Christy Karacas

Kill Pretty: How does it feel having made 4 seasons of Superjail now that you’re on your next show?

Christy: It sounds kind of shitty to say, but I don't watch my own stuff. The other day Superjail came on and I was like, "Fuck I forgot how crazy this was!" I hadn't watched it in maybe 5 years. I'm 43 and when Superjail came out it was like 10 years ago. A lot of my friends who don't do animation, they don't really watch cartoons. I was thinking, "Who watches this besides animation friends I know?" Then as I've gotten older, in the studio now I'm one of the older people and the kids now are like, "I watched that in high school or college" and it's so crazy to me that all these kids are watching it. It's a fun feeling.

KP: And you're influencing them to make grimy, nasty, weird art.

CK: It's funny though, I don't know if you've seen my stuff before Superjail, like Space War or Bar Fight, but back when I was doing animation... I can draw, but, it sounds weird, but I can draw good, but it's a lot of effort for me to draw well so I like to draw raw. I've always liked underground stuff and kind of dirty looking stuff. In the 90's people think of, like, Beavis and Butthead. I grew up watching Beavis and Butthead and thinking, "Oh my God this is the funniest thing I've ever seen!", and loving that stuff. Then when I got out of school and started to work in animation, a lot of the shows are really clean. Powerpuff Girls, Sheep in the Big City, a lot of the Cartoon Network stuff was very clean, stylized, thick ink line. I had a hard time getting work because they would look at my portfolio and be like, "This guy can't draw, this stuff sucks." The funny thing is my first kind of real professional job was on Daria and began on such a clean show. I was a background designer. So the backgrounds were kind of perspective drawings, they were pretty simple. It's funny how simple that show looks when you compare it to something now like Metalocalypse and how crazy the backgrounds are. Animation has come a long way, I think. Commercial or television animation, you know?

KP: I really love the clean style of Daria and the dirty style of Beavis and Butthead.

CK: Yeah, me too. Sometimes you'll meet someone and they'll only like one thing like, "I like this, that other stuff sucks!" It's all good. It's boring to like one kind of thing.

KP: Did you always draw as a kid?

CK: Yeah, always. When Star Wars: Force Awakens came out I was home with my mom and found these really old… I used to draw on the brown grocery bags. My brother and I would draw so much my mother would be like, "We're not getting more paper. You're drawing on all the paper,” so we'd draw on anything. I found all these old Star Wars drawings. On my Instagram, I was posting all these kids drawings of Star Wars. I love kids drawings and kind of outsider art. Crude, raw things, there's a very pure love in it. When something is pure, even when it's bad, it's good. I was a big Darger fan. I got into that stuff in my senior year of college. A friend of mine turned me on to that kind of stuff. I was like, "What is this stuff? It's crazy!" It looks like you're looking into some crazy person's brain; it's the best.

KP: What was motivating you to draw as a kid? Were your parents artists?

CK: They weren't at all. I don't know. My brother is a year younger than me and we’re very close. We always just drew. I don't want to say it's a boy thing because I think a lot of girls draw too, but I always thought it was a thing everyone did, but maybe we just did it. We just used to draw everything. Superheros, Star Wars… I remember this crude crappy drawing of Wide World of Sports and it has these boxers, why was I drawing this? Another one was of Family Feud, why? It's so weird. I don't know what I was thinking.

KP: What cartoons did you grow up with?

CK: I grew up in New Hampshire. We had TV, but we just had the normal channels and I'd be so jealous of my friends who had cable. I remember waking up super early in the morning and they would play really old 70's anime, but super early in the morning, like 6am, 7am, before the Saturday morning cartoons. It was stuff like Battle of the Planets and I would get up super early to watch that. I remember even as a kid being like, "These cartoons are different, they look cooler and better." They had weird robots and the people are kind of realistic. Then the cartoony stuff would come on like Richie Rich, that kind of stuff and thinking, "What are these weird cartoons." Not knowing what was anime or that they were from Japan or something. I think it’s funny when your kid mind sees something in a certain way and you don't understand it.

KP: Was there a certain time when your drawings became more violent or was it always that way?

