From Fairly Odd-Parents To The Garden: A Life In Animation With Butch Hartman

Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I spend half my time as an author and the other half running the centre and today we're taking an expedition into the world of animation because we have with us as a guest Artman. Now I'm sure that people listening to this will have at some point seen one of your cartoons. So perhaps you'd like a bit about your background as a creative and your journey into animation. Well Julia, I love your accent so much. I'll do whatever you tell me. So what would you like? What would you like to know first? Where should I start? Let me guess. Did it start as a little butchered school doodling away in the margins of his books when he was talking to his maths? You must have been hovering over my shoulder. Yes, absolutely. I think with a lot of artists and a lot of kids. A people who grow into adulthood doing art, it absolutely starts when you're a kid. And I started doing it when I was a youth. I remember one of my most vivid memories I was in kindergarten and our teacher told us to draw a picture of her. Draw a picture of me. So all the kids are drawing a picture of the teacher. And I thought nothing of it. I just drew it and my teacher started raving about it. I'll never forget this. And she starts raving about it and kind of got my attention and their pictures. And she actually went out in the hallway and showed the other teachers that she loved the picture so much. And I realized my little tiny mind at that point. I realized I could get attention from adults at that point. And so I thought, well, if I could just keep drawing, I could get attention. So I actually kept drawing because I liked it. And then I loved cartoons here in America. We had Saturday morning cartoons. So I'd watch cartoons all the time and I would try and draw them. There was no way to freeze the television image at that time either. You couldn't stop or pause. So I would draw as fast as I would draw Fred Flintstone and Scooby Doo as fast as I could. Learned how to basically practice off television. All my other friends are outside playing baseball or playing sports. But I never had any interest in that. I just wanted to be inside drawing all the time. So were you also reading comics at the same time as watching the cartoons on TV? Oh, yes. I love comic books. I'm a huge comic book fan. I have a bunch of comic book drawings behind me here that I've done on my own. But I'm a very huge fan of characters like Spider-Man and Superman and Batman and those kind of characters. And I love what I loved a lot about those that wasn't just the drawing, although I would always criticize the artist, you know, as a little kid. But I love the storytelling. And that's what I really fell in love with. And I think every artist should know that no matter what you do as an artist, you're always telling a story. Whether you're writing a story or painting a picture, there's always a great story to be told. And people love stories. All of us do. Right now, you and I are telling a story. So people love it. And if you could tell it well, you'll really, I think, be very successful. Okay. So let's tell the story of that little boy in the classroom. It leaves the classroom. What happens next for him? Normally I got beat up by the other kids. But then after the beating, I would go, now I'm kidding. I would, no, I lived in, I grew up in Michigan here in the States. And I loved art. I didn't, but I wanted to get on television. I wanted to be in the TV world with all my, on my heroes that I love so much. But I didn't know how to get on television. It's all very untouchable. When you're a child and when you're in Michigan, especially, how do I get in there? I found out about a college in California called California Institute of the Arts or Cal Arts, for short. It's founded by Walt Disney back in the 70s. And they actually had a character animation class at that school. So I got to be 18 years old, didn't know where I wanted to go to college. And one of my friends was actually going to that college and once you come to this college and I looked into it, he had to submit a portfolio of art to get into the school. It was very high level school of art. And so I had to get what they call a realistic portfolio. I had to show my realistic drawings, like human figures and animal figures and things. So I'd go to the Detroit Zoo in the dead of winter because you can get in for free. I'd go into the Detroit, I'd be like the only one in the zoo and I would draw the tigers and pandas or pandas. I'd draw whatever animals were in the zoo. I would draw them and ended up coming up with a portfolio that got me in. I got into the school and I went in 1983. I went to college in California. But the best part about that was I got into an atmosphere of people who were doing exactly what I love to do. And I would have other animators, other writers, other actors. They were all kinds of artists there. And I always tell people if you want to get into your chosen profession, start hanging out with people that do what you want to do. Do what you love. Because if you want to be a baseball player, you don't hang out with hockey players. You hang out with other baseball players. You hang out with people that do what you like. You want to be a musician. You hang out with musicians. I wanted to be an animator. And my dream was to work for Disney. And I've never worked for Disney. That's the only place I've never worked. But I worked everywhere else. But I ended up learning the craft of vanishing and drawing and art and all that type of stuff. And the main thing about