Metaverse, the virtual presentation of New York Comic Con, kicked off today featuring an impressive slate of Marvel-focused panels. One of those panels focused on the beloved X-Men: The Animated Series with some of the creators of the show discussing their work.
- The X-Men: The Animated Series panel featured:
- Eric Lewald (series showrunner)
- Julia Lewald (series writer)
- Larry Houston (series producer/director)
- Rick Hoberg (series artist)
- Stephanie Graziano (production)
- Sven Larsen (VP, Licensed Publishing for Marvel)
- The panel showed off some of the amazing hand-drawn art that was used to create the 1990s animated series.
- The team pointed out the difficulties fo creating an animated series like this in a time before computer imagery, with the artists having to create and recreate the the characters time and time again.
- Houston talked about how he would bring on different artists for different acts of the show, based on the artists’ talent. For example, if one artist was better at drawing women, they might handle Rogue scenes while an artist who was better at drawing robots would handle Sentinels.
- Graziano, who Julia Lewald referred to as air traffic control, was asked about what she thought when she learned that they would be doing the “Dark Phoenix” saga on the series.
- “It’s all the same,” Graziano said, laughing. “The hardest part is, in the longer series you can get away with taking things out of order, you know once in a while if something happens. In that case, you can’t do that.”
- Houston also touched on the cameos he put into the series, saying he wanted to give fans a reason to believe that this series was part of the bigger Marvel universe.
- Finally, they plugged the Lewalds’ book, X-Men: The Art and Making of the Animated Series, which is available for pre-order now and will ship on October 13.
- You can watch the full X-Men: The Animated Series panel below: