Family, Jelly and The Correct Pronunciation of Gif with Matt Braly and Ainsworth Lin

I must admit: I was never a Power Rangers fan. It never quite grabbed me in the way it did so many others. I can appreciate the craft, and the goofiness, but it holds little nostalgia for me. Perhaps that's why I jived so much with "Family Force V" while reading it in preparation for this interview. It's got a great hook and a killer cast of characters. But don't take my word for it, take the creators's!

Matt Braly and Ainsworth Lin both come from a background in animation, with Lin working as a character designer and Braly as a storyboard artist. Braly worked on one of my favorite shows Gravity Falls and was the creator of Amphibia, a show I keep getting recommended and keep forgetting to watch (sorry Matt!)

We talked about their approach to creating the first book in a planned series, applying animation techniques to comics (and having to unlearn some as well,) and discussed the proper way to say GIF. Don't worry. We also spill on our favorite characters. You'll never guess mine.

Thanks to Skybound for arranging the interview. Family Force V is out now in comics stores and June 10 in bookstores.

Let’s start with, hopefully the easy question of, how did the team come together? How did you two meet up? 

Matt Braly: That is easy. I brought the pitch to Skybound and our editor [Alex.] After, they were like: “We love this pitch. We’d love to produce it.” We combed through a bunch of artists and Ainsworth’s work immediately popped as being a great fit for the project. The editor reached out to Ainsworth and luckily he had availability. And…is it two years later? One-and-a-half? I think it’s been two years.

Ainsworth Lin: Oh wow, you’re right.

MB: Two years later, here we are!

That’s a long time when you say it aloud but I guess that’s the timeline of a book.

MB: Maybe that’s being ungenerous. Maybe a year and some months. We can check our email and find out.

AL: I think it’s been two years.

MB: Oh, ok. Then never mind. [laughs.]

Is this your first, full length project in the comics world?

AL: In the comics world…yes? I did a small kickstarter thing two, three years ago, but this is the first actual venture into the official comics world.

You went from that to a, what, 200-page graphic novel?

AL: 200 pages with colors, yeah.

Wow. Were you initially expecting to color it yourself or were you expecting to work with a colorist?

AL: I have no idea. I was just going in blind. I knew I’d be doing most of the work and I was up for anything so doing the coloring and lineart and layout and everything…I’m kind of picky about my own personal work. It’s nice to have that creative control, of making sure it comes out the way we want and it made the process a bit more streamlined because it was just me, Matt and Alex working on this thing.

What was the division of labor while crafting book one?

AL: Matt, how was the writing thing?

MB: It went like this: I wrote the script with my editor and we fed it to Ainsworth chapter by chapter.

AL: I got a general outline of the whole thing first.

MB: Oh, okay! So he knew the beginning, middle, and end of the story but we went chapter by chapter and I think we were only a few chapters ahead of you, Ainsworth.

AL: Yes.

MB: Ainsworth would chime in - “sounds great” or “this part’s confusing” or “guess we’ll tackle that when we get to visuals.” Then he would start on layouts for full chapters when we were halfway done through the scripts. All I did was write the story and dialog. Ainsworth did all the sketching, the final lineart, and the coloring. And the cover! He did such a cool cover. We had a letterer as well, Jame.

It was a small team, just the four of us.

I really love the use of SFX and the way they’re built into the art. Ainsworth, did you do some of the SFX that’s integrated into the art or was that all Jame?

AL: If there’s anything that looks hand drawn, that was me. Jame mostly handled the text boxes and speech bubbles. I’m not sure if Jame did any of the SFX.

MB: I was just looking. I seem to remember there’s only one instance. I think you didn’t do the music notes on the page because there’s a very clear style difference?

AL: Yeah, that’s not me.

MB: Yeah, OK. I knew it. You’re right. You did 99% of the effects in the book. It’s funny, because this one jumped out at me and I said, I don’t think Ainsworth did that one?

AL: It’s too clean.

MB: Yeah. It’s too clean and pretty.

Matt, you said this was also your first graphic novel. You’re coming in from the animation space. How different has it been from key animation and directing to scriptwriting for a static medium?

MB: You kind of said it. The biggest learning curve for me was going from screenplays to comic book scripts. For a screenplay, we have kind of a rule where almost a page is a minute. You’ll read a sixty page script and that’s roughly an hour. With a comic book, a page could be as short as five seconds if it’s an action scene or as long as ten minutes if it’s a heartfelt conversation. The reader controls the time as opposed to you when you’re directing for film.

I loved working with Skybound on this book. What I loved about this graphic novel space is that it’s a little bit older than what I was working on before. YOu know, I was after the 6 to 11 demographic on my show at Disney, which was great but very restrictive. Here, we were maybe targeting 10 to 16, maybe a little older, so we got to play a little more in that action-adventure, Avatar: The Last Airbender space, which I love.

Characters even say “shit” once in the book. 

Get that one PG-13 swear in.

MB: Exactly. They never would have let me do that at Disney, you know?

They’re very protective of that.

MB: Yeah. But here, I asked “can she say ‘go to hell?’” And the editor was like, maybe once, or, just do it a little bit but don’t go crazy.

That’s interesting because from reading a number of these Comet books [Skybound’s YA imprint] I’ve found that they skew a little older in terms of the allowances than other YA imprints out there. So it’s interesting to hear there are still those considerations to be had.

MB: And Skybound too. You think of Skybound, you think of “Walking Dead” and “Invincible.” You think of some pretty metal stuff. I do like that even in the YA space, they’re kind of pushing it a little bit.

Ainsworth, was there anything in the art where you pushed it a little?

