Stop motion animation is enjoying a major revival these days. Projects like Coraline, Mary and Max, $9.99 and the upcoming The Fantastic Mr. Fox have combined to make 2009 the year of the stop motion animated feature. 
However, the medium doesn’t appear on TV all too often, presumably because of the painstaking animation process. There’s Robot Chicken, Moral Orel and the upcoming Titan Maximum, but you’d be hard pressed to recall many more.
You’ll likely remember Celebrity Deathmatch, the stop motion TV series created by Eric Fogel that enjoyed a 75 episode run. Well, Fogel returns this year with Glenn Martin, DDS, a series he co-created with former Disney CEO Michael Eisner and Alex Berger. Animated at Cuppa Coffee Studios, the 22-minute comedy follows the adventures of a traveling dentist and his family. The series is currently airing on Nick at Nite on Mondays at 8:00 p.m. (ET/PT). We recently grabbed a few minutes from Eric’s busy schedule for an interview, but first here’s a clip from the episode titled Pimp My RV:
AARON SIMPSON: How did your involvement with this project begin?
ERIC FOGEL: Well, I came into this project when I sat down in New York with Michael Eisner. He had an idea for a show and a rough script. 
He basically wanted to do a show about a family that leaves everything behind and takes their life on the road in an effort to grow closer. That was pretty much all they had so when I came in my job was to create the look and the world and the characters. Then, I ended up directing an eight minute pilot presentation that we used to sell the show.
AARON: And how did that design process go?
ERIC: It was definitely an evolution. There was sort of the normal design process that you go through on any show to get to the look, but the characters have all evolved from the look we created for the pilot presentation. Glenn was probably a little bit goofier looking – he had a receding hairline and a little less handsome than he is now. Jackie was slightly less attractive than she is now. We essentially cleaned and polished them up a bit. That and we fattened the dog, Canine, up a bit and actually made his asshole even bigger. If you can believe that.
AARON: Is Michael Eisner involved on a weekly basis with the production?
ERIC: Yeah, he’s definitely tuned in to the show. He’s been present at all the table reads and has weighed in on every single script. He looks at everything. He’s selective in the notes he gives, but when he does give notes they’re very definitive and there’s no questioning the validity of the notes. They’re usually right on the money.
AARON: So, the process of stop motion animation is incredibly labor intensive and you don’t see a great deal of it on TV. Why did you choose stop-motion?
ERIC: We’re insane. I don’t know what we were thinking. Stop motion animation is a big undertaking even when you’re dealing with two characters in a single set….
AARON: … like Deathmatch.
ERIC: Exactly. Like Deathmatch. Now, imagine five main characters on the road in an RV meeting new characters and ending up in new environments for every episode. This is the opposite of Death Match. It’s ridiculously ambitious.
AARON: Do you ever, as a producer, try to limit the complexity of an episode?
ERIC: Yeah we do. And I think in the beginning there was a little bit of the gloves-are-off approach but the writer’s are sensitive to it as well. We’re always looking for ways to re-purpose elements from show to show.
AARON: The animation is being produced in Toronto, but you’re in Los Angeles. How do you manage this?
ERIC: I’m in Toronto pretty much every other week. We write and record all the episodes here in Los Angeles, so I pretty much split my time 50/50 between here and there.
AARON: And what’s the lead time on production?
ERIC: That’s a difficult question because the schedule changes depending on which episode the network wants to air at what time, but it takes approximately three months between the time that we turn in the rough audio, the audio track, and we get back the rough cut of animation. But the turn around time for the actual animation is very fast, between two and three weeks, to output the half hour of animation.
AARON: Okay, and, on average, about how many seconds does an animator produced in a day?
ERIC: We like to go for seven seconds a day. Generally it ends up being anywhere between six and a half to seven seconds.
AARON: What audience is the show for?
ERIC: The idea is to have a show that appeals to kids on one level and also appeal to adults on another level. It definitely strikes a balance in that way. There are plenty of jokes that will go over kids’ heads and there’s also plenty of physical, slapsticky-type humor that kids are gonna to friggin’ love.
AARON: Is there a character that everyone on the crew is talking about who steals the show or gets all the good lines?
ERIC: Conor, the thirteen year old son, is definitely a break-out star. I think when I was designing him I had a really specific look in mind – a really nerdy teenager with braces in a permanent state of awkwardness. Conor is completely horny, and as dumb as a bag of rocks. Comedy gold.
AARON: Was there an episode where you feel like the show found its legs?
ERIC: You know it’s funny, there’s some episodes where you’re not really sure how they’re going to come together. I think, for me, when I saw episode four in which Glen starts up a romance with the NorthStar (Onstar) voice lady. That was a really simple, straightforward episode, but we took a real cinematic approach to the story. You watch it and it’s like, “Wow I feel like I just watched a thirty minute movie.” I guess you could compare it to Wallace and Gromit shorts in that way. Really high production values and really funny visual gags, and the warmth and the heart all came through in the story.
AARON: Great, can’t wait to watch that one. From a broader prospective, where do you see stop motion right now as an art form and as a business?
ERIC: Within the animation community, I think stop motion is always going to be on the fringe. It’s sort of the red-headed step-child of the bunch. It kind of goes away for a little while, then it comes back, and you get beautiful pieces of art like Coraline coming out. I want to continue working in the medium forever and I definitely have more stories that I want to tell and things I want to do.
AARON: What do you turn to for inspiration?
ERIC: In terms of comedy there are the things that make you chuckle and the things that make you laugh out loud and roll on the floor. I love the little nuance performances that we get from our actors and that inspires me. We’ve got great vocal talent on the show: Kevin Nealon, Judy Greer and Catherine O’Hara. They work amazingly well with the group and they bring lots of little nuances to the show.
And I grew up watching the big physical gags in Tex Avery cartoons and Tom and Jerry, and those are the things that just make you laugh at loud. So it’s always fun to be able to do that kind of humor in Glenn Martin, DDS.
AARON: Congrats, Eric, on the new series and good luck with the back half.
ERIC: Thanks, I appreciate it.
[...] Glenn Martin, DDS is a failure for more than just Cuppa Coffee. Celebrity Deathmatch’s Eric Fogel deserves some blame for this show, as Glenn Martin, DDS grew out of looking at some dog’s distended starfish. Seriously. [...]