Exclusive Interview: Dan Dominguez and Brett Weiner creators of 16-Bit High

Brett Weiner: I had directed a bunch of episodes of the first season of Oishi High School Battle, which Dan produced, on the Shut Up! Cartoons channel.  As Dan was getting season 2 of Oishi ready, he asked me if I had any animated ideas.  I’ve been a huge gamer all my life, so I decided to put all those game tropes together in one place and high school seemed like a natural fit to smash all these games and characters together.

Dan Dominguez: I grew up on Nintendo, and cut my social teeth on the Nintendo versus sega wars. I was firmly on the Nintendo side cuz they had better RPGs. Then as an adult I backed off from video games after I realized one night that I had turned down sex with my girlfriend to win a side quest on final fantasy 12. So when Brett, who I creatively respect the hell out of, told me his concept I was sold.

Brett: But did you finish the side quest, Dan???

Dan: I want us to do that more in the upcoming seasons for sure. I’d love to parody gta, bioshock, fallout for sure. I think people will really respond to seeing their favorite modern video game stars 16 bit-enized.

Brett: There’s a few guest stars coming up that are direct parodies of contemporary game characters, so keep an eye out.

Brett: Freddie Wong, Toby Turner, PewDiePie… I would love to write roles for any YouTube gamer who wants to come on the show.  Ever want to voice a pixel-animated giant death robot?  Just let me know.  We’re also using the SmoshGames hosts, so keep an ear out.

Daniel: I think we should do a limbo episode where our heroes can’t find their way around in the dark narrated by Lars Von trier.

Brett: Or Werner Herzog.  Oh, and Harley.  Harley from Epic Meal Time is awesome.

Brett: There were a lot of gaming products I was toying with, but didn’t have space to fit into the first season.  I was trying out everything from Kinect and Oculus Rift to old school Virtual Boy and even older-school power glove.  I did want the audience to know that we’re not only going to take on tropes inside of games, but also gaming culture and some of the hardware too.

Dan: I definitely think it’d be fun to parody the ridiculous new Wii u controls.

Daniel: I’m 100% Nintendo for life, so Brett’s going to have to write those episodes or I’ll feel like a traitor.

Brett: It should be pretty obvious I’m a nintendo fanboy as well.  But that doesn’t mean I haven’t played basically all the other systems.  I’m a huge Sega and Sonic fan, so down the line we’d definitely want to do something there.  You’ll see as the series goes on, we continue to build the world of the school where any character can show up.

Brett: Sometimes they’ll take field trips, but for me the school is where all the fun happens.  These totally different characters are forced to spend time with each other.  Not to mention all the teachers and classes at the school.  For example, what does 16 Bit High’s gym class look like?  You’ll find out.  I want to anchor the show around the school.

Dan: Hogwarts is a great example of this. They spend a huge amount of time at the school but there’s no end to the weird corridors and wizardly places they can put there. There’s no reason why we can’t, for instance, do an episode where the kids have to take a driving class and are taught by the grand theft auto guy.

Brett: I think Dan just wrote a new episode right there.

Brett: Oh man.  It feels like a long time, but that’s because I’ve been living with this world in my head for longer than we’ve been making them.  

Dan: Every episode takes at least two weeks to write. Then three weeks to animate, about a week of notes, then another two weeks for sound. Of course before all that there’s hiring staff, casting, recording voices, budgets, contracts, boring paperwork stuff etc, for 10 episodes it’s about half a year all told. You really have to think of it the same way you think of television, except the budgets are lower, so we all have to drive used cars. But the workload is similar.

Brett:  Shout out to Lowbrow Studios, which do absolutely amazing work with the pixel art and are really quick about turning it around.

Dan: I always feel like movies and comics fit nicely into this world. The same way video games draw a lot from those sources as well. And I think audiences that grew up video games usually also grew up wolfing down comics and movies the way I did.

Brett: I pull a lot from high school experiences.  My favorite episodes are ones that apply a high school trope (doing drugs, bringing a gun to school, cheating on a test) and applies to to a video game mechanic.  It’s more fun to have some sort of honest core to the action before Jimmy starts slicing everything up with his energy sword.

Dan: I’m developing a sitcom with NBC/Universal right now, and my production company has one horror movie financed and another movie in development with a big fancy company. They are both probably going to be rated R so please sneak into the theater and don’t tell your parents (Ed’s Note, we killed them anyway). As to SMOSH and Defy we’ve been asked for more oishi high school battle (which we also produce) and to pitch a few other shows as well, so well see!

Brett: I’m always working on a ton of stuff!  Right now I am finishing up a webseries called Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D: Declassified which is running on ABC.com and I’m doing a webseries for the New York Times Op-Docs section called Verbatim, which are comedic re-enactments of real court documents.  And in my spare time, I freelance direct for a few YouTube channels.

New episodes of 16-Bit High air every other Saturday on Smosh Games. Check out the latest episode below.