that school though, it had connections in the industry. It had people that were in the industry coming and going. You could always meet them and talk with them and get in your head. How do I do this? So if you want to learn how to get into any industry, again, get connections in that industry. Yeah, hang out with the people who are hopefully going into it as well. Yeah, exactly. If you can. Yeah. So, okay. You do make that transfer into the industry. And perhaps we should talk about some of your major products. The one that I know best, because my kids watched it, is the fairy of parents. Fairly odd. Yes. Yeah. I'm finding that out. Does that come fairly late on? How do you started working on others? What was the running order of? Well, the way. Oh, that's a great question. The way it worked for me was I was in the animation industry. I got in the animation. I was in school in 1983. In 1986, I left school and got into the animation industry. I got in as a character designer, which is basically like, if you're going to cast a movie, what sort of a, I think my picture is frozen there. No, I'm still here. Okay. But if you want to, let's say you want to cast a movie or an actor, what you want to do is you want to have auditions and you want to get different people to come in. But as a character designer, that's what you do is you have people. You draw different characters. You draw, you know, if there's a bulldog or a cat or whatever, I'll draw several different versions and that'll be the one the producer chooses to be in the show is this cat lazy, energetic or whatever. So I got in as a character designer and then I learned how to do that. I learned how to do backgrounds, which is set designing. Basically, I learned how to do writing. So by the time the fairly odd parents rolled around, I knew how to do everything. And that's really what I was, I was very, I benefited a lot from my, about 15 years in the industry and then I sold my first show, which is the fairly odd parents. Yeah. That's absolutely brilliant. And it shows the, you know, it's not instant success. You have to do your time learning the tricks of the trade. So people are wanting animation. It's much better to have a realistic expectation. You've got to do, you've got to do the graft. Well, there's that there's a price to pay and with everything. And that's not a bad price to pay. The price you pay benefits you. It's like going to the gym. You know, everybody wants an amazing physique, but you can't get it unless you put the work in. You know, you can't eat donuts all day long and think you're going to look amazing. You have to go and do the work. You've got to set a certain lifestyle as well. I had to really realize that, you know, I can't just go to where I've got to get up early. I've got to be ready. I've got to be creative because my job, every animator's job, every writer, artists, whoever, their job starts with a blank piece of paper. And I have to fill this piece of paper with something that someone's going to pay me for at the end of the day. And that really is what the challenge is. And people don't realize that. People go, well, I just want to, you know, draw pictures and set up my desk. Well, you can do that. You can totally do that if you're good at that. Great. But I encourage people to get more out of themselves. You're not just an artist. You're a storyteller. You're a producer. You could come up with your own show as well. I love, you know, a lot of people want to be like someone who sells a show like you said. I want to sell my own show, but they don't know what goes into it. It's so much more that goes into it than just drawing funny pictures. Yeah. So obviously animation by nature of the freedom you have to draw anything you can imagine. Fits really well with stories which have a real core of fantasy, magic, dragons, unbelievable creatures, you know, that stuff. Was there any ones that you felt as growing up were inspiration on the style that you adopted? Because obviously there's lots that you enjoyed. Was there one way you thought, yeah, that's the kind of direction I'm going in? Oh, well, you know, I was very influenced by Saturday Morning Television. You know, I really had a huge respect and admiration and love for Disney films, animated films. I loved lots of comedy, lots of sitcoms and things like that, comic books. But I really, my drawing style was really influenced by Saturday Morning, Hanover Barra, like the Flintstones, Scooby Doo, the Jetsons, Johnny Quest. There was a bunch of great Hanover Barra, you know, the super friends shows that I grew up watching really got influenced by that. And I ended up going into the television animation industry because to me, the movie industry, to work at Disney, you had to work on movies at the back of the time, back at that time you had to work on movies. And you would, if you worked on a movie, it was like a four-year gig, you'd work on a movie and be the same story for four years. You would do maybe three or four scenes in the movie, five scenes, whatever, six scenes. And you'd do that movie. I am a much more hyperactive person. I wanted to tell more than one story. So working in television, I got to tell one story every week. I could do a different story every week, maybe every two weeks, and that to me was a lot more fun. Presumably, it's a collaborative process once you get into making a series that is not just you on your own drawing everything. Oh, everybody. I mean, you have, you know, you've, you've, you've never set the end of a television series and seen the list of credits to go by. There are hundreds, maybe sometimes it's dozens, but sometimes it's hundreds