Stephen P. Neary's 'The Fungies' on HBO Max

When Stephen Neary was a child growing up in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, he didn't know that working in animation was a realistic goal. He loved cartoons, drew a lot and made small stop-motion movies in iMovie. After high school, he began taking animation classes at New York University, and that's when he fell in love with the medium again. "Whenever I watched an extras DVD storyboard presentation of a movie, I thought it would be my dream job!" he says.

This week, the talented creative sees the launch of his 2D animated show on HBO Max. It's called the colorful and imaginative series The Fungies! and is set in a mythological metropolis of Fungietown and follows the numerous missions of Seth, one of the young mushroom dwellers of the city who loves scientific adventures. The idea for the show came to Neary while he was reading about prototaxites, ancient fungi that grew on our planet about 400 million years ago.

Rule of creatures

Neary says that growing up, he loved all those fun "creature" shows - like cartoons The Smurfs, The Wuzzles, Noozles, Popples e Fraggle Rock. "I think about The Fungies! almost as if we were restarting a cartoon that never existed. It all sounds a little crazy, but a prehistoric setting was the perfect setting for all the stories we found ourselves wanting to tell, ”he observes.

“Mushrooms are weird little mushrooms, but they love each other,” says Neary. “The characters drive the story, so while they can separate their bodies to form a bicycle, we keep the show based on real emotions. We have an amazing cast. Fun improvisations and moments of life with the characters are an important part of every episode. "

“From an artistic point of view, we draw all the backgrounds in pencil and paint them digitally. It gives the comic a rich storybook quality that I love. It's fun to see the line difference between the backgrounds and digital characters and props. It's like being a kid and knowing which door Scooby would open because you could tell it was painted on a cel and wasn't part of the background. It has a special charm. "

Neary, who turned 35 in August, looks back fondly on his early years in animation. He remembers the day his professor Rob Marianetti asked him to help out on some cartoons Saturday Night Live's TV Funhouse shorts. “I was so bad at drawing, but I helped compose and scan the animation,” he admits. “Fueled by coffee and Jamba juice, we would stay up all Friday night to finish the cartoon to be broadcast the next night. The studio was outside Times Square and the city was alive at all times. It was crazy, but Rob and his fellow student, Dave Wachtenheim, were very pragmatic and calm in surfing the waves of chaos.

After directing several award-winning short films (Chicken Cowboy, Doctor Breakfast), Neary has worked on various films as a story artist (including the two Rio Photo, Epic, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, The Peanuts movie e The Angry Birds movie) and on Cartoon Network's Clarence series as storyboard artist and supervising producer. He was also an animator Wonder pets e 3rd and Bird.

Neary says he had different ideas about the business when he was younger. “I remember telling a recruiter when I was 18 that 'I wanted to be a director,'” he admits. “Very politely, they told me never to tell anyone that:“ A great studio isn't looking for an 18-year-old director! “First, I need to be able to understand part of the process inside and out. Subsequently, I tried to focus more on the storyboard and the storytelling aspect of animation. It seems obvious now, but I was extremely naive at the time! "

When it comes to bad advice, Neary says he gets confused whenever he hears direction "to have fun" with a task! “Before we begin, let's make sure we have the same definition of 'fun',” he says.

Now that his little mushroom friends are making their debut this summer, Neary is ready to watch his little world grow. “For now, our team is putting everything we have achieved into it The Fungies! But I'd love to make a movie at some point in my life, ”he says when asked about his plans for the future. "Oh! And also a graphic novel. I started creating more personal comics last year for Instagram and it's something I want to keep doing. There are so many interesting avenues for artists and entertainers to explore right now and I just want to do more with my friends! "

The Fungies! debuts Thursday August 20 on HBO Max.