College Adventures Special Episode VI: Interview with Jeremiah Cortez (Dogs in Space)!
A bit more of a casual entry this time, but I 100% had to talk about my Writing for Animation class professor and creator of the amazing Netflix cartoon Dogs in Space, Jeremiah Cortez! Spoilers for S1 of Dogs in Space btw! (Please watch it, it’s great)
(Btw, his class is the setting for College Adventures Season 3 Parts 7, 8, and 11!)
· For most of the semester he was under NDA about his series, so it was really tough hearing him say stuff like “Oh man, there’s the joke/character/scene in the show that’s SO good! I can’t tell you about it right now, but can’t wait for you all to see it!” so much.
· Nevertheless, he showed us a ton of character sheets for the show, and they were super-extensive!! There was so much detail in them for how every character dynamic in the whole show should play out, and it was really fun to see!
· Netflix really wanted him to cast a big-name celebrity as Cpt Garbage, but he managed to fight against that in order to find the right person instead. Some names thrown around included Seth Rogen and Will Ferrell!
· For the same reasons, Netflix was also very against hiring no-name David Lopez as Chonies, but Jeremiah insisted he was right for the job (and I agree!)
· Loaf was originally written to have a British accent, since he’s a British Bulldog!
· Apparently while recording her lines for Kira in the finale, Debra Wilson actually broke into tears! That’s dedication!
· Also, Kira wasn’t even going to be the antagonist of S1 at first! It was originally going to be an alien that the crew of the Pluto found. And his “evil” plan was to steal the dogs’ gene-alteration tech to splice himself and become strong enough to get revenge on the evil aliens who conquered his planet.
· One of the other producers went to Jeremiah and told him he wanted the S1 villain to be Laika instead- an abandoned dog with an anti-human agenda. Jeremiah initially turned him down because Laika wasn’t gene altered and would have died of old age long before the events of the show, so after 2 days of back-and-forth, they settled on changing Laika to Kira so her life would fit in the timeframe of the series. Honestly one of the best examples of writing compromise and cooperation I’ve ever seen!
· Not going to lie, seeing him come to class every week with his notebook covered in cute stickers he drew himself was super-nice to see!
· In his lecture about color schemes, he accidentally gave away the twist about Kira’s heel-turn, but the writing on the show is so good anyways that I didn’t mind at all while bingeing!
· On a lighter note, the Dachshund magician character is called The Magnificent Chipolata, and was originally created by one of Jeremy’s storyboarders as a joke! He liked it so much that Chipolata became a recurring character!
· Jeremiah also confirmed the fan-theory that Ed conned his way into the position of ambassador for the Pluto, forcing the original holder of that role to be a hot dog cart worker on the M-Bark.
· The puppies episode was one of the first ones written for the show! Jeremy said it was important for season 1 to have episodes with the creative freedom of fillers while still having plot advancements.
· Sailor Moon & DragonBall parody episodes were also considered for those same reasons, but had to be cut for time.
· The show’s production was hit pretty hard by covid. Even though voice actors can hypothetically record from home, some people don’t have a good enough setup to record non-echo-y audio. Kimiko Glenn recorded all her first takes in her kitchen with a low-quality mic and it was all pretty much unusable!
· Jeremiah also talked about some future shows he was thinking about pitching! Out of courtesy, I won’t say exactly what they were, but I will mention some rough trends about what he likes!
· Pretty obvious from Dogs in Space, but he likes the contrast from putting genuinely cute wholesome characters in horrifying dark situations. (I wholeheartedly agree with this! If adult animated protags actually had nicer art styles, I would empathize with them more in dire situations)
· He also wants to make a musical series like Centaurworld or Phineas and Ferb, but is unsure of the logistics behind making one as of now.
· He thinks up character arcs first, then creates worlds and characters that match them, rather than the other way around (Which I think is a really cool and useful writing technique!)
· He’s upset with Netflix’s strategy of cancelling most shows before 3 seasons, citing Parks and Rec as an example of shows that get much better when given more than 2 seasons to grow.
· Finally, he gave us an exclusive sneak peek at the first episode of season 2! I promised not to spoil anything major, so all I will say is that I like the direction they’re taking and hope they’ll update the opening sequence to match it!
· Season 2 should hopefully drop around next spring!