CK: This sounds weird, but growing up I always drew really violent stuff. I have no idea why, but I hate fighting. I'm a very non-confrontational person. I'm a pussy; I don't fight, I don't like that kind of stuff actually. I always wonder sometimes if that's why I draw that stuff. I remember growing up my parents always said, "Why do you have to draw that stuff so violent?" I would draw people getting their heads ripped off and blood gushing out. I always liked weird, creepy things. I loved Godzilla and horror movies as a kid. Faces of Death, I'd rent that stuff. Weirder stuff. Zombie movies. Zombies didn't used to be cool. It was the nerds or the weirdos or the metal heads that would watch that stuff. I remember going to Blockbuster, Me and my friends were nerds, Saturday night would be: go to Blockbuster, rent the weirdest movies we can find and go to my friends house and we wouldn't even drink; we would drink soda and watch weird movies because we were nerds.

Back to the violence. There's a kinetic energy to that stuff, when blood gushes out or when something breaks. Movement and energy in that kind of thing is part of the attraction to it. When you watch Barfight, when things break or when a guy punches a guy it's not really realistic, it’s very stylized in a cartoony way. When a table breaks or a chair breaks over a guys head it turns into little triangles. I always say to the animators, "Think of it like fireworks,” when something breaks, make everything shoot outwards from a point and have it be very visual in a way where there’s movement on the screen. There's a lot of thought. Animation’s hard and you have to really consider every little thing. The discussions behind the scenes are really funny, "Oh when that guys head gets cut off don't have the blood be realistic. Have it shoot out in a more exciting, fun way." I loved Looney Tunes growing up and I think that was a big influence. I think cartoon violence is so funny. Three Stooges also, I always loved The Three Stooges. They're beating the crap out of each other. Moe was really sadistic to those guys, but it's funny. Funny sound effects when they're putting a guys head in a vice or cranking his nose with a wrench. I had this Three Stooges party at my house a year ago and a bunch of our friends came over and we just watched Three Stooges all night. Our stomachs hurt we were laughing so hard. Watch that stuff with a group and it's funny. To me, it's the funniest thing. I think people either love or hate Superjail, but the people that don't like it are like, "It's so violent, it's so gross!" I'm like, "It's totally ridiculous, it's so not scary." To me it's just dumb. Funny and dumb. The news and the president is more horrific than a cartoon with some dumb guy with tattoos on his face. It's so ridiculous to me.

KP: When I was a kid I would always dream that the Simpsons would one day actually make Itchy and Scratchy, it was always a fantasy of mine. It always drove me nuts that they never did that. When I watched Superjail I felt like I was finally getting my Itchy and Scratchy.

CK: I totally agree. When I would watch Simpsons, Me and my brother thought Itchy and Scratchy was so fucking funny. You know how you can watch videos of every Itchy and Scratchy and they're so genius and amazing? With Superjail, sometimes we'd get stuck because I don't like repeating the jokes. It’s hard to not repeat them. Sometimes we'd be stuck and the boards are due tomorrow and it's not funny enough, what are we gonna do? There's always that eleventh hour, "I'm fucked, I'm not gonna have an idea." It would always come to us at the end. I would also watch Itchy and Scratchy and go, "God, they're so creatively funny with their violence." That's the thing with Looney Tunes too. Superjail, I don't just see the violence. It's the jokes and the gags and the violence. You don't just shoot a guy in the face, you shoot a string and a bucket falls on his head and he gets dizzy and falls off a cliff. Some kind of gag. When I was a kid watching Indiana Jones movies, the set pieces and the action scenes were very choreographed, you were on the edge of your seat. It was a sequence. Very thought out and composed. Made in a way that was artfully considered. Some of these new movies, it's just shaky camera or just crazy action, not that same level. I think Edgar Wright does it very well, these amazing action sequences that are choreographed. I really like that kind of thing. Or even stuff like a Jackie Chan movie, it will have very imaginative, creative fight scenes, it's not just people punching and kicking. Like those Police Story movies. He's a huge Buster Keaton, silent movie fan. There's no sound. You gotta tell the story visually.

KP: At what point did you decide you wanted to get into animation?