of people that work on these things. For my series in Nickelodeon, my, my multiple shows I did, we had dozens and dozens of people helping us. I could never have done it alone. Now, there is a visionary at the top that was me for these shows. I'd say, here's what I'm thinking. What do you guys think? And they would go, well, maybe this, maybe this. Okay, what if we did this? Because when the network comes you and says, we want a three hour special, we want a three hour special. Yeah, we want to air over the course of three weeks, an hour, hour, hour. Okay, what kind of story is that? How do you tell a story like that? What's the beginning, middle and end? You know, how do you keep the audience interested? We got to sit on and talk about that. And then once you get that down, okay, what are the characters? What are the designs? Who's the actors? You know, can we get this celebrity to be in all that sort of stuff? So it'd be, it really starts taking off at that point. Yeah, so lots of people listening to this are actually writers or people aspiring to go into the industry. Good. I'm interested in the, so you start a sort of structural discussion about the kind of story you're telling before you get to character design or yeah, it all starts with what we call the premise. And you know, what what back in Nickelodeon what we would do and most studios do this, you will come up. They'll say buy your show from you, which is a gigantic thing. If someone sells a show, that's a humongous accomplishment. Number one, but number two, you have to learn how to not only make your show well, make it on time, make it good and play the political game in the studio. There's politics to go into it as well. You might have someone who bought your show and why as a huge champion versus an executive, but then that executive leaves and another executive comes in and they might not have even had anything to do with your show. And they could care less about it and they want to get you off the air and you're like, no, wait, our shade. So there's all that that goes on behind the scenes as well. But the creative process starts with we would do a premise. Okay, what's our premise today? Timmy Turner. He's a little boy. What's a relatable thing a little boy goes through? Okay, just want to get a haircut. Okay, that's funny. Kids don't like haircuts. So he wishes because he has magic fairies. He wishes for indestructible hair. Oh, that's really funny. No one can cut his hair. Then what happens? Okay, what about if nothing can cut his hair? At first, it's really amazing because it looks beautiful, but then the hair gets so out of control it takes over the city. That's great. Okay, that's funny. Okay, and then you just kind of go into that sort of a thing. All right. And then you have to write a script and you have to make sure it's funny and make sure the actors are funny. And you know, by the time the actors get into record the show, you've already been working on the script for months. So an actor comes in and they want to add funny things to it too. And if they do, if it's funny, I was told the actors, if you can add something funnier than what we have, I'm all for it. But if it's just something different, we don't, you don't get to do that. We worked on the script for a month. Do you do have the voices then do the animation or where around? Oh, no, no, we always do the animation first. And they're doing it to them. Oh, no, I take it back. I take that back. Oh, everyone's going to kill me. I said the wrong thing. We do the voices first. Yeah, then we animate to the voices. I apologize. I said that wrong. Yes, we do the voices first. Then we animate to the voices. For sure, there's some kind of crude, I'm not that crude, but some kind of previous kind of thing that they're aware of. A little bit. Yeah, sometimes, sometimes the actors need it. Sometimes they don't. You can have a storyboard ready to show the actors. If you're doing a movie, they most certainly have a storyboard usually. They'll show the actors. But and they'll have a script. All the actor really needs a script and maybe a drawing with the character looks like to kind of into it. But once the character, once when you were going to show as long as I did with fairly odd parents, that show ran for 18 years. By the time, you know, 10 years in, they didn't need storyboards anymore. They just knew the characters so well. They didn't need it anymore. So I would imagine that it's a mixed picture, but for you as a writer, is your or creator, is your instinct to start with a character or a premise? So, for example, you know, the fairly odd parents, magical, godparents, is I can imagine where that came from? Whereas something else might be, I've got an idea for a really good like a little character who will hold the show. Well, the main thing you have to realize when you're coming up with any character is will anybody will anybody care about this character? Why would anybody care? Like right now, if I ask you to name me or maybe one of your top five movies, give me one of your top five movies, and it doesn't have to be the right movie, just tell me what you're talking about. I still think redemption. Shaw Shank Redemption is a fantastic example. The reason you love that movie, first of all, it's a great story, it's a fantastic story, but the characters in that movie are great, you know, you've got Andy Dufrein and Morgan Freeman's character Red. Those, those are the characters we follow through the story, and you love, you care about those characters, you care about them. And at the ending, when they hug on the beach, you know, I'm giving it away, but you haven't seen