Action comedy family series Super Duper Bunny League 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 was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: Congratulations on this. Jonny, this is based on a comic book. That’s where all great superheroes come from, so what a place to take it from!
Jonny Belt: Yeah. Jamie Smart, who is a prolific graphic author and comic book artist in the U.K. — 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 “The Backyardigans” and “Bubble Guppies” 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’t really seen before. And we thought it would be perfect for this age group, so we jumped at it.
JM: And Robert, what do you love about bunnies?
Robert Scull: Initially we were thinking bunny superheroes… there’s a lot of animal superhero… animal heroes and stuff. But it was really, like Jonny said, Jamie’s sensibility, that it was funny and the drawing style lends itself to animation perfectly. And our first reaction was, “Hey, it’s cute.” And the next thing you knew we were developing it.
JM: Amazing.
RS: That doesn’t answer your question. I love bunnies because they’re delicious.
JM: (laughs) You know what’s 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… into turning them into superheroes, I love that. Who doesn’t love a grilled cheese sandwich?
JB: So that’s a perfect example of Jamie’s humor and why it kind of works for our audience. It’s immediately cartoony. You don’t have to spend time explaining it. You don’t have to spend time saying, “How did the power of a grilled cheese maker get to turn these guys into bunnies?” It’s immediately cartoony, and so that was one of the main reasons why we found it appealing. We didn’t have to spend the time to explain it.
RS: And the kid appeal. Everything is kid relatable. The issues the characters face, including fighting bad guys are personal issues that kids will encounter — wanting to snack and wanting to take naps and maybe not wanting that.
JB: 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.
JM: There’s a lot of thought that goes into that. And Robert, was that same kind of thought going into the powers that these bunnies have?
RS: 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’d like to just create a team of the main characters and had to adapt some of the powers a little bit.
Super Duper creators Johnny Belt and Robert Scull
JM: And there’s a narrator on this show, Janelle James from “Abbott Elementary”. Jonny, what do you love about her personality — through this voice performance and the humor and the energy that Janelle brings to this?
JB: She’s fantastic. I spent many, many hours with Janelle, working with Janelle, and she’s hilarious. Her energy… 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’t help but comment on what’s going on. So yes, she gets us from point A to point B [and] helps sort of guide the preschool audience, but she’s also unable to be like, “I can’t look!” She’s talking to the TV screen, which we found really funny. And she ad-libbed a lot of stuff.
JM: Terrific. You feel like even the adults watching this with kids and grandkids commenting at the screen, at the zaniness and the craziness… that relates to the narration for her. This is in Important City. So Robert, what’s the most important thing that you had to decide on when it came to making this show?
RS: I think it was just figuring out the balance of the characters’ personalities and making sure they’re all likable and they are original. Everything’s been done. So it’s difficult to come up with something that feels fresh and doesn’t feel like just a rip off of a thousand other superhero things you’ve seen. So making the characters work together to be complementary to each other and likable was probably the hardest part… the most important part. Character’s everything for us.
JB: Yeah. And these characters specifically, we wanted it to sort of read as friends first. Their friendship… and sort of siblings. They live together. They fight together, they battle together, they save the world together.
RS: Wait for the bathroom.
JB: They wait for the bathroom, but they’re gonna argue over who gets the front seat, and they’re gonna argue over who gets the last piece of pizza. And so all of that stuff, no matter if they’re taking out the garbage or fighting the world’s scariest bad guy, it’s fun to watch them interact with one another. They’re very supportive. They’re 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’re really respectful of the audience and making sure that it’s safe viewing. It should be fun, family viewing.
RS: We wanna avoid snark. It’s easy to get cynical and snarky and especially for our audience. We want to be sweet. We want heart in there.
JM: And Jonny, there’s such energy to the hand-drawn animation. How was it working with your team on the zaniness, the fast motion and the comedy that’s within the visuals that we see?
JB: Because it’s an action comedy… 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’s 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… the humor is really important to us. The heart’s really important to us. And of course it’s a superhero show, so it needs to be action packed.
JM: And in the first half hour I saw it’s also a bit of a mini golf adventure. Robert, do you have a mini golf memory that comes to mind?
RS: Yeah, that’s 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.
JM: I wonder for the both of you… Who are your superheroes? Who are the people you look up to or have admired for a long time — maybe in the animation space?
RS: I can’t not say Walt Disney. Making it about believing the characters are feeling and thinking on the screen. “The illusion of life”, if you will. That’s where it all starts.
JB: I’m gonna have to say… 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.
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