Being Wunderbear with Mikey Heller
New-Yorker Heller draws comics, does standup comedy and moved to L.A. just a year ago to become one of the main writers on Cartoon Networkâs show We Bare Bears. The show tells the story of three bears living as humans; it is cute and funny and seems to appeal to adults at least as much as to kids. Discover the show and one of the men behind it now!
Have you had many odd jobs before getting where you are?
Yeah. I had a bunch of jobs when I was in high school... I was an animator for a now-defunct video studio that did health related videos for gyms. I would just animate title screens and stuff. In college I worked at a dining hall and I would try to do cartooning for extra money, but never that much money! After college I was chopping salads for a long time, that was one job. I was doing production assistant stuff, different video things, around where I lived. As a production assistant I worked for WFXI, thatâs the PBS station. Weâd just try anything. Anything that was required of us. That was definitely an odd job in itself!
And how did you finally manage to get a proper gig?
I was in New York, and I had a pretty nice job at a website called SmilesForAll.com. That lasted for a bit and then after that I was just doing stuff on my own. I was just cartooning for cash. I had been doing a comic strip called Time Travel online for quite a while, at that point maybe four or five years. My now-boss, Daniel Chong the creator of We Bare Bears, was developing the cartoon and he had liked some of my work he had seen already and so he reached out to me at one point about writing some stories for the show. I did that for a bit, I freelanced from New York, and then eventually it led to being offered a full-time gig so I moved out here for the âbig thingâ, the âbig old jobâ.
Tell us about the team writing process.
Itâs a very great and interesting process. Iâm one of two full time writers. We break stories by taking an idea that someone has offered us, an idea we have, an idea presented us by the director and creator of the show. Between the two of us we beat it out, just like the beats of a story in notes, and we try to do this with the director and the creator and other people who work on the show like the storyboard artists. We want everyone to be included in the process so when it moves to the next stage everyone is already on the same page about this particular story. When it comes to typing out outlines, thatâs what gets handed to the storyboard artists is these detailed outlines, that, we do on our own. But when we try to break the story and get the details down, we like to hear from everybody.
How do you get the dialogue right, do you read them out?
For a dialogue in the outline we will have the ideas of what they need to say, maybe just lines, and then the storyboard artists as they storyboard, will fill in the rest of the dialogue themselves. So underneath a certain panel will be the line that they need to say. That dialogue will be transferred to a script, maybe tightened or revised in some way. Weâll have a hand in that as well, and then that will be recorded. If they need anything else later, theyâll get those lines later in case certain scenes need to be revised or redone. So everyone kind of has a hand in the dialogue.
What happens when someone disagrees with a part of the story?
Well, people often disagree in the room. Ultimately we have to do whatâs best for the story. The more people agree on a certain concept, perhaps thatâs the shining light and thatâs the best move for the story. Iâve never witnessed a big fight or disagreement. I think the staff of the show, the reason why we all work so well together is âcos we all have the same tastes and ideas and tend to have a certain hive mind about how a story should work. So big disagreements donât happen a lot, but finding the right move or decision for a story can be a big group effort sometimes.
Do you write episode by episode or do you write everything and then send it to the animators?
We just go episode by episode. Weâre kinda working on a group at a time, and we just hand those off and weâre done with them, and we just move on to the next ones. Itâs sort of like an assembly line. After us itâs the storyboard artists. We have, I believe, six storyboard artists in the studio and they all have four to five weeks to work on their episode. Itâs usually two people to one episode and after that itâs handed off to the next crew of people, design stuff like backgrounds and characters and props and the storyboards being edited into X-sheet form. So itâs a long process but thereâs a lot of overlap. Episodes are continuously being worked on after weâve started writing them. Stuff is eventually shipped off to Korean studios to be animated, and then that stuff, after many months, comes back and gets edited here. So we might be writing a new episode, but then an old episode we wrote a long time ago is still being worked on. Itâs just a continuous process of things going out and coming back.
Youâre a writer but you also draw, but youâre not drawing on this cartoon?
No. In our writers room we have walls with drawings. When weâre beating our stories itâs always great to have storyboard artists listen on pitches of the stories and theyâll illustrate ideas. Iâll do that as well, Iâll doodle something to explain what Iâm talking about. So thatâs definitely helpful, but I myself donât have to draw for the show.
I donât think I can [Laughs]. For storyboard artists, it takes a lot of skill besides just being able to draw well and thatâs something Iâm not trained in, and it seems like a lot of hard work!
Do you still do your own cartoon strips?
Yeah, I still do my comic strip. I took a break for a bit when I moved here just because I had a lot going on, but recently I got back into it just so I can keep it alive. I feel like itâs an important thing in my life and I should keep it going. So I still do that.
Good. I do it just for myself. Not a lot of people read my comics. Itâs had a few lucky ones that have kind of spread all over the Internet. I often joke that my website is probably the last place where people have actually seen my comics! Theyâve probably seen it on Tumblr or image sites that just host other content. Itâs just something for me to just have an outlet for something silly, and to motivate myself to work on something.
Is We Bare Bears enough to take up your time?
Yeah. Work is usually nine to six. Thereâs plenty of people who work on all sorts of stuff, not just their own show, but they freelance for other things as well. But just being a writer, thatâs all I have to worry about so I stick to We Bare Bears.
How does it work to be creative from nine to six?
It can be hard! Often, if itâs after five and we still have a huge problem to deal with, Iâll be like âitâs never gonna happenâ, âcos every idea we have are called âfive oâclock ideasâ which means we may have tapped out. Although there have been occasions where after five we had great epiphanies about how to write something. But to be creatively engaged all day can make you feel tired at the end of the day like you donât want to do anything else. Which is tough because everyone who has a creative job wants to be creative all the time, especially on their own projects at home. So you just have to buckle down and commit yourself, because once youâre in it, itâs great. But if I get home and Iâm like âI gotta draw a comic, but I donât feel like it, Iâm tiredâ, I sometimes have to fight that feeling and once I get going Iâm like âoh right, I forgot, I like to do thisâ.
And what happens if you have an idea for the show at midnight?
I usually tell myself after work to stop thinking about the show. Iâve had plenty of ideas about the show after work, but for the most part I try to keep thinking about the show just at work.
Would you like to have your own show one day?
I think that would be super awesome! I think I have a lot to learn before I could even begin to imagine what that would be like. To produce your own show, thatâs like every aspect of producing a show all rolled up into one job. Perhaps Iâm not even fit to do it! But it would be fun, right, to at least imagine?
You want to stay in this industry?
Yeah. I have always wanted to work in comedy and television.
And would you like to release a book of your comics?
Yeah. Thatâs sort of been a goal of mine for a long time. I have so many comics on line but theyâre all very⌠itâs just a âgrab bagâ. Some of them donât really fit if I were to collect them all into one. Theyâre all different sizes and formats and styles. If I were to release a book, I would pick and choose. I wouldnât have an omnibus of everything. But I also want to make stuff thatâs just for a book. Those are long-term goals.
Anything else you want to share with the world?
Watch We Bare Bears! Itâs a great show, itâs wonderful!
More on www.mikeyheller.com or http://timetrabble.com, and watch the cartoon on www.cartoonnetwork.com/video/we-bare-bears/panda-foul-clip.html
(header image by Mindy Tucker)Â
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