it by now. Sorry. But when they finally reunite in the beach, you just you start crying. It's like, thank God, you know, it's an amazing story. And that, that story grabs you because the people there's stakes in that story like, what are the characters going through? What's at stake? What's the risk? What do they have to lose? That is a story that really grips you. Like I could, I could tell you this like Star Wars, for example, the very first Star Wars movie, great movie, because you have Luke Skywalker, he's the young idealistic kid, you know, he's innocent, and then you have Han Solo, the kind of grizzled smuggler guy, and the princess who we think is just this, you know, helpless female, but she's really a kick butt girl who doesn't take any junk, you know. There's great characters in that show, and that's why you love that, because how many other sci-fi movies can you name that you can't even name characters from? So, I can't name characters from, because my I'm, there's a million films. His galaxy quest. Oh, fantastic film, fantastic film. Yeah, the characters are funny. Yeah, it's probably the best Alan Rickman role ever. Oh, he's so great. He's, I have an Alan Rickman impression I can do. He's, he talks sort of like this killer. I mean, John McLean, you know, but Mr. Potter, but I, I think that's a great movie, too, because the characters are great. And that's why, because again, like I said, for Star Wars, how many other sci-fi movies have been made that no one cares about? Doesn't matter about the ships or the effects, it just matters about the characters. And if you can add good effects around it at the same time, that makes a great story. Yeah, something that's just situational, so well. Well, Harry Potter, Harry Potter is hugely popular because people love the characters, you know, they love the characters. And there's a lot of other stories about kids with powers and things like that that, for some reason, just didn't resonate as well, because the characters aren't that great. There's even low-budget movies with great characters that people love, like Napoleon Dynamite. Have you ever seen that movie, Napoleon Dynamite? I haven't known. That movie was made for like $400,000. And I think they made it over a weekend, but it made so much money, because it's hysterically funny, because the characters are funny in it, you know? The one for me that's a bit like that is Billy Elliot, which kind of then being an independent kind of filming film. Yes, but now it's a stage show. Because it resonates with audiences, because they love that character. Wizard of Oz is another one. You love their own magical land, but you love the lion. Come on, put them up, put them up, you love that, and you love the 10 men and the scarecrow and Dorothy. I mean, they're just wonderful characters. Well, I think it's clear that we're really about characters here. That's, I mean, that's the way I've written it. Well, it has to be. It has to be. I'll point out Spider-Man, because I'm a comic book nerd. There's a million superheroes out there, but for some reason, Spider-Man resonates because he's a kid. He's not an adult. He can't pay his rent. He lives with his aunt. He's got homework to do. You know, he's got problems. And oh, by the way, he just so happens to have superpowers, you know, which is a, which at the time was a twist that had never been done before. Yeah. I mean, I've been very fond of the Spider-Man films, but probably my favorite sequence is when the Toby McGuire character puts his costume in the washing machine and watch everything go pink. And you think, yes, I've been there. That's totally funny. Exactly. It's great. Like, what the heck? It's really funny. Yeah. Because before, before that time, all the superheroes were billionaires and people, other lives were together, and everything was perfect. And oh, by the way, they're super handsome, super, you know, I'm talking about it. Yeah. So to add some added dose of reality, it always helps, I think. So, um, thinking about one of the big of differences, which I'm not aware of so much, is the technical demands of what you're doing. And obviously found the whole kind of creation of the way they make cartoons has changed so much over the course of your career from sort of 2D and now this sort of motion capture world, which I think has really been driven mainly by the gaming making games, but also, you know, high budget films, but it's now getting cheaper. For you, what do you think? How's this affected your storytelling, if at all? And what do you feel people should be thinking to expect in the future? A mixed culture, are we going to be going more and more cartoon real? And kind of that odd thing like that tinting that, um, oh, yeah, yeah, you know, um, I think there's some amazing technology out there. I sort of, I sort of put it this way sometimes. It's like, it's like the way cars are built. You know, a car is designed to get you from point A to point B, right? But you can get there in a very fancy way, like a Tesla, or you can get there in a very basic way, like a pickup truck from 1950. But the car, it's all designed to do is to transport you. Stories are the same way. You can do it in a very fancy way. You could do it like Pixar, you could do it with, um, you know, all the bells and whistles of a Pixar movie. Or you can do it very simply with stick figures or black and white that does for some reason, touches, touches people's hearts. They want to see it again. The medium to me doesn't matter as much as the story does. And, um, again, I'll point out Pixar. Pixar, who does, who tells wonderful stories, like toy stories, one of my favorite