CK: I'll be honest I really wanted to do live action but I always drew. I went to RISD, an art school, I was either gonna do illustration or animation. Their animation department, FVA - Film Video Animation, you start out with live action and animation and by your junior and senior year you kind of pick a direction. I went into that not knowing what I'd do. I'd still love to do live action some day, I really would. But with live action you're working with so many people and you're dependent on so many people. With animation you can sit in your room and just do it by yourself. In college you have to find actors and people to do the lights and people to run the camera, you're the director. I just didn't want to deal with the social aspect of it. I'd rather do animation because I can kind of do everything myself. I don't have to deal with that. I don't really think that I'm a super social person. With friends, yeah but with work I don't like meetings, I don't like being the boss. In general animators are really nice people, they're nerdy nice people. A lot of us grow up in a similar way and like a lot of the same things and I love everyone I work with. They're some of the nicest people ever. With live action you think of Hollywood or some Michael Bay thing. I don't like that stuff it's kind of a turn off. I'd like to do it some day but that aspect of it creeps me out a little bit. I don't know, it's weird. I'm a little intimidated or turned off by it. So that's how I got into animation. Even in high school I was like, "Oh maybe I'll get into animation" but I wasn't really sure." To be honest I wasn't really comfortable with how I drew and my artwork until l was a senior in college. I always kind of hate what I make. I always see the bad things about it. When I went to RISD, a lot of my best friends then are a lot of my best friends now. A lot of them are amazing artists or are in amazing bads and I was always like, "Ah, I'm the worst one! I suck." I really felt like that. I never felt confident with my work. I remember around junior, senior year I thought, "Oh maybe this is how my stuff is." I don't know what happened but something clicked and I started to feel good about my work. I still kind of struggle with that. I don’t want to repeat the same stuff. I'm always like, "What can I do different or what can be better." I like to think of it like it's always changing and moving forward. You don't want to feel stuck or stale. Also being in my 40’s, I'm very self aware that I don't want to be that old guy that everyone says "Oh his stuff feels like it's from the 90's". You want to stay current. Keep moving forward. Sometimes it goes up and down and you're in a rut and you think, "Oh I suck!" But you can't think about that. You just have to keep working. With animation, Adult Swim is so comedy driven. All these comedians, these really funny people and writers. In animation there's a lot of animators, and sometimes I think they think only about animation. I have a lot of friends that do art or other things and I just think of everything. Being more aware of other stuff that's not animation that can influence your work.

KP: I think hating your art is the path to being a great artist.

CK: I think that's true. When you meet someone that loves everything they make you're like, "Dude, that sucks." It's so weird.

KP: Did you make Space War at RISD?

CK: Yeah, that was my senior film. That's when things really clicked with me. When I started feeling good about things. You know how it has this stream of consciousness, it doesn't cut, it moves; it's very directional. Everyone was like, "Oh how did you think of that? Are you crazy?" I read this interview with John Zorn about this album Naked City. It's kind of an experimental noise jazz band. There's this one song where it sounds like you're turning the dial on a radio and it sounds like it's edited but it's not they play it and it's really crazy. I read this interview and he was like, "I wrote all these separate genres of music on these notecards. Country, thrash metal, whatever. Then he threw them on a table and rearranged them and wrote the scenes like that.” And I remember going, "Man that is so smart! I don't know what I want to do so I'm just gonna do all the scenes that I want to make that I think are funny and whatever I do… I'm gonna draw this octopus ting killing these robots… but I'll connect them last." And when I connect them I think, "Well how am I gonna connect these things? Well I'll go up into the sky and follow this guy, then follow this guy." I read that interview and that's what made me think of that. I kind of didn't worry about it until the end. I assembled it all last. Everyone was so, "What the fuck?" and I was like, "Yeah, it's really not that smart. Just do the parts and connect them." It kind of became this thing I would do. With Barfight too, I'd cut as little as possible. Follow this guy throwing the bottle, then follow it down and go up. Superjail is the same way. Doing that on the computer with Flash is a bitch. You get these really big files. When you have a thing that pans forever then goes up and down, where do you cut the scene? How do you give it to different artists? Those things logistically are a little bit of a pain the butt to figure out. But with Ballmastrz I didn't do that. I wanted to try something a little different and try anime. That kinda was how that came about.

KP: You're saying, "Oh it's not that brilliant of an idea" but it’s partly the idea but also partly the execution and the choices you're making and how it's moving. I think that's what people are drawn to when they watch Superjail or Ballmastrz. You have a way of moving in animation that I don’t see a lot. It's interesting and different.

CK: It definitely was a conscious thing. I don't want to sound pretentious but I was definitely like, "Yeah man, I'm not gonna cut." But making a limitation or some kind of parameters on your thing can make it interesting. So if I'm like, "Okay I'm gonna try and not cut no matter what." A lot of people that are working on it are gonna go, "Just cut it, it would be so much easier." and I'm like, "Yeah, but if you do the easy thing it's not interesting. Make it difficult." Certain movies have come out and they've started to do that more with compositing and special effects. There’s a scene in Kingsman with a fight in a church that never cuts. I was like, "Fuck that's just like my animation!" I actually really love that movie but there’s always a part of me that's always wanted to do live action and I'm like, "I didn't have the balls to go for it and try and do that with live action", but again working on a Hollywood movie just seems like it would be the worst.

