For too long swans have been thought of as regal animals that embody beauty instead of the truly monstrous and dangerous creatures that they are. Swan Boy, part of FXX's animation anthology series Cake, shows this creature in a whole new light. Based on the "rude as hell" webcomic by Branson Reese, Swan Boy follows a 20-something swan who is also a boy as he levies his low station and medium intelligence against the worst life can throw at him.
Creator and voice of Swan Boy, Branson Reese, sat down with CBR to talk about bringing Swan Boy to life. He dived into the origins of the lead character and described how the series found inspiration in classic golden-age animation. Reese also revealed the benefits of comedy maximalism and how a rapid, anarchic sense of humor says a lot about comedians.
Can you walk us through all the different hats you wear on the production of Swan Boy?
Branson Reese: Okay, I can try -- it's a lot. So I believe I'm the showrunner for it. If I'm not, the showrunner is asleep at the wheel because I've been doing the showrunning. So I'm the showrunner and the creator, I am the -- you can probably tell -- I'm the voice of Swan Boy. I helped do the character design. I did a lot of the character designs, but I don't want to over-inflate my role on the show because we're working with Augenblick Studios who are unreal, they're so good. They were my first choice to work with and they've been incredible. Every single thing that I do -- except voicing and creating -- every other thing I'm talking about, people at Augenblick have helped me with or done instead. Originally we had this guy, Jeremy Jusay, do the backgrounds for it.
All of this is to say the answer is it's an extremely collaborative process. So there's a lot I do, but a lot of other people, like Katie Wendt, also did a lot of the character designs. She helped clean up my character designs and get them ready for television. So I do a lot on it, but I hope that doesn't sound like it's me versus the world. I do a lot in conjunction with Augenblick Studios who do a ton and have really shaped how the show looks and sounds and is.
How was the shift from comic to animated cartoon?
So the webcomic is just me, which is why there are no backgrounds in the webcomic. Or, I'll grab a photograph and just place it in the background, 'cause I don't know how to draw backgrounds. Three-point perspective? I don't know what that is. I didn't go to art school (and I think it shows). So I did that webcomic all by my lonesome. And then I started talking to FX, we were making it a show, so then the jump -- Augenblick Studios was very cool and understanding. They were actually gentler with me than they even had to be because they've worked with cartoonists who had made the jump to animation before, so they're very familiar with how it can be a very violating process. It's like, "Every aspect of this used to come from me, it was my drawing, my writing, my everything." They were incredible, like, "Hey, we're going to have somebody come in to clean this up, but we still want you involved as much as you want to be involved." It turns out, I wanted to be extremely involved, so I had a hand in everything.
I've never worked with taking my webcomic through TV production before, so I don't know what it's like otherwise, but I can't imagine it's possible to get any smoother than this. They were so great with me and they're so smart. I wanted to work with that studio before, that was a dream come true to get to work with them. So it was like, "Please, you tell me how it's gonna be and I'll acquiesce to you." So it was great. It was a very nurturing partnership. I guess that the answer to your question is it was a very smooth transition. I felt very supported. If there's anything in the finished product that people don't like --unfortunately, I had so much control that that is on me. So if there's anything people don't like, that is my fault. I can't blame it on anyone else.
Where did the idea for a swan who is also a boy come from?
I don't totally know. It was just instinctual. I was just drawing and then that came out. I used to do these daily comics, once a day for a year, and then I stopped doing it but my body didn't really stop doing it. So I kept drawing and I kept having ideas for things. Then I turned 30. I said at the time, "I'm not stressed about turning 30." In retrospect, I was freaking out. I was a fucking mess. So I made an autobiographical comic about... I was making fun of my body. I was like, "I'm sort of shaped like a swan." And so I made this swan boy.
I've always had it stuck in my craw how swans are depicted --they're sort of on knit pillows at Cracker Barrel, like, "Oh, we're so in love!" But if you see a swan in real life, your fight-or-flight is activated and you try to get away from it because they're wretched dinosaurs. They're terrible beasts of chaos. So I was like, "That's me. So I'll just take this character, I'll just amp up everything that sucks about me just a little."
