How long does it take a group of grown-ups to come up with a
workable storyline for an 11 minute-long cartoon? Would you believe two days?

So says Craig McCracken, the talent behind those Emmy-Award
winning Cartoon Network series, “The Powerpuff Girls” and
“Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends.” Though — more recently —
Craig has been riding herd on Disney XD‘s acclaimed animated adventure,
“Wander Over Yonder.”

Mind you, this character-driven sci-fi comedy is probably a
lot harder than most animated series to pull off. If only because “Wander
Over Yonder” is built around an overly-optimistic intergalactic traveler
and his loyal Zbornak steed, Sylvia. Who then spend each episode traveling from
planet to planet helping people to learn how to live free and have fun.

Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved

“And because Wander and Sylvia never visit the same
place twice … Well, that means — for each episode — we have to come up with
a new world and the people who live on that world. More importantly, we have to
invent the problem that these people have which Wander & Sylvia will then
try and solve,” McCracken explained during a recent phone call. “And
since we like it when — over the course of an episode — we can then give you
a different insight about Wander or Sylvia … Well, that’s we spend a full two
days breaking ‘Wander Over Yonder’ stories. I mean, you can’t really tell a
deep, rich story with lots of humor if you haven’t first figured out what the
overall tone of that episode should be. What the stakes really are. Which
character has the most to learn from this particular storyline.”

Which — I know — sounds like an awful lot of behind-the-scenes
prep work, especially for an 11 minute-long cartoon. But as any fan of
“The Powerpuff Girls,” “Foster’s Home for Imaginary
Friends” or “Wander Over Yonder” will tell you, Craig has a true
gift for creating dimensional characters. Take — for example — Lord Hater,
the galactic conqueror wannabe who’s Wander & Sylvia’s chief nemesis on
this Disney XD show.

“You know, I couldn’t bring this up to Disney when I
was originally pitching ‘Wander’ to them. But I’ve always felt that it’s
Hater’s show,” Craig said. “I mean, Wander’s the star of the show.
But Hater’s the protagonist. He’s the character that has the most to learn over
the course of this show and is the one who most needs to grow. And so Hater’s
the character that you sympathize with the most because he’s the most flawed.
Whereas Wander … He’s the guy who’s kind of got it figured out, who’s got his
stuff together. I mean, Wander has some flaws. 
But he’s really the guy who’s guiding Hater to his future or wherever
he’s going to end up.”

Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved

Which I know sounds kind of subversive. But here’s the
thing: McCracken likes playing with people’s expectations when it comes to
“Wander Over Yonder.” With the perfect example of this being
“The Helper,” the episode which debuts tonight on Disney XD at 8 p.m. ET / PT.

“The concept this time around was what if we sent
Wander to a planet where no one needed his help,” stated Aaron Springer, who
not only wrote & storyboarded “The Helper” but also directed this
“Wander Over Yonder” episode. “Just like with all the other
episodes of  ‘Wander,’ the writing
sessions for this show were a group effort. And we spent those first few days
talking about the many ways we could possibly frustrate Wander. And in the end,
the story idea that seemed to have the most potential was that he’s just unable
to actually complete the acting of helping. Once that became the thru-line for
this episode, we could then come up with all the gags and character-driven
moments that we needed for this show.”

“And what’s great about Aaron is that — when he draws
— his storyboards have this very Moebius-meets-Gary-Larson quality,”
Craig enthused. “Which is kind of outside ‘Wander’ ‘s usual show style.
But we liked so much of what Aaron had drawn, the characters that he created
for this particular planet that we decided that we didn’t want to change that.
So rather than lose the aesthetic quality of what Aaron designed, we kind of
modified ‘Wander’ ‘s show design style so that it would then fit better with
what Aaron had done with his boards.”

Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved

Which — again — maybe isn’t what you’d expect to hear
about a TV show that’s being produced by The Walt Disney Company. But the people at Disney Television Animation just love Craig McCracken.
They’re thrilled that — after spending 15 years at Cartoon Network — he’s now
decamped to Disney. Which is why DTA is willing to give Craig lots of creative
freedom when it comes to “Wander Over Yonder.”

Of course, the downside of doing that is McCracken & Co.
sometimes come up with ideas that prove difficult for Mercury Filmworks (i.e.,
the overseas studio that actually animates “Wander Over Yonder”) to
produce. Take — for example — “The Void,” the recent episode where
Wander & Sylvia find a door just floating in space. Once these two step
through this door, they find themselves exploring a white feature-less
void.”

“Given that we’ve been forcing our art directors to
come up with all of these new worlds and the creatures who then live on these weird
planets … Well, we thought that ‘The Void’ might be a nice break for
them,” Craig recalled. “But from a production standpoint, what we
didn’t realize is that — when you’re producing animation digitally — a scene
can only be so long before a computer can’t then render it anymore. And since
what we had just sent the folks at Mercury Filmworks was all of these really
long scenes with characters acting on a white background … Well, we wound up
making it extremely hard for them to render this particular episode. And we
were like ‘Oh, we had no idea that this would an issue.’ So the one thing that
we didn’t think would be hard actually turned out to be pretty difficult.”

Craig McCracken (top row in blue plaid shirt) and the “Wander Over Yonder”
production team at Disney Television Animation. Copyright
Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved

You should expect to see other innovative “Wander Over
Yonder” episodes to pop up on Disney XD in the coming weeks. In addition
to the two that are bowing tonight (i.e., “The Big Job” &
“The Helper”), there’ll be three new episodes on this cable channel
in the coming weeks. “The Funk” & “The Enemies” on
November 25th and “The Rider” on November 28th. Not to mention a
special holiday-themed episode which will drop next month sometime that will
then revisit an earlier, especially popular “Wander Over Yonder”
episode, “The Gift 2: The Giftening.”

“And the best part about working on a show like ‘Wonder
Over Yonder’ is that — because Wander & Sylvia are always on the move,
always going someplace new — from a creative standpoint, you’re never locked
in. You never find yourself in the situation that people who work on other
animated series often find themselves in. Where they basically have to make the
same episode over & over & over again. So they then struggle to find
different ways to tell the same story,” McCracken concluded. “Whereas
on ‘Wander Over Wonder,’ we never tread the same water. We always kind of do
brand-new things.”

Except — of course — for that two day-long process when
Craig and his team follow in order to break the story of every new “Wander
Over Yonder” episode.

This article was originally posted on the Huffington Post’s Entertainment page on Friday, November 14, 2014