movies of all time. But then once Toy Story came out, people said, oh, that's how we're going to do movies from now on. We're going to do it with computers. That's the ticket. But how many bad movies have been made with computers? There's terrible ones, you know, out of the tent, named 10 computerized movies, only two of them were good. Eight of them are bad. No one remembers them, you know? So it's, that comes down to the story as well. Like I could say Buzz Lightyear, you're like, oh, I know that character. You know who that is. You know, um, like right now, I challenge you. This, this is going back to Star Wars. Name me one character from the movie Rogue One. You probably can't. Um, you can't, right? Because the lead character. Right, right. That's the perfect. You should give them the sort of, um, general, a single syllable name, and then I forget them. I know exactly. So, I mean, you'll, you'll see that, um, character is the most important thing. And, and I'm, I'm all four doing things in new mediums and making them look amazing, like the Matrix, the one that movie came out, the new technology they had in that. And, um, you know, uh, just doing a Jurassic Park when that came out, um, the way that it was in that at the time was groundbreaking. It's wonderful to have new technology. But at the end of the day, it comes down due to people care about these characters. You know, back to the, back to the futures, another example of a great story with great characters, you know, Marty McFly, you went ahead with him and the doc. What a great relationship they had, you know, and they're just funny. Yeah, very much an old couple that they're living great. So you've hinted that it's, um, a tricky industry to be in as many of these very intensively competitive industries are, um, if someone's out there in their bedroom thinking, I'd like to try my hand at getting into that industry. Can you give them some tips about how to, you know, build up their defenses for what they might meet? Oh, absolutely. Character qualities that help. You're, you're, okay, your, your best defense is being good at what you do. If you're good at, if you're good at what you do, that is 80% of the battle. Because if you have a product, you see, the thing is you're going into an industry that's going to pay you something. And, and I know it's all about the art and, you know, I, I meet a lot of artists go, I don't need to make any money. I go, well, that's fine. Okay. I hope you don't, I hope you do great. Good for you. But you want to do it in the industry and be an artist in the industry and be a storyteller and get paid for it. You've got to come up with something of value that people can, pay you for. And, um, you know, even Pablo Picasso got paid for his paintings, you know, people get paid for their art and don't ever feel guilty about it either. A lot of people say, well, it took me five minutes to draw this. No, it didn't took you a lifetime of practice to draw that. That's why it only takes you five minutes to draw that. Your, your talent is valuable. Your gifts are valuable and you can get paid for them. But make sure you're good at what you do and be ready to learn and be open to learn. Do not be a pre-madana. I will hire a less talented hard worker than a super talented pre-madana any day. If you're, I don't care how talented you are, if you're going to make my life miserable, I don't need you around. I need someone who wants to learn and who's open and will do what I ask and grow in the process. Be ready to grow. You don't know everything. Also, get out of your comfort zone. If you're living at home or just you haven't left your hometown, but you want to be in the industry, you need to go with the, or the business is, you know, you need to go to New York. Maybe it's Hollywood. Maybe it's, they're doing things in Georgia now. Maybe it's, I don't know where the industry is that you want to do, but go there. Yes, you can do things online now, but there's really nothing that takes the place of being interactive with actual human beings, you know, whether there's a pandemic or not. If you can travel, if you can go, definitely go and meet people that do what you do. I said one of the things that I've been wondering about as there's such an explosion of the platforms and more and more content being made, as you've noticed a shift in content becoming more regionally specific. So, whereas, perhaps, you know, I could think of two main centers for cartooning. One was obviously America, and the other one was Japan. But I think industries coming up elsewhere, or is it still dominated by those two polls, would you say? Well, that's a good question. There's a lot of animation being done kind of all over the world. There's a lot being done in Canada now, a lot being done in India, a lot being done, as you said, in Japan. The Philippines, there's a lot of animation done in the Philippines, but those are places that make the animation. The places that the animation are mostly in America, they're mostly in Hollywood, and things like that. I could be wrong. Someone out there is probably going to nail me for that. I'm sure I got something wrong there, but I know. Discussion, isn't it? Yeah. No, it is, but the places that pay that pay for projects to be made are predominantly in Hollywood, because they want, you know, these are all the platforms, Disney, Paramount, Universal, Netflix, all these companies, you know, and animation's not done overnight. You know, every animated project you see that's coming out right now was started about four or five years ago. Yeah. So it takes a long time, especially if it's a series, it takes a long time to