{"id":190541,"date":"2025-04-18T08:54:37","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T08:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/animation\/up-up-and-away-with-super-duper-bunny-league-animation-scoop\/"},"modified":"2025-04-18T08:54:37","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T08:54:37","slug":"up-up-and-away-with-super-duper-bunny-league-animation-scoop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=190541","title":{"rendered":"Up Up And Away With \u201cSuper Duper Bunny League\u201d \u2013 Animation Scoop"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Action comedy family series Super Duper Bunny League<\/em> premieres this Saturday April 19th at 9:30am on Nickelodeon. Creators and EPs Johnny Belt and Robert Scull share insights on bringing to life the adventures of heroic, funny bunnies. (This Animation Scoop Q&A<\/em> was edited for length and clarity.)<\/p>\n

Jackson Murphy:<\/strong> Congratulations on this. Jonny, this is based on a comic book. That\u2019s where all great superheroes come from, so what a place to take it from!<\/p>\n

Jonny Belt<\/strong>: Yeah. Jamie Smart, who is a prolific graphic author and comic book artist in the U.K. \u2014 Bunny vs. Monkey and a bunch of different IP. And we were given the chance to take a look at Superhero Bunny League as it was called back in the day. And it was immediately appealing to us. We came from \u201cThe Backyardigans\u201d and \u201cBubble Guppies\u201d and we looked at it and it perfectly fit our sensibility, and we felt like it was a great sort of skew on superheroes, which we hadn\u2019t really seen before. And we thought it would be perfect for this age group, so we jumped at it.<\/p>\n

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JM<\/strong>: And Robert, what do you love about bunnies?<\/p>\n

Robert Scull<\/strong>: Initially we were thinking bunny superheroes\u2026 there\u2019s a lot of animal superhero\u2026 animal heroes and stuff. But it was really, like Jonny said, Jamie\u2019s sensibility, that it was funny and the drawing style lends itself to animation perfectly. And our first reaction was, \u201cHey, it\u2019s cute.\u201d And the next thing you knew we were developing it.<\/p>\n

JM<\/strong>: Amazing.<\/p>\n

RS:<\/strong> That doesn\u2019t answer your question. I love bunnies because they\u2019re delicious.<\/p>\n

JM:<\/strong> (laughs) You know what\u2019s great? My all-time favorite food is a grilled cheese sandwich. So the fact that you guys take a grilled cheese sandwich and the powers of that\u2026 into turning them into superheroes, I love that. Who doesn\u2019t love a grilled cheese sandwich?<\/p>\n

JB:<\/strong> So that\u2019s a perfect example of Jamie\u2019s humor and why it kind of works for our audience. It\u2019s immediately cartoony. You don\u2019t have to spend time explaining it. You don\u2019t have to spend time saying, \u201cHow did the power of a grilled cheese maker get to turn these guys into bunnies?\u201d It\u2019s immediately cartoony, and so that was one of the main reasons why we found it appealing. We didn\u2019t have to spend the time to explain it.<\/p>\n

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RS<\/strong>: And the kid appeal. Everything is kid relatable. The issues the characters face, including fighting bad guys are personal issues that kids will encounter \u2014 wanting to snack and wanting to take naps and maybe not wanting that.<\/p>\n

JB:<\/strong> We have a new villain pretty much in every episode except our main villain, Dr. Puzzleglove, who is responsible for turning them into bunnies. But every single one of those villains has kind of a kid relatable backstory and problem. Not wanting to share or not wanting to wash a piece of clothing that you find as your lucky piece of clothing that turns into a monster. I think preschoolers will find that really funny.<\/p>\n

JM:<\/strong> There\u2019s a lot of thought that goes into that. And Robert, was that same kind of thought going into the powers that these bunnies have?<\/p>\n

RS:<\/strong> Yeah. Jamie came up with the powers initially, but we adapted them for the show. And in fact, in the original comics, everybody in the world had powers, and so we thought we\u2019d like to just create a team of the main characters and had to adapt some of the powers a little bit.<\/p>\n

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Super Duper creators Johnny Belt and Robert Scull<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

JM<\/strong>: And there\u2019s a narrator on this show, Janelle James from \u201cAbbott Elementary\u201d. Jonny, what do you love about her personality \u2014 through this voice performance and the humor and the energy that Janelle brings to this?<\/p>\n

