’t lie and say I haven’t called up a bunch of my comic book friends and asked them for opinions. But yeah, it’s been fun. And, you know, I can’t take any credit because I’m not writing or directing this thing. I’m just the little angel on Harv’s shoulder, telling him what to do. It’s fun to watch his creative instincts come alive, and I say that’s a great idea. Here are a bunch of ways you can do that.
John Harvatine IV: Yeah, well, it is funny, Matt, because a few months ago, we could have gone down a more traditional path and pitched it to people, looked for places to help create it. But I really like what we chose, the Kickstarter approach of just creating something and making it for people. It’s really exciting and something we haven’t done before. It’s really rewarding to just, not that I hate the little man, but just get a little more direct, you know? It’s fun and exciting.
Well, especially what you mentioned about having the option of going with an existing publisher or going independent. Now that you have a Kickstarter for The Von Dingles going, what are the next steps?
John Harvatine IV: Yeah, well, that’s a really good question. I think the desire to create more comic stuff is 100% there. We’ll probably take a break from the Kickstarter and think of other ways we can do it. Matt, what do you think about that?
Matthew Senreich: Yeah, I think the interesting aspect of going this route is that now we own this IP. Now, it is something that is in the world as actual content, as opposed to having to sell off the rights fully. We can license it now. And I think that’s a more interesting approach, which a lot of comic companies are able to do. So yeah, I like that better than selling a concept or an idea flat out, where you go off and own it. And you know, it’s there as an alternative.
John Harvatine IV: We’ve done that with other shows where we’ve created things and sold them, and then we don’t own them. They have a life cycle on TV, and that’s it. So it’s a little more exciting to think that we can have something that can continue, and we control where it goes. So that’s important to us.
The comic industry has changed drastically in the last few years. How do you, as a studio, see your skills and expertise lend themselves to comics, and what do you think you offer that might not in comparison to, say, a Marvel or an Oni or a DC, etc.?
Matthew Senreich: You know, it’s telling a story. It’s just a different medium to tell a story. I don’t look at it as trying to compare ourselves to Marvel or DC, which focuses mostly on superheroes. Look, I mean, Mad Ghost with Jeff Johns, who’s a dear friend of mine, they’re not necessarily doing superhero comics. It’s telling stories in other mediums.
What I like about this is we’re just telling a story, you know, with pictures and lines of dialogue, just in a different way. I think I like just being able to tell that. And I think this story, in particular, was always drawn out. You know, the thing that Harv always did was we draw pictures and then go out into the world and take a picture of that image. That’s why this lends itself so well to comic books. It’s one frame at a time.
John Harvatine IV: And this story is like, it’s bigger. So, if we were to do it in our traditional way, like in stop motion, it would be hard to grab a budget to do what we wanted to do with this story. So comic books are perfect to express this story because it is a big journey. And it really lends itself to the comic book.
Matthew Senreich: And also, it’s a graphic novel, as you know, we want to talk about it as comics, it’s a series of comics that will just be a graphic novel. So, you know, it’ll be a self-contained story. Hopefully, people respond to it, and it can turn into something much larger. We have the stories for that. It’s just whether or not, you know, it gets the fan base to turn it into that.
Now, if The Von Dingles becomes like a phenomenon, do you see it all being in comics? Do you see it going into more shorts? Where do you see the story going from here?
John Harvatine IV: Yeah, I think… You first, and I’ll answer.
Matthew Senreich: Okay. I think it goes in every direction that it can go into. You know, I think there will always be comic books of this. Again, that short is a beautiful animated short and unlike anything that’s out in the marketplace. Hopefully, we can turn it into an animated series in some capacity down the line. But yeah, I think there will always be stories to tell.
John Harvatine IV: Yeah, I think that’s exactly it. Starting out with comics is the best expression, but we would love to try and stab at a stop-motion series because these characters look good photographed as well. So, it works in both ways. It’s really the story we want to express.
Matthew Senreich: Yeah. There’s an Instagram page that’s getting a little bit more traction; it just started out with no publicity. And it’s just The Von Dingles on Instagram. It’s fun to just see a picture posted every day of an egg on…
John Harvatine IV: The world. An egg every day.
Matthew Senreich: And just the fact that people are actually joining this is interesting. Okay. But I like that people find that interesting. It shows that we might be onto something.
If this series, The Von Dingles, goes into more comics, do you have any dream people you’d like to work with to continue the series? Any artists, storytellers, etc.?
