Toon In: Animated TV Highlights for April, from ARK: The Animated Series to Knuckles
Photos Courtesy of Paramount+, JAKDF 3rd Division, and Naoya Matsumoto/SHUEISHA
Welcome to the ink, paint, and pixel corner of Paste TV, where we’re highlighting some of the best premium animation projects on streaming or direct-to-video aimed for teens and adults. This monthly column not only provides an overview of the new animated series to check out, but we’ve also collected some of the finest creators and voice talents in the medium to give updates, or introductions, to their series.
ARK: The Animated Series Post Mortem (Aired March 21)
If you’re a gamer and play Ark: Survival Evolved… Surprise! An original 2D animated series based on the world and mythology, by the creators of the game, dropped on Paramount+ in late March. ARK: The Animated Series gives players and non-players alike a serialized, hard sci-fi story to dive into, with more episodes on the way later this year.
Series co-creator Jeremy Stieglitz tells Paste that he and Jesse Rapczak released the game in 2015, and it wasn’t until 2019 that the idea of a companion series took hold. Because the game is open world and played in either first or third person, Stieglitz says they knew they couldn’t really explore the backstory with any emotional depth in the medium of origin. Plus, they also found that overall, episodic storytelling featuring cool dinosaur tales was lacking. So, they worked out a budget and an outline for the show they wanted to make—and then the pandemic hit.
Stieglitz says they thought they would have to shut down, but instead, the animation industry was able to shift to work from home and ARK: The Animated Series went into full production as a traditionally animated series. While that decision may puzzle some gamers, Stieglitz says two things brought them to their 2D animation.
“I think hand drawn ages better,” Stieglitz says of the timeless quality of the medium. “But also, we said the video game is already 3D and we do not want to be confused visually with the video games. We said, if we go CGI, we’re going to be too tempted to use our models from the game, or to take assets directly from the game. And ultimately, it’s just going to feel like a cutscene for the game.”
For the 2D animation, they hired California based studio Lex + Otis, and veteran animator Jay Oliva, who found the balance of capturing the spirit of the game while making the show its own thing. Stieglitz says writers Marguerite Bennett and Kendall Deacon Davis helped them make sure the story arc stayed character driven rather than just action based.
“Marguerite, who’s an LGBTQ writer, really made—among many other things—the character of Helena feel completely authentic,” he details. “Even with the villains, especially in Part 2, we get to know more about them and what drives them. And she’s also an academically trained historian and I am definitely a history buff, so we had many discussions about the Roman Empire and the Victorian era, which features more in Part 2. Also about indigenous cultures, and for those episodes, we brought in cultural consultants to help us visually with those scenes, but also with some of the plot aspects with the flashbacks of those cultures. And the language as well.”
Stieglitz says Davis came from the video game world, particularly Halo, and drilled down on how to take the more dramatic elements of the game world and turn that into a moving narrative. “The adaptation aspect and the plot mechanics of how that’s going to work were very well thought through by him,” he says.
As the originator of all of the game and show content, Stieglitz says he’s been most excited to get into the head and heart of Helena (Madeleine Madden) and Meiyin Li (Michelle Yeoh). “In the original game lore, Helena was very important to this background in the game, but you never get to know her as a person,” he explains. “I really liked the idea of getting under someone’s armor, so to speak, and learning that they’re tough physically, but they have vulnerabilities in other areas. You can never really explore that in the game in a meaningful way. So seeing how their relationship evolves, and continues to evolve over the show is something very meaningful to me.”
At the end of “Element 6,” there are plenty of cliffhangers to keep audiences guessing, from the return of Helena’s assumed dead wife, Victoria (Elliot Page), to the impending battles to come. Stieglitz promises in Part 2, there will be emotional closure for audiences.
“It was very important to us that over this run of episodes, we don’t leave it with some kind of bullshit: ‘tune in next time for the satisfying good resolutions you want to see,’” he says. “Yes, there’s more story to tell. But we were like, just in case we never get to tell any more story than this, it won’t feel like anybody wasted their time. They’re gonna get the kind of narrative and emotional closure they want out of this run of episodes. And that very much relates to Helena’s backstory, and not just about Victoria either. It’s very important to us that the pilot sets that up, but the rest of the episodes really continue to address that.”
Last but not least, when asked how they got a voice cast absolutely stacked with A-list actors the likes of Yeoh, Gerard Butler, David Tennant, Jeffrey Wright, and Monica Bellucci, Stieglitz admits that was their silver lining to the pandemic shutdowns, as actors were available to record at home. He says Oliva went through his contacts from previous projects and they assembled this dream cast. Teasing what’s to come on that front, he says, “Russell Crowe is only in Part 1very briefly, but he’s hella in Part 2. And he did something very fun, I won’t spoil it, with his character that is a lot of fun. I think people will really enjoy it.”
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