JB:<\/strong> She\u2019s fantastic. I spent many, many hours with Janelle, working with Janelle, and she\u2019s hilarious. Her energy\u2026 The feeling we wanted to get is not just a narrator, the all-knowing narrator that you usually have on preschool or certainly superhero shows to move us along. This is sort of the person who can\u2019t help but comment on what\u2019s going on. So yes, she gets us from point A to point B [and] helps sort of guide the preschool audience, but she\u2019s also unable to be like, \u201cI can\u2019t look!\u201d She\u2019s talking to the TV screen, which we found really funny. And she ad-libbed a lot of stuff.<\/p>\n

JM:<\/strong> Terrific. You feel like even the adults watching this with kids and grandkids commenting at the screen, at the zaniness and the craziness\u2026 that relates to the narration for her. This is in Important City. So Robert, what\u2019s the most important thing that you had to decide on when it came to making this show?<\/p>\n

RS:<\/strong> I think it was just figuring out the balance of the characters\u2019 personalities and making sure they\u2019re all likable and they are original. Everything\u2019s been done. So it\u2019s difficult to come up with something that feels fresh and doesn\u2019t feel like just a rip off of a thousand other superhero things you\u2019ve seen. So making the characters work together to be complementary to each other and likable was probably the hardest part\u2026 the most important part. Character\u2019s everything for us.<\/p>\n

JB:<\/strong> Yeah. And these characters specifically, we wanted it to sort of read as friends first. Their friendship\u2026 and sort of siblings. They live together. They fight together, they battle together, they save the world together.<\/p>\n

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RS<\/strong>: Wait for the bathroom.<\/p>\n

JB:<\/strong> They wait for the bathroom, but they\u2019re gonna argue over who gets the front seat, and they\u2019re gonna argue over who gets the last piece of pizza. And so all of that stuff, no matter if they\u2019re taking out the garbage or fighting the world\u2019s scariest bad guy, it\u2019s fun to watch them interact with one another. They\u2019re very supportive. They\u2019re very loving. We were really careful on not leaving our preschool audience behind on the jokes, but there are multi-layered jokes in there. But we\u2019re really respectful of the audience and making sure that it\u2019s safe viewing. It should be fun, family viewing.<\/p>\n

RS<\/strong>: We wanna avoid snark. It\u2019s easy to get cynical and snarky and especially for our audience. We want to be sweet. We want heart in there.<\/p>\n

JM<\/strong>: And Jonny, there\u2019s such energy to the hand-drawn animation. How was it working with your team on the zaniness, the fast motion and the comedy that\u2019s within the visuals that we see?<\/p>\n

JB<\/strong>: Because it\u2019s an action comedy\u2026 if you love superheroes and you love battles, we wanted to check that box. We felt Gigglebug in Helsinki, which was our animation team, had the perfect sensibility for it. They do beautiful 2D animation. Their style, the thick and thin line, combined with Jamie\u2019s style, they did a test for us and they just hit it outta the park. It was a perfect combination. So we felt like we could maintain the preschool pace, push it just a little bit, but also\u2026 the humor is really important to us. The heart\u2019s really important to us. And of course it\u2019s a superhero show, so it needs to be action packed.<\/p>\n

JM:<\/strong> And in the first half hour I saw it\u2019s also a bit of a mini golf adventure. Robert, do you have a mini golf memory that comes to mind?<\/p>\n

RS:<\/strong> Yeah, that\u2019s an example of how we like to start things out in an everyday place, something kids would be interested in, and then take it and have it go extreme.<\/p>\n

JM:<\/strong> I wonder for the both of you\u2026 Who are your superheroes? Who are the people you look up to or have admired for a long time \u2014 maybe in the animation space?<\/p>\n

RS<\/strong>: I can\u2019t not say Walt Disney. Making it about believing the characters are feeling and thinking on the screen. \u201cThe illusion of life\u201d, if you will. That\u2019s where it all starts.<\/p>\n

JB:<\/strong> I\u2019m gonna have to say\u2026 rock gods. Music people who really put on a stage performance. I was a huge KISS fan as a kid. Those were my superheroes. All of those guys putting on those incredible shows felt magical to me.<\/p>\n