It's been very interesting, by the way, seeing press and reaction to Swan Boy. Everyone's like, "Oh, he's a terrible asshole. He sucks, why would anyone want to be around him?" It's like, "Wow, that's very interesting because he's extremely based on me." But whatever -- lid for every pot. You can't please everyone all the time. But that's where it came from was thinking swans suck and also seeing myself in swans, it just seemed like a no-brainer that that would be my...I've had furries reach out after and they were like, "Hey, is this your fursona?" I don't know the barrier of entry for what constitutes a fursona or not. If it's low, then yeah, sure, that's my fursona. If there's something you have to do, I probably didn't do it so I don't want to steal valor from furries.
Is it cathartic to hear people badmouth a character who's based on you?
No, it's just sort of like, "I guess that's what I'm like." I've met enough people. I've thrived and not thrived socially in enough situations -- I'm 33, I got a pretty good sense of what the deal of myself is, what the social buy-in is. I knew that when I was a little kid, it's like, "Well, I'm not for everyone. That's just how it goes." I guess it's funnier than anything else. You put yourself out there and are like, "Huh, I put it down and that's what people are picking up -- interesting." It's too late to change my personality. If I was 12 or something, this would maybe be a wake-up call, but at this point, I've committed to sleeping through the day.
Is the sense of humor in Swan Boy in line with the general comedy stylings of the era -- is it a product of 2021?
I guess it has to be. No matter what I do, I can't opt out of it being 2021 -- as much as I'd like to, I'm just stuck in it. I am a product of my time, no matter what I do. It's liberating, no matter what I do, I'm doing something in conversation with 2021, even if that conversation is just plugging your ears and being like, "It's the 40s!" It's very inspired by, as I just said obliquely, it's inspired by a lot of golden age animation, which is what I love. There's some 90s stuff because that's what I grew up with.
But I guess ultimately, yeah, it is. It is about 2021 and how odd and depressing, and the rod of capitalism just slowly hollowing out America like that. Or you know, how much was ever there, but I don't want to be too Unabomber. Inevitably, that's going to come up because that's what I am thinking about. When I was writing the script -- I wrote it in 2020 -- that's inevitably what's going to come out in all of it. There's a weird -- it's never addressed, but a strange subtext of it is Swan Boy came of age during the war on terror because I did and he's me. He's got some Bugs Bunny in him but he's also very obviously a guy that grew up watching Jackass so naturally, those two things go together. And I think it's a pretty good fit.
That golden age of animation influence shows itself in the animation style of Swan Boy, but it also shows itself in the sound design too, which is not something you get from the webcomic format. So how involved are you in the sound style of this show?
I'm so glad to hear you say that. So we worked with Great City, an audio place that -- they're incredible, they're so good. They're so good at coaching you through and assembling. If anybody's in my specific situation where you've just sold a cartoon to FX, they're gonna let you go anywhere. I recommend working with Augenblick and with Great City. But how many people could be in that boat? They were great. Aaron Augenblick was a huge proponent. He immediately saw that strain of the sense of humor of it. So he pushed really hard for it.
One of our producers Carrie Miller -- I don't know where she got it, she had access to all of these old Hanna Barbera sound designs, like the [makes noise of a cartoon character starting to run away without getting traction on the ground]. You know it as soon as I say it, it's when Yogi Bear starts to run and he's not running yet. It's that Bongo sound effect -- we had access to all of that. So I was just a kid in a candy store. It was like, "Oh, this is what I wanted it to be."
When I drew the webcomic, that was in my head anyway, so I feel spoiled. I feel like a rich kid at a birthday party where everyone's just watching him open presents. I got everything I wanted on that -- I got those sound design things. Swan Boy throws something off-screen, that gets the glass shatter sound effect from Wet Hot, all of that gets to be in there.
