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Ecco l'intervista a Sean Molyneaux e a Merideth Mulroney su Huntik:
An Interview with the Folks Behind ‘Huntik’
“Huntik” is about a boy named Lok who discovers his missing father’s journal and magical amulet. His discovery is so powerful that an evil group known only as The Organization will do anything for it. With help from his mysterious new friends Sophie and Dante–who belong to a good group called Huntik–Lok is able to learn how to use his new powers and search for his missing father. The art is a blend of Western animation and anime. On a certain level, it reminds me a bit of one of my favorite childhood cartoons: “Thundercats.” The show has even spawned a Pokemon-esque card game produced by Upper Deck.
Story supervisor and writer Sean Molyneaux and Merideth Mulroney who is handling the DVD release were kind enough to spend a little time with us. Here’s what they had to say:
MOVIE ‘TUDES: How did “Huntik” come into being? I know Sean wrote the first episodes, but was it your brain child or a collaborative effort? How did you get involved with it?
SEAN MOLYNEAUX: Huntik was the brainchild of Iginio Straffi, an Italian animator and director who has been called the “Disney of Italy.” I became involved because at the time I was a writer and story supervisor on “Winx Club,” Mr. Straffi’s biggest hit show, and I had also done work on the show “Yugi-Oh.” Since Huntik’s American producer is Upper Deck, the distributor of Yugi-Oh at the time, it was a perfect fit.
After Iginio drew up his initial concepts for the show, I met with him and some producers from Upper Deck in his animation studio, Rainbow S.P.A. There we had a series of intense meetings where we hammered out the kernel of the show, and I was tasked with the job of creating the “Show Bible.” In the world of IP’s and TV, the Show Bible is a master document that covers the entire program: all the characters, all the development that will take place, all of the backstories, episode synopses and the plot–past, present and future. I was given a decent amount of freedom to flesh out the details of the plot, the main characters, their story arcs and their pasts, and was responsible for the secondary characters pretty much top to bottom.
MT: “Huntik” is actually a multi-national production. Merideth, please tell us a little about how that works and what gets done where?
MERIDETH MULRONY: As a multi-national property all around, Huntik has producers and team members all over the world. Creatively, the writing is all done in America, the computer graphics, backgrounds, design and art is all done in Italy, and the nuts and bolts animation is done in Korea. The program is originally recorded in English at NYC’s NYAV Post studio, (and dubbed using that as a guide into other languages) but all the music and sound effects are produced in Italy. In addition, the Italian studio supplies the episode and art direction, making sure their designs and backgrounds make it from the drawing board to the final product just the way they want them. The combination of American writing and voice acting with Italian art and direction makes Huntik a true hybrid of the two countries’ styles.
MT: Sean, how do you marry the words and art over such distances?
SM: We e-mail everything back and forth. Ideas, sketches, etc. Everything starts with the descriptions in the scripts or in the Bible. From there, the designers either go off in their own direction, or they write me for more details. When the designers go off on their own direction, it’s generally because they’re inspired and the final product is usually really awesome. Then it’s a simple matter for me to go back and tweak the scripts so that, for example, the physical design of a Titan matches what it can do. I try to keep my descriptions minimalist at first, maybe mentioning a single important fact (maybe a personality trait, or a physical trait in the case of a Titan), hoping that maybe this will inspire the designer. Sometimes things just “connect”, like with Montehue. My physical description of him was just a big guy with some kind of facial hair, but I spent a lot of time describing his personality. The final result was literally exactly the image I was picturing in my head, right down to the jacket.
MT: Upper Deck was originally most famous for its baseball cards. Merideth, please tell us about the “Huntik” card game now produced by Upper Deck and its popularity.
MM: Upper Deck is no stranger to collectable card games. Their recent hits include the World of Warcraft TCG, and they are particularly known for their game support, which means hosting tournaments, doing special events with card stores and organizing play leagues. The Huntik TCG has some unique mechanics. It’s still new, but the Upper Deck team knows what they’re doing, and we’re confident it’ll make some waves this holiday season.
MT: Sean, what were some of your most favorite and influential ‘toons as a kid? How did you become a T.V. writer?
SM: I was a child of the 80’s cartoon boom, so I was watching things like “He-Man” and “Transformers.” What really caught my eye on TV was the Japanese imports “Robotech” and “Voltron” (especially Voltron), although I didn’t know they were Japanese at the time, the different storytelling style really captivated me. My single greatest influence, however, was definitely the “Transformers Movie”…the original animated one from the late 80’s, thank you very much. My dad ran the “media” department of the local library, so he was able to get me the VHS before it was available at the rental places, and I watched it about 1000 times. It totally blew me away because it was 100% true to the original stories, characters and style, but at the same time it was a real movie with an epic plot, twists and turns, character development and drama. It was completely for kids, but included things like loss of a father figure, incompetent but well-meaning leaders, and confronting certain death. To this day, no one has been able to take a kid’s franchise and create something that both preserved it and brought it to the next level the way the animated Transformers movie did.
I got started in the writing business at Media Blasters, working on adaptations of Japanese shows. By luck, I was involved with Rurouni Kenshin, which ended up on Cartoon Network. A recommendation from voice director and actor Mike Sinterniklass, with whom I ended up working with many times, landed me some work on “Yugi-oh,” which led to working on “Winx Club” and with the creator of “Huntik,” Iginio Straffi. There were lots of other projects in between, but basically one thing led to another and I took every opportunity I had and worked as hard as I possibly could on each one.
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