Directing Danger Mouse: An Interview with Robert Cullen Part One
We’ve heard from the voice over artists, we’ve heard from the producers and head writer, now it is time for us to hear from the man leading the team responsible for getting Danger Mouse back to the screen in style.
Fresh Cut Grass
Robert Cullen is the creative director of Boulder Media, an animation service studio operating out of Dublin. The company has helped bring Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends and The Amazing World of Gumball to the screen. Cullen recently directed Fresh Cut Grass, a delightfully dark tale about a young bear who heads to the big city to meet is sister, but things are not as they seem. Both Fresh Cut Grass and Danger Mouse demonstrate the ability to create a coherent world that’s bright, colourful and able to take the audience anywhere.
Having the creativity to imagine this kind of world is something that Boulder were never going to have a problem with, the real trick was pitching their abilities to bring Danger Mouse up to date whilst still retaining his original charm.
We caught up with Danger Mouse director Robert Cullen to find out how this was achieved.
We’re you a fan of the original?
Robert Cullen
A huge fan, I’m of a certain age that remembers it originally, When we were younger there were only three channel and the show was shown daily with a cliffhanger at the end of most episodes. I remember it being different to most of the other shows I had seen, my older brothers would laugh along with it and the show didn’t talk down to you, the comedy was more sophisticated and not what you may expect from the average daytime cartoon. When we were approached to do a bid for it, we thought “gosh this is too surreal!” doing the project you grew up watching as a child, it’s a wonderful experience.
Did the BBC approach you to create a bid for the show?
It was an open bid, so we pitched against other companies. The basic tender was “what would you do with a modern Danger Mouse” so we had to imagine how Danger Mouse would work in this day and age. So we did some concept designs, tweaked a few of the characters and presented what we thought the world should look like, what we pitched isn’t too far from what the show is now. When we found out we got it we were dumbstruck, amazed, delighted!
What was your approach to the pitch?
The character in the original show were classic iconic designs so we didn’t feel any need to redesign them or over stylise them, they just needed a fresh coat of paint, some tweaks to fit in the with animation style, I think the biggest change is probably Baron Greenback, we knew his character would be a lot more cartoony and expressive so we wanted to take a pass at the design to help with the animators.
Were there any challenges in updating such an iconic character?
The main thing was to not deviate too far from the origjnal, we didn’t want to re-invent the wheel, with danger Mouse himself we gave him a slightly bigger nose and more refined features, the iPatch is a new enough feature, we kept it similar to the original but made it more of an iPhone silohete, we also took a few pounds off of Danger Mouse’s belly, he was a bit too tubby to be a super spy.
Penfold is pretty much exactly the same, quite commendable that you didn’t feel the need to update him too much.
Penfold is pretty much exactly the same as is Colonel K, Stilleto, they’re pretty much what they were originally, the biggest change we wanted to add was the environments and the backgrounds to make the world they inhabit more dynamic, bigger and bolder, we tried to make it more filmic so it would fit well when storyboarding
As well as keeping the originals you also had to design new characters like Prof. Skwalkencluck
Yes she is the new “Q” character, so she does all of the inventions. We had to come up with a design that feels like it was part of the show and didn’t feel like it was dropped in from a different planet. We developed a simplistic style really so new characters would fit in, we needed to make them feel like part of the same world, which took a little time to nail down but once it was done we knew exactly where we were going.
Join us for part two of our interview tomorrow when Robert Cullen talks about working with Cosgrove Hall co founder Brian Cosgrove. If you can’t wait until then, why not listen to our podcast interview below?