Rick and Morty followers might need some time to attend earlier than the subsequent season, however there is a new indie animated collection of shorts that can hold them completely satisfied till then. Specializing in a diner on the sting of a black gap, Sunny Aspect Down explores the identical emotional core and sci-fi comedy that make Rick and Morty so good.
What makes the MAKE Studios shorts extra spectacular is their totally impartial nature, becoming in neatly with a legacy of creators turning to the web to discover a fanbase for his or her distinctive creations. Whereas attending LightBox in Pasadena, California, ScreenRant spoke with Sunny Aspect Down creator Natalia Poteryakhin concerning the collection and what makes it particular.
Sunny Aspect Down Are Good Shorts For Any Rick And Morty Fan Ready For The Subsequent Season
Sunny Aspect Down is a enjoyable addition to the galaxy of sci-fi parodies. The collection focuses on Nat, an exhausted waitress at a greasy diner on the sting of a black gap. Nat desires to flee the gravitational pull of her work (and the black gap all the time ominously hanging behind the diner), however is trapped in additional methods than one.
It is a very enjoyable collection, with a concentrate on sci-fi parodies that play out over the course of 6 2-minute-long episodes. Every section riffs on totally different sci-fi archetypes, with the primary episode particularly having enjoyable with a transparent parody of Kirk and Spock from the unique Star Trek, filtered by way of a Rick and Morty-type sense of comedy.
“[Animation] does not have to suit into neat packing containers and the identical normal codecs,” Natalia Poteryakhin defined, noting that the web-series method has been a great tool for inventive freedom. “I feel indie animation is a wellspring of wonderful work. We will inform totally different sorts of tales.”
Natalia Poteryakhin is the director, author, and storyboard artist on Sunny Aspect Down, however she’s additionally collaborating with the remainder of MAKE to convey the animated collection to life. “Our storyboard artist, Andy Vella, took the script and considered visible gags and jokes to punch it up in methods I could not have imagined. It acquired 3 times funnier.“
Sunny Aspect Down Expertly Performs With Tone
Once we first have been engaged on it, it was actually simply concerning the gag and making individuals chortle. Then we saved making it longer, till these one-minute shorts grew to become two-and-a-half-minute shorts that inform individuals tales concerning the world, the principle characters, the struggles, the issues individuals really relate to.
The collection, which already has the primary episode obtainable on-line, has a blast poking enjoyable on the conventions of the sci-fi style. The truth that it is all been delivered to life with a standard animated method simply makes it really feel much more particular in an animation panorama largely dominated by digital artists.
For all of the jokes, there’s an undercurrent of blunt somberness to Sunny Aspect Down that makes it significantly compelling. Much like how Rick and Morty works as a result of it makes use of the scatological humor and sci-fi references as a floor stage for its extra emotional components, Sunny Aspect Down touches on pure malaise and existential dread.
“I feel everybody looks like there’s this large, looming, dreadful factor behind them,” Potreyakhin defined. “To stay with that and to search out humor in it’s what the present is all about.” That is clear by the primary episode, which fuses distinct animation and goofy alien intercourse jokes with a painfully actual sense of inevitability of being slowed down by life.
Reflecting on her method to the collection and the world of animation, Potreyakhin famous that “we’re making two-minute shorts. We all know that is an uncommon format, however that is how we’re making the best-looking animation doable, as a substitute of diluting it into making an attempt to make a 21-minute pilot… in animation, play to your limitations and what your pursuits are.”
The primary episode of Sunny Aspect Down is offered to stream now on Youtube.