Exclusive: The Hollywood Puppet Sh!tshow And The Rise Of The Animated Reality Series

Courtesy: Fuse

 

The Hollywood Puppet Sh!tshow producer Pascal Engelhardt should be totally cognizant of the product lifecycle. The Harvard-educated former software consultant from Germany moved to Los Angeles and was eventually able to provide a service that few other studios provided…3D design and printing. “There are only a couple of companies in Los Angeles that do this today, and the other one does it for the Marvel films”.

These are concepts that are going to have to be key differentials for the appeal of The Hollywood Puppet Sh!tshow, as the series gets ready to debut in an increasingly competitive animated reality series market that’s right now in the “Mature” stage of the product lifecycle. That’s right, we’re officially naming an important genre of the adult animation format…the animated reality series. Let us explain.

Usually, the animated reality series is a sketch animated series, none too indifferent from say TripTank or Robot Chicken. But, where the animated reality series goes that the sketch series doesn’t, is that, for the most part, the voice acting production is lopped off in favor of someone retelling a crazy ass story that is then recreated by way of animation. Major brands have been utilizing this genre to take advantage of the popular format that is adult animation and with great success. MTV’s Greatest Party Stories Ever aired two seasons and is on its way to a very popular app featuring crazy stories from the MTV fanbase and celebrities alike. WWE has greenlit a second season of WWE Story Time that should premiere later this year featuring some of Sports Entertainment’s biggest Superstars. And Viceland’s Party Legends is a little less than halfway through IT’S second season showcasing the drunken tales by way of celebs. Heck, even Mike Judge is getting in on the action for an upcoming series to Cinemax that leverages country music stars.

The fun of these shows is, that when done correctly, you can sometimes get a good variety of animated formats and aesthetics that you normally don’t get to see on TV. For example, Greatest Party Stories Ever has utilized hand puppets, 2D and 3D animation, and even stop motion. The Hollywood Puppet Sh!tshow is sticking with a lone format, but it’s a format seldom seen on television, marionette puppets.

That said, the premise is very similar as all of those aforementioned properties. Wilmer Valderrama introduces his famous pals to tell some of their crazy stories that are then recreated using marionettes. Not since Team America: World Police has the medium REALLY been used as prevalent as in this series, and producer Pascal Engelhardt notes that despite having a fraction of the budget or time, he was able to deliver puppets that feature great detail all the while featuring highly exaggerated features recognizable of their real-life counterparts, “About five months ago, I got a call from a guy that wanted to print marionette heads. After figuring out how all this works, I proposed building the bodies as well with expanded features for the head like the eyes and movable jaws.”

Upcoming characters that you can look forward to seeing for the first season of the series include Joe Jonas, Gina Rodriguez, Lil Jon, Terry Crews, Steve Aoki, Amber Rose, Damon Wayans Jr., Big Freedia, Amanda Cerny, Karrueche Tran, and Anjelah Johnson. The efficiency of how these characters are produced have been vastly improved thanks in large part to Engelhardt’s application of the technology to the marionette art form. What used to take months to do in terms of character design (like those seen in Team America: World Police) now takes weeks thanks to Pascal’s 3D printing capabilities.

 

Engelhardt prides himself on just how close the real-life celebrities on The Hollywood Puppet Sh!tshow look whence compared to their puppets, “It really came together when we started adding the wig designs. Like when we put on Lil Jon’s wig right away I was like, ‘This is Lil Jon’ my favorite puppet is actually Big Freedia because she’s the biggest and tallest. It’s just phenomenal how the characters look after you add in the crystals and their mouth grills”.

Yes, the animated reality show is here. But thanks to Pascal Engelhardt, a once dormant art form that is centuries old gets a massive software (and printing hardware) upgrade for the new millennium.

The series premiere of ‘The Hollywood Puppet Sh!tshow’ is on Tues., July 11 @ 10:30PM on Fuse!