KP: I see a direct connection between Space War and Barfight but by the time you made Barfight it felt like you had solidified a lot of things. It feels like you're already there. When I saw that I'm like, "This guys ready for his own show."

CK: Crazy story about that. When I made Space War it got into a lot of animation festivals. You got to remember this was pre internet. The internet existed but not like now. I went to all these festivals and I was like, "Wow, I'm gonna be an animator, this is amazing." It was a big deal for me. I was like, "Okay, I gotta make another film." I'm a big believer, I always tell animators or people that say, "How do I pitch a show? What do I do?" I'm like, fuck pitching a show, make what you want to make. If it's good people are going to come to you. If you make something, you own it. It's a calling card. You waste so much time making a pitch pack. You're kind of telling someone, "Yeah this is gonna be awesome." They have to either imagine it like you do, which they can't, or trust you and if you've never made anything why are they gonna trust you? You have to make your own work. If you want to be in a band you gotta start a band. If you want to make art you gotta make art. You don't wait till someone tells you to do it or gives you money to do it. That’s not how you do anything in life. After Space Wars I got the job on Daria and I was like, "I'm gonna make another film!" I worked really hard on Barfight. When we finished I felt like it was something special. I was gonna take it to festivals and I was gonna get noticed. It's gonna be awesome! It got rejected from every single festival. We entered it into all the animation festivals. I was PISSED! I was like, "What the fuck? What do you have to make? Why does someone not like this?" I don't know if it was a good year for other stuff, I don't know what happened but I was very angry. I was like, "Fuck animation!" At that time, I think it was around 2001, 9/11 happened. The economy was weird. A lot of the animation studios shut down. I was in a band at the time and I was like, "I'm gonna focus on the band." I got this other job doing package design. The people were very nice people but I didn't like the people. The band was cool, I was in my late 20's early 30's, I was pretty bummed out. Years later, 2003 or 2004, I don't even remember but I get this call, "Hey are you the guy that made Barfight?" I was like, "Yeah". He was like, "Dude, why aren't you pitching a show?" I was like, "I donno, no one fucking liked Barfight." I never had cable, again Space War and Barfight, comedy and entertainment has gotten super cool and weird. You can be as weird as you want now. But in the 90's it wasn't like that. It didn't really fit anywhere. It was too weird for Comedy Central and it was not cool enough for MTV, it didn't really have a home. I don't want to say I gave up but I was kind of like, fuck it. I was really into this band. But when I got that call it was Adult Swim that called and they were like, "Check out Adult Swim." So I looked them up online and I was like, "What is this weird ass shit? This is the best weird shit ever." I was so psyched. That's how we pitched Superjail. They were like, "Make Barfight with a story." Basically.

KP: It's so strange because watching Barfight it seems like something that would work really well in a festival.

CK: I was really, really surprised. I'm not bitter or upset about it, I think it's one of those really funny stories but I really do wonder… Maybe it was a weird year with a lot of super good stuff, maybe people were turned off by the violence. I don't know. Superjail has aged so well. I think people like it even better now than when it came out. Even when Superjail came out, I think it had kind of a niech following. People either loved it or hated it and I do think it was a little too weird. Tim and Eric wasn't even out yet. I love Tim and Eric, I think they're fucking geniuses, but I know people that fucking hate it. I'm like, "Well, dude what do you like?" They probably like Rick and Morty. Taste is so subjective. I think if Superjail came out now it would be way bigger than when it came out. I don't think it paved the way for anything but I think it was just a little bit before when it might have been more palatable, if that makes any sense. If you look at taste or tone in comedy and entertainment things have just gotten weirder and weirder. It's almost like anything goes now. It's almost like it's hard to be weird now. Sometimes I think I'm gonna make something so minimal and slow just to do a 180 on all this stuff.

KP: I always felt like Superjail was so compact and so tight.

CK: I've always said we're on the budget for an 11 minute show but we're squeezing a 22 minute show into 11 minutes. Not writing wise but visually for sure. I'm super proud of the crew and everyone that worked on it because it was a hard fucking show. It was super fun but it was hard. I bought a couch and I slept at the studio three times a week during Superjail. It was fucking bonkers. It was like, "If I don't sleep here I can't make this perfect and it's gonna suck." I was very unhealthy during that production. People were like, "You look like you're gonna die." I'm like, "I'm fine! I just need to sleep."

KP: Where did the original inspiration for the concept come from?

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