Matthew Senreich: You know, I just talked to Andy Kubrick the other day, and I was like, hey, man, what are you doing? He’s like, “Too busy right now, buddy.” But there are so many people out there in the world that I adore. I started interning with Joe Madureira back at Marvel in ’91.
Like, who’s a comic artist that I would love to work with, is like picking my favourite child. It’s a really hard one. But I think that’s also the best thing about having worked at Marvel: you have access to a lot of these people who become friends and dear friends. So just when the time presents itself, who’s that person, and what’s the style that we’re going to go into?
Do you see the industry changing in the future, with more shows, movies, comics, and people getting back into the media? Where do you see it going?
Matthew Senreich: That’s a hard question.
Million-dollar question, even…
Matthew Senreich: It’s tough because I watch through my kids’ eyes what they look at, and what they watch and what they read, and, you know, like my daughter just read all of Amulet or Bone. But again, they’re not going to the comic book store reading the individual issues. They wait for the graphic novel to come out, and then they go and get the collected version, and then they go read it. You know, it’s interesting to see what they’re going to like and how they’re going to want to
I do like going to comic stores and seeing what came out for the week. So, for this, I can’t answer that question because I don’t know who’s going to respond the most to it. This is, you know, I would call it, a TV 14-esque book. Hopefully, people will really enjoy it. And then you see where that fan base, I always come back to even Robot Chicken.
When Robot Chicken launched, I thought it was a show about toys. It was a sketch comedy show about toys. I thought it was going to be all men. It’s a 60-40 split. And so, yeah, I said the same thing.
It’s very interesting. But it goes to show you that you just don’t know where that audience base is going to come from. You write it the way you see it in your head, and hopefully, it’s the best version of that. And you see how people are going to react. My favourite sketches on Robot Chicken aren’t going to be your favourite.
And it’s okay. I like that aspect.
John Harvatine IV: So perfectly said.
Matthew Senreich: Yeah, exactly. Why I am curious to hear your version of this, but in the comic book version, again, we’re in superhero fatigue, but I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. As long as it’s good, it’s good.
But I am curious, what is yours?
I mean, it’s interesting because I was just at Lucca Comics & Games in Italy, and I just saw how much excitement there is for all these mediums and how people are getting into comics in so many different ways. You have the apps now, and you have more and more people buying the trades. You get people who maybe never lived through the ’90s or Spider-Man, etc., and they’re buying these trades. And it’s so interesting to see people who are 10, 15, 18, etc., picking up these things that I remember from when I was a kid. I’m like, oh, you’re reading this now?
Matthew Senreich: I was at a Thanksgiving dinner where my wife’s cousin, just out of college, was telling me about how he was in the manga section at Barnes and Noble. And it is overwhelming how many shelves there are. Way more. Because, again, it doesn’t matter what the medium is in this form of telling a story. People like telling a story like that. And people like reading a story like that.
Does it have to be all superheroes? Not necessarily, but I think superheroes do stand out because that’s everybody’s mindset. But you can tell any story in a comic book form, in a graphic novel form.
Right, I definitely agree. I love it. Just to see the variety of things that are coming in that we never imagined, even in the mid-’90s. It was impossible to buy manga in the mid-’90s.
Matthew Senreich: Oh, I know.
Now, you go to any big bookstore, and you’ll find entire sections of manga, bigger than some comic book stores back in the day. So it’s really a different era.
Matthew Senreich: Completely. And that’s what makes it great. That’s why I say I like seeing what my kids are going to read next.
Anything you’d like to wrap up with as we people should keep aware of this new project?
John Harvatine IV: I don’t know, Matt, what do you think? How do we wrap this up? We got it [The Von Dingles],funded. That’s great.
Matthew Senreich: I hope people get excited about the visual style of this. Again, it is wacky and weird and wonderful. It’s about eggs and caring about eggs. How do you sell that? I don’t know. But hopefully, someone will see this visual style and go, that’s interesting.
Yeah, well said. For someone who wants to follow what you guys are doing, is it just on your Kickstarter page, or do you have anywhere else they should look?
John Harvatine IV: Well, yeah, our Kickstarter page is a good place to go because you can see information about the graphic novel, and then it also has a link to the animated short that we created that helped inspire the whole world. And then, our Instagram, The Von Dingles, is where we do a lot of photography in our world. So those are the three little spots to check out. Awesome.
Thank you so much. And I look forward to seeing how the project comes along.
Matthew Senreich: Yeah, thank you very much.