do. Yeah. And a lot has changed in the last four or five years, of course. Oh, yes. Things always change, but we adapt. And, you know, I'm just excited because now, you know, when I was younger in the 80s, we didn't have iPhones. I had movie, like I didn't have, we didn't have camcorders. We had actual movie cameras, but it took forever to make things. And if I wanted to make a film, I had to go rent equipment, and I just didn't know how to go about it, and if I wanted to sound, and all that was really hard. But now, everyone's got a TV studio in their hand. It's called their iPhone. You can do a movie right now and upload it to YouTube in the same day if you want to. So if you're a good storyteller, you can get an instant audience reaction right now. And I always ask people, what's holding you back? Now, there really is no excuse now to not make something. If you want to make something, don't give me the excuse, you don't have the equipment. You have an iPhone in your hand. You can make something. So what's what have you got on the cards that you're making next? You were saying that you've just to me before we came online Yes. I do have a new project. I'm making a cartoon now. In fact, we just had a press release come out. I'm making a new cartoon. It's a Christian cartoon. I'm a Christian guy. And the Christian cartoon market is kind of sparse. There's not a lot of cartoons for Christian kids out there. So I had this idea a while back and it's called The Garden. It's about a little lion named Lenny and a little lamb named Lucy. They live in a magic garden or anything can grow. You can plant a trumpet. It will grow a trumpet tree. You can plant an idea. It will grow an idea, bush and plant a donut. It will grow a donut tree. And so every day they tend to the boss, who's God, they talk to the boss and they say, what's up boss? And the boss gives them a job every day. And normally they don't do it correctly. They mess it up and then they have to ask him how to do it right and through a scripture or a song that he tells them how to do it right. And it's really charming. It's Rage's kids. A kid's age is three to eight. Hey, that idea of planting a trumpet tree reminds me of the early days of Narnia when they plant the toffee. Oh, there we go. I didn't know that. Is that a Narnia? It's in just the one incident of it. In Magician's nephew, when they arrive as well as being created, everything, that's why the lamppost grows because the queen jar this throws a bit of metal that she'd ripped off a lamppost in London. Oh, that's why it's there. Okay. And it grows into a lamppost. But also Diggory has a paper bag of sweets in his pocket and he plants one and you get this tree which goes toffee's or a carnival. I never, I never read that book. That's a fantastic story. Look at that. You can connect it now. So, but we always finish our forecast with aware in all the fantasy worlds is the best place for something. And we've gone all over the place. We've been to, you know, best mountain, best in best singer, that kind of thing. And I thought in honor of your wonderful failure parents, so we do where is the best place to be a fairy godmother? And I want to expand the definition to mean anyone who comes to a like a child with magical gifts. So it's the best place to be a fairy godmother. Yeah. Are my answers limited to the fairly odd parents world or is it limited? No, no. Any fantasy world that you could be a fairy tale. It could be. Gosh, there's something. One of my favorite fantasy worlds. Gosh, okay. Now see now my head is spinning. Okay. So I give you my mind while you're thinking. Let me hear yours. Yes. What is yours? So I didn't, I mean, obviously you think Cinderella, but no, I think that actually my favorite fairy godmother is Hagrid when he turns up at the beginning of Harry Potter with his magical umbrella and a cake. I think he basically is the fairy godmother because he's the one who comes in and says, you shall go to the ball. You shall go to Hogwarts. I see. Is my favorite magical intervener? I got you. I have two. I have two. I think the first one would be Obi-Wan Kenobi telling Luke he's going to tell Luke all about the force. That'd be a good one. Yeah. And the other one is Peter Pan. His Peter Pan shows up to Wendy and says, hey, let's fly. He teaches her how to fly and they fly to the Neverland, which I thought was pretty cool as a kid. Always loved. In fact, a lot of my flight scenes in Danny Phantom come from Peter Pan. Yeah, no, wonderful story. I mean, the original is a bit odd if you ever read it. It's very much of its time. Yeah, it's very different. Yeah. Was it of ours is different too? Yeah, there's lots of, you know, authorial comments, which you think, oh, that's a bit funny, but I think the concept goes above that, I think. Yeah, that dream of flying is wonderful. Thank you so much, Bertchen. I hope that everything goes well with the new project of the garden, but obviously, you've many more setting morning cartoon watching of these things because they are on television all the time now, aren't they? They are. In fact, if I could just show a shout out real quick, there's a brand new Fairly Odd Parents live action show on right now. It's on Paramount Plus. It's called Fairly Odd Parents Fairly Otter, and it's on Paramount Plus. Live action with animated fairies. Yes, I think you're really enjoying it. Oh, fantastic. That's a great tip. So, thanks very much for being with us, and I think it's about your cartoons. And I'm going to give you my catchphrase. I always say, my YouTube channel art gives you power, use it wisely. 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