Writer, co-director and EP Charles Huettner and supervising director Benjy Brooke discuss the chaotic and mind-bendingly beautiful world of their new 2D adult animated sci-fi series, and how autonomous sensory meridian response played an unusual role in the visuals and texturization of the show, which premieres October 19 on Max.
Imagine an alien world, where glowing orbs show you faces of friends and strangers, squid-like slugs can serve as gas masks, and hippo-sized grazers can somehow survive being slit open, climbed inside by humans, and have their organs pulled and twisted to produce eggs that serve as light sources.
In short, it’s a chaotic world that makes no sense and total sense, mind-bendingly beautiful, with a noticeable amount of vorarephilia (or “vore”), an artistic interest in the consumption of sentient beings for food, pleasure, or symbolism. And who’s to say which one?
“That's part of creating a fantastical world with organic elements,” notes Charles Huettner, writer, co-director, and executive producer of Max’s upcoming adult animated series, Scavengers Reign. “That kind of stuff is just in there. Even if you don't want it to be. You're trying to be imaginative and you're like, ‘What if this creature ate this other creature but they're not dead?’ Like Pinocchio. That’s kind of vore. They didn’t intend to make vore. But they did. It’s a similar thing here. We're not sitting there wondering what perverted idea we can come up with. It's just a little bit unavoidable.”
Premiering on Max Thursday, October 19, Scavengers Reign, a 2D adult animated sci-fi series, follows a deep space freighter crew stranded on a beautiful yet unforgiving planet. The wear and tear on the ship, the way the crew members navigate the terrain, and its animals suggest the explorers have been stranded for quite a while. The events kick off at a point where the crew starts to learn the true nature of this planet as they try to survive long enough to escape or be rescued. Huettner co-directs with fellow writer and executive producer Joe Bennett. The series is produced by Titmouse, Max, and Bennett’s Green Street Pictures, which the director founded with Scavengers Reign’s co-executive producers James Merrill, Sean Buckelew, and supervising director Benjy Brooke.
“If you look at stories like Robinson Crusoe, The Revenant, Castaway, and The Last of Us, you have a character with an opportunity to fight for survival and carve out a place for themselves, but there are always these forces that are aligned against them,” says Brooke. “It’s a very human experience, to want to establish order in the world and then have all of these forces collapse against that order. We're seeing that now with climate change, and these very philosophical ideas come up. If none of this is going to last, what is the point of it all? That’s the experience of being alive and gleaning what we can from our moment on Earth, because we all know we're going to die at some point.”
That concept was the seed that sprouted the idea for Scavengers Reign, back in 2017, when Bennett proposed collaborating with Huettner on a short film for Adult Swim; their short won the heart of Adult Swim founder Mike Lazzo, who gave the pair the greenlight to produce a pilot for a potential show. Though industry happenings left the series in limbo for a while, a then newly established HBO Max caught wind of the concept and executives looked at Joe and Charles’ developed pilot.
“They told us they really believed in it,” recalls Huettner. “We knew part of the appeal was in how different the story was from other adult animated shows. I think we were pretty weary of the crude cookie-cutter reputation that adult animation had at the time, and it was important to us to expand what audiences could expect from the series. We really leaned into that side of things and treated it more like what you would see in live-action dramas.”
In order to make the show’s alien world as tangible as possible, elements of ASMR – an autonomous sensory meridian response, like a tingling sensation, which usually begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine – played an unusual role in the visuals and texturization of the show.
From rubbery vines and elastic appendages to crinkly leaves and bristly fungi, the environment of Scavengers Reign provides a sensory smorgasbord.
“Joe and Charles would talk a lot about the tactility of the animals and plants and the interactions with each one,” explains Brooke. “Charles manages to bring that kind of ASMR quality to all those backgrounds, and the texture and the detail make it so you can imagine brushing your hand on one of these plants and you can deduce what sound it would make. Everything has a little cacophony to them.”
It’s an ecosystem not totally unlike the one depicted in Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation. Though the book was published in 2014 and the film adaptation made its debut in 2018, neither Bennett nor Huettner was familiar with the story when working on their original short.
“The movie came out as we were about midway through the short, and I remember going to watch it in the theater just to be like, ‘How close is this to our story?’” shares Huettner. “There were actually scenes that were very similar. It was crazy.”
Brooke adds, “We're all sharing in this cultural stew, and I think it's a very human thing to want to approach the infinite, and maybe get so close to that infinite that you lose your humanity. That's what our show is about, how you retain your humanity in the face of this big, awe-inspiring universe. And do you need to retain this thing that you think is you if, in the end, it's just going to dissolve anyway?”
The immense amount of visual detail certainly helped the animators become as enraptured in the world of Scavengers Reign as the characters become episode by episode. But balancing the fantastical visuals with human relations drama required a daily dance.
“At first, we tried to go really hard on the nature stuff,” admits Huettner. “My thought process was, ‘I rarely get a chance to draw stuff like this. I'm going to go all out.’ And that was one of our early notes: ‘Hey, guys, this nature stuff is really cool. But we need more character drama.’ You have 12 episodes, and if every single episode is about what we can do with an alien banana, that might get a little stale. You need a human backbone to push a story along.”
In the end, it was the marriage of the habitat and humanities that clearly communicated what Bennett, Huettner, Brooke, and the rest of the team were trying to get out of this world.
“Maybe we should venture out into the unknown,” says Brooke. “And maybe we should let it change us.”
Huettner adds, “Even though it's a strange world, and it's hostile in all these different ways, it's also very inviting and accommodating. It’s not evil, and neither are the characters. You just have to let go of your preconceptions and go with it.”
In truth, Huettner notes his nervousness for Scavengers Reign’s release. Even though it’s been many years in the making, the director isn’t completely certain how audiences will receive such a shocking number of images and the numerous sudden left turns in the storyline and character developments.
“Some of the themes we’re talking about have never been presented in this way,” he says. “I feel like audiences are trained to expect things like, ‘If I see this person in a weird light, that means they're evil or the bad guy,’ and we don't do that. And I wonder how that will be received. But, since the trailer’s come out, everyone’s been checking out the short film. So that’s a good sign.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