I'm glad to hear you picked up on it because sound is something that hits you on such a psychic level more than a conscious level. So it's cool that you were picking up on that level. I got to see and hear these without that and it's a very different show. The Swan Boy I was imagining when we added that sound stuff, it really came alive.
Swan Boy is part of this mosaic of shorts on FXX's Cake. How important is this format to the stories you want to tell with the show?
That's such a cool way to phrase it: it's a mosaic. Yeah, it is. It's an anthology show. It's very cool, I'm very honored to be a part of Cake. All the stuff on there is very cool. It's a show I would like if I wasn't on it, which is not necessarily a given. It's nice to be able to say that. In general, a lot of artists would agree -- maybe not, most of the ones I talked to, though, agree that limitations can be very liberating. The limitation of five-minute episodes is very liberating because I can't be expected to tell a half an hour story in five minutes -- no, I'm an idiot, that can't be expected of me.
So instead, then I get to shrink down the storytelling into these little five-minute chunks, which is very similar to one of the primary influences for Swan Boy, which is Looney Tunes, or old Fleischer shorts. These theatrical cartoons that by design had to go in front of movies or in between newsreels of Hitler dying or whatever -- which is good. So that limitation led to very rapid-fire, anarchic sense of storytelling, which now I get to do. I would have wanted to do that with 30 minutes anyway, but now with five minutes, I'm forced to do it, which is very exciting and nice. It can be a little more gag-driven, because how much story can you really fit into five minutes? But who knows, knock on wood. Whatever happens in the future with Swan Boy I would hope if it does ever become a longer form thing, we could then retain that. The blueprint's already there. We could retain that sense of anarchy and just gag, gag, gag, gag, gag.
You're also a comedian, a podcaster, a DM... Is there a through-line, something that you can trace through all of your different work?
No matter what, it's me. I try to live a more unexamined life and just go for it and then let someone else put the pieces together. If I had to, it's that early age of animation sensibility. It's very comedy-forward, very gag-driven comedy, anarchy, blah, blah, blah -- all this stuff I've said a million times already in this interview. I guess that would be the through-line. I don't think I have a lot to say artistically, other than, "What do you think of this, is this funny? What about this? Do you like this? Is this funny?" But also I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
I think you can accidentally reveal a lot of yourself. I would rather reveal myself accidentally than really try to say something personal and fall short of that. I would rather just say as many things as I can and ultimately through... I think it was Frank Herbert who said [something like] there are so many details in Dune because you can accidentally reveal so much more of your soul just through quantity. It's maximalism. I guess comedy maximalism would be the through-line. And then whatever people pick up, maybe it's in there. I don't know. I'm not my own therapist.
What do you prefer more, the scripted things you're working on with Swan Boy or the improv work you do with comedy or with DMing?
Ideally, it's in the middle. Improv, I love it. It's very therapeutic, I love improvising. It's very nice. Somebody said at one time, it's comedy with no waste. You just do it and then it's gone. You've left no footprint. That's very nice. That's a little highfalutin' for how we think of it, but still, it's beautiful. But I like that aspect of improv, it's almost like comedy fireworks where it's like, "Wow, look at that," and if you missed it, it's gone. But you log a certain number of years doing improv and it's like, "Oh, I would have loved to have something to stick around to have my name on." So you get the script in there.
Ideally, there's some middle ground because I love writing and scripting, but if I spend too much time just by myself writing, it starts to feel a little dead. I need other people to be involved and to surprise me. So, to me, the ideal thing would be -- it's sort of how we do Swan Boy and a little bit how we do Rude Tales, where we improvise. Rude Tales we improvise and then we come in later and provide structure on top of it. With Swan Boy, it starts a little more structured but as we do it, and as we animate it and storyboard it, then the spontaneity can seep in and fuck up all of the stuff that I was scripting -- which is ideal. I want to ruin it a little.
Swan Boy airs as part of Cake on FXX Thursdays at 10:00 pm ET.