Behind the Scenes Interviews

Here you will see interviews from people inside the South Park Studios.

Interviews

Get a peek inside the Studios of South Park with exclusive interviews of the cast and crew.

Interview:

Adrien Beard Storyboard and Production Artist Supervisor

What happens after you get a script? First thing we do is we divvy up who's going to do what in the storyboard department. Sometimes I'll let Keo (Thongkham, Storyboard Artist) or the other storyboard artists pick scenes that they think they'll really enjoy doing. Otherwise, I'll pick (depending on) what their strengths are. Like Tony (Postma, Storyboard Artist), since he's studied trans (transportation design) at Art Center, I might give him a scene that has a lot of vehicles, or anything that's kind of technical. Keo is really good at action, so he can do a lot of the action sequences. Greg (Postma, Storyboard Artist) is really good at character scenes where there is a lot of talking. Somewhere in there, we decide there will be new characters and that may be connected to the temp lead sheet or not.

What happens when you get the temp lead sheet? When we get (the temp lead sheet) we have to hurry up and do some character design work and get that approved by Trey, because if we boarded it before we actually designed the characters, the framing might be wrong. Usually that's what I'll do, I'll go up there (to Matt and Trey's pagoda) and try to find out if there are any new characters. We'll have a conversation with Trey and he'll let me design (the new characters), and then he'll make some modifications, and then we can get started actually making them into Corels.

What kind of software do you use? We use Photoshop. We use Corel. We use Painter every now and then. But mostly we use Corel Draw, which is similar to Adobe Illustrator because it's vector based.

Trey has some, uh, interesting notes. Yeah, like when we designed God, (Episode #316 - "Are You There God, It's Me Jesus") Trey kind of said it was like a hippo/cat thing, which gives you a lot of leeway in the design work. Actually, the story I always tell is, early on he had this scene where Evil Stan was being corralled and taken into the house (Episode #105 - "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig"), and the script just said: "Evil Stan is lured into the house by something f***** up. You figure it out Adrien." So, first we were going to use a Patrick Swayze album, and then we came up with a couple other things that eventually got cut all together. Or the "Christmas Time in Hell" (Episode #315 - "Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics) they didn't really have very much of an idea how they were going to get around hell, so we came up with that whole rollercoaster sequence. That's one of the fun things (about working at South Park), because Trey actually trusts us enough to let us come up with ideas.

Has working on the show for a long time helped in this process? You would think that everyone would get the South Park sense of humor, but they don't. I think I kind of picked up on that over the years. So when (Trey) writes a joke, I kind of know how he wants it pulled off. The design of Timmy was pretty easy because I kind of knew what (Matt and Trey) were talking about. They used to go on the Web and check out those sites.

What are some of your inspirations for character design? Timmy was actually based on this kid I knew in elementary school. We know Mr. Mackey was based on someone Trey knew. One of the drawbacks of South Park is the characters are so simple. You aren't allowed to do too much. But that's part of the challenge and that's what makes it fun.

There are some occasions where you guys have to create new storyboards at the last minute. There was one where Cartman was shooting everybody when he was a cop in the "Chickenlover" episode (Episode #202). We had to change all those boards all of the sudden because he wasn't allowed to shoot people. (Comedy Central) didn't like the idea of kids handling guns, so we had to quickly make (Cartman) have a billyclub to hit people with instead. That's the hard part of revisions, because often times you may have liked a joke, or you may have really put a lot of work into something, and then all of a sudden it gets yanked. Usually it's late at night too, when Trey has a moment of inspiration that's going to come to him at 3 a.m., and we have to rush and finish those boards in under an hour.

What was your start date? I don't know the exact date. Early on, maybe the second week. Early 1997. I remember going to Lantana (their temporary production offices) and nobody was there. They were really trying to figure out how they were going to do the show at that point. The second time I came back Anne (Garefino, Executive Producer) had just gotten there and Ali (Shyngle, Production Accountant) was there at that time. I didn't meet Frank (Agnone, Supervising Producer) until Westwood (South Park's previous home) a month later. I was there the whole time, pretty much.

How did you meet Matt and Trey? Initially, they were working with a guy at the company I was working for, Light Entertainment. They were working on "Orgazmo" when I met them, and we kind of joked around and stuff. Then they asked me to do some boards, and they liked my stuff, so I went down to their house and we talked about the scripts. Then we went down to a bar and we kind of hit it off personality wise. Anyway, Matt asked me to work on the show. At the time I didn't think it was that funny because all I had seen was the cussing kids thing ("The Spirit of Christmas"). I know everyone thought that was hilarious, but I couldn't imagine that being the whole show. But Matt and Trey were like, NO NO NO, it's not going to just the cussing kids, we got a lot of funny ideas and blah blah blah.

And we got stuck with you. So how did you get into art? I've been drawing since I was a little boy. And in high school I was the head of my Art Club and�

Art Club? Yeah we tried to raise money to do things for the school, but it's funny because it's usually an excuse for a bunch of people to do drugs. So the Art Club wasn't too beneficial for me.

Now for the boilerplate. What's your favorite episode of South Park? That's a tough question. I like all of them for different reasons. I don't know, I get a real kick out of that phonics monkey (Episode #313 - "Hooked on Monkey Fonics"), I think he's pretty damn funny. That's a good question, let me think. Can you give me a minute?

Yeah. (One minute later) I don't know, on the top of my head I would have to say the movie.

Cop out. Anyway, How was working on the movie different from working on the show? We had a lot more time to work on it, obviously, even though at the end it turned out like any other South Park episode. We were doing everything last second trying to get everything done. But we had a lot of pre-production time and that was really nice. It was a lot different because we had time to really conceptualize things and do a lot better design work. That was another thing, it was fun to collaborate with people who really didn't have any exposure to South Park, but were respectful of everything that had been done and brought a lot of new ideas.

Okay, here's Karin's question. What's your favorite crayon color? I like "flesh" because I think it's funny that peach is considered flesh and it's nowhere near my flesh.

They changed that didn't they? I thought, "Oh the audacity!"

Sweet. I totally forgot about that. It was an ugly looking peach, right? Yeah it was like this weird kind of sunburn peach that I thought was pretty damn funny. I remember even as a kid they'd give it to you and you'd be like, "Well, this isn't right." They'd say "Draw your family" and they'll give you the flesh colored (crayon). I'd be like, "I need more like a brown.." There were no real colors for minority flesh.

Yeah, I think you had to get the 128 crayon box set for that. One day. That's when we'll know we're really evolved.