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Fans of the classic Looney Tunes stories and ‘90s kids have a lot of reasons to smile this fall. Tiny Toons Looniversity — a reboot of the Tiny Toon Adventures series, which was created by Tom Ruegger and produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Productions, debuts on Max and Cartoon Network this weekend.
The new show aims to celebrate the classic animation style and humor of the past while incorporating a new adventure for the characters. This time around Babs, Buster and their friends Hamton, Plucky and Sweetie head off to Acme Looniversity, which is the premier institution of higher hijinx learning. During their time as students, they start friendships with one another and study under historic Looney Tunes characters.
The show is produced by Amblin Television in association with Warner Bros. Animation, with Spielberg as executive producer alongside Warner Bros. Animation & Cartoon Network Studios President Sam Register and Amblin Television Presidents Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank. Erin Gibson (Attitudes!) and Nate Cash (Adventure Time) are the toon’s co-showrunners and co-executive producers.
Throwback to the Classics
“We definitely stuck with the classic volumetric designs,” says Cash. “We didn’t try to make it graphic or more modern in any way, other than we streamlined the amount of detail on the characters, which makes it super appealing, I think. It’s a little bit skewed more towards The Simpsons.”
“That same aesthetic applies to old Looney Tunes like some of the first Porky Pig black and white shorts,” he adds. “That’s why they’re so appealing, because they’re so minimal and detailed. They have that really cool, classic cartoon look, and we’re leaning a little bit towards that. So, it’s all 2D. There were a few times that the overseas studio requested to cheat with a 3D model for a golf cart or vehicles. We do it very sparingly. That’s the trick: to make 2D characters look as 3D as possible. And I think that’s what makes the show stand out visually, since that’s not something that gets done a lot in modern cartoons where it’s so volumetric that everything is moving in Z depth.”
‘We’re more focused on having fun and trying not to be super sophisticated. We’ll go over the top for a gag. We really hope kids find it funny.’
— Co-showrunner/executive producer Nate Cash
The series had a team of about 50 to 60 people at Warner Bros. Animation. Most of the main crew for preproduction and post was located in Burbank, while a larger number of animation artists were located overseas, though WBA retains a small staff of animators who work on revisions and special scenes. There were also additional freelancers and crews at overseas production partners. Studio Redfrog in France did work on one episode and Snipple Animation in the Philippines finished all other animation. For the most part, the show was 2D done within Harmony.
Looney Tunes shorts and series have always been distinguished by music scoring and songs, and this series is no exception. Cash loved working with composer Matt Johnson, who brought just the sensibility they wanted to the show.
“[Matt Johnson] is amazing,” says Cash. “He re-did the main title and brought in an orchestra to get that full sound to it. Also, in the episodes, sometimes we’ll need something that sounds like a pop song and says a certain thing. He’ll take our request, we’ll hear what he does, and it’s exactly what we needed for the scene and super catchy. So, he definitely understands what we need. He’s also amazing at working with the voice actors to get them to sing at their peak. The whole time, he’s doing the score for the whole episode, not just the songs — and he’s doing all of that in a hurry. By the time the show gets to him, we’ve seen the storyboards and animatics and we’ve seen that so many times over and over and over again, a lot of times with just a scratch track. But then he comes in and does the composition and suddenly he makes it flow a little bit better. It just glues everything together.”
To help voice the characters that represent the new and legacy influences of Looney Tunes, the series brought in a talented, seasoned voice cast. The show features Emmy Award-winner Eric Bauza as Buster, Daffy and Gossamer; Ashleigh Hairston as Babs; David Errigo, Jr. as Hamton J. Pig and Plucky; and Tessa Netting as Sweetie. The show also features Tiny Toon Adventures alums Jeff Bergman as Bugs Bunny, Sylvester and Foghorn Leghorn; Bob Bergen as Porky Pig; Candi Milo as Dean Granny and Witch Hazel; and Cree Summer as Elmyra. Looney Tunes veteran actor Fred Tatasciore brings his talents to Taz and Yosemite Sam.
Cash and Gibson bring a classic comedic sensibility both to the storytelling and the comedy. They’re both veterans of popular animated series, steeped in the history of the characters and how audiences remember them. The show updates a few things for a new generation of viewers who might not be as familiar with the stories, characters and setups as their parents and caregivers.
“Babs used to be a kind of love interest, but [Erin Gibson] decided to switch that up pretty early on,” says Cash. “She wanted to switch the romantic relationship for a sibling relationship, because they go off to college and this way they can be more supportive of each other. We definitely pulled from the old show and maybe revamped characters that were more background characters. We had to fill out the campus with kind of new designs also. But for the most part, we’re taking what was already in the old show, and just continuing it.”
Familiar Faces Revisited
In addition, some legacy characters have been given key supporting roles. For example, Foghorn Leghorn is the football coach at the school, Yosemite Sam is the security guard and Granny is the dean.
“It was really fun working with these characters because they’re so classic and people remember them for good reason,” says Cash. “We have Wile E. Coyote as one of the professors, which was a little bit of a challenge in the beginning to have a professor who doesn’t speak, but I think it became cool hurdle to jump. The show doesn’t focus on the legacy characters that much or follow the main characters in class a lot. It’s more focused on their lives on campus, between classes. But one of the most fun characters for me to work on was Granny. She’s the dean of our school, so she was in the early parts of development. We had a drawing of her kind of sitting back at her desk like The Godfather, where she’s the badass and you wouldn’t want to mess with Granny.”
The co-showrunners also sought to uphold the puns and wacky humor established so long ago. “Erin, my co-showrunner, really loves puns, including putting them into the lyrics of songs,” says Cash. “We’re actually about not taking things too seriously. We’re more focused on having fun and trying not to be super sophisticated. We’ll go over the top for a gag. We really hope kids find it funny. My kids have been brutally honest with me about what they like. We really wanted this show to have that sense of fun that has made these characters so loved and stand the test of time.”
Tiny Toons Looniversity premieres Saturday, September 9 at 9 a.m. ET/PT on Cartoon Network, with new episodes debuting every week. All 10 episodes of the first season are available to stream on Max from today (September 8).