AL: I mean, they were OK with blood as long as it was alien blood. There’s that one monster that’s made of alien blood. It wasn’t too restrictive and there’s not a ton of quote-unquote mature content in this book so it’s fairly simple on my end. I don’t have to worry about swearing on my end.

What were some of the direct influences on the book both visually as well as storytelling wise?

MB: Storytelling wise, I love The Incredibles. I love that it was this comedy but that the stakes were incredibly high, which was quite unique for Pixar in general. Everyone knows that scene where the missiles are going to hit the plane and Mrs. Incredible says “There are kids on board!” or something similar and it blows up anyway. I just remember you know like, “Oh, people could die in this. They could legitimately die.” We wanted that for this book too where the danger’s very real.

Obviously, there’s a little bit of comedy but it’s not an overpowering amount. It’s not MCU, meta, winky stuff. It should be more character based and right for this particular book. That was my biggest tonal inspiration, The Incredibles, and then obviously Super Sentai TV shows; this is an homage in that direction.

AL: For the art, I looked at an old anime called Bubblegum Crisis that I saw concept art and character sheets for, and I was like, that’s some pretty cool art designs. Obviously, we looked at old Power Rangers stuff too because this is a sentai show. For those that don’t know, it’s basically Power Rangers.

Initially in our first drafts, we leaned more towards the Power Rangers aesthetic where it was just people in costumes and suits.

MB: The monsters were goofier.

AL: Yeah, the monsters looked really cheap and chunky. They looked like dudes in rubber suits. They were, like, really silly. One was a giant fish man with cannons on his shoulders. It was a lot of fun.

After that, we started to hone in on where we wanted to be. I don’t remember if it was you or Alex who suggested we add more armor to the suits.

MB: Yeah. I’m not sure. With the suits, in the back of the book, there’s a great section of sketches and design work that you can look at. We wanted to give them their own identity and not be a straight one-to-one Super Sentai, Power Rangers, spandex wearing looking thing so we opted to give the costumes mechanical parts too. 

The eyes are kind-of LCD, right? You can see they’re emoting with their eyes that are glowing and they’ve got these cool Megaman boots. We looked for inspiration from all over. I know you had a little Gundam inspiration in your drawings as well.

AL: Oh, yeah. Definitely.

MB: Just to bring in a bit more of the robotic feeling to the costumes so it wasn’t just Power Rangers, it was also this technology-infused thing as well.

AL: I feel like in the animation industry, at least the more modern ways they draw sci-fi components as very organic and rounded in shapes, so a bit of that was injected into the DNA of the project.

I did notice the roundness but I didn’t connect it to that trend.

AL: It’s also the… in art school, and it’s not applicable to everything, but the general principle is round is friendly, triangle is harsh and evil, square is square and really rigid, that kind of thing. So, round, friendly heroes.

Are you sure you couldn’t just make them eggs? The roundest heroes!

MB: [Laughs] I do think there’s also a story component to it. This highly advanced, technologically advanced alien ship shows up and gives them their powers, so their suits look very advanced. It’s about that kind of aesthetic.

Speaking of that, actually, that’s how it’s set up. The title is “Family Force V.” There are these five individuals that are given powers and they go off and start their own families around the world. It’s Super Sentai as a family drama. 

MB: Yup. That’s the pitch!

Which I really dug. It’s a very good hook and keeps the story grounded. Were you worried about the balance? Having too much family drama at the expense of big action sequences? Was that something you were concerned with?

MB: That’s a really great question. Some of my favorite things I’ve worked on, like Gravity Falls  or Amphibia (my own show,) the work works best when it’s a happy combination of the mundane and the fantastic. When you mix these things together, the resulting friction and contrast is really interesting. So to your question, I think we really tried to find, like, how many family dinners there are to alien fights. Can those things feel like they’re connected?

Can you have a fight where something went wrong and people are still grumbling about it at dinner afterwards? That kind of synergy is what we were looking for with the book. But it’s a tricky balance. I did read some feedback on some early reviews that it was like Power Rangers mixed with a sit-com and I was like, oh, a sit-com? That’s really interesting. 

I think you see certain visual tropes like a family on a couch or a family eating dinner or the daughter slams the door and is upset after an argument. It’s all very 7th Heaven or the like.

A trip to the mall!

MB: Yeah! Oh, the mall and the talent show. Yeah. Totally. The real appeal, though, is those things. It’s funny because when you watch Power Rangers - the old show, the very first show - those kids are in high school, supposedly. Number one: they all look like 35. Yeah right. But number two: there’s no high school trappings. Those kids are just getting yoked at the gym for the majority of their off-time or they’re hanging at the juice bar. I don’t think I’ve seen a single one of them do a math problem or go to a school dance. Not even once.

They don’t fail a math test.

MB: Yeah, that stuff is strangely absent. Maybe the creators were like, eh, kids don’t want to see that. I do remember thinking that it’s funny none of these kids actually have to go to school.

The dream.

MB: Yeah, a little bit. We wanted to make sure that for this book, no no no. Here you have a character that’s being pulled in those directions: school, family, punching aliens.

I’m going to give this to Ainsworth first but Matt you can also answer: what design did you most enjoy making and which design did you struggle with the most?

AL: In making, I think my favorites were…it’s a toss-up between the Mazoku themselves and the Moon Troopers. Both are fun to draw. I love drawing fantasy stuff and the Mazoku squeeze in that space between sci-fi and fantasy and it works really well with what I’m used to.

But I also really enjoy drawing the Moon Troopers. It’s kind of ingrained in my head how to draw them because of drawing the entire book. I do enjoy the shape language of them all.

If I had to say, my favorite Moon Trooper to draw is Maise. I just really love the way she looks. Oh! You know what? I really loved drawing the Moonkaiser even though it’s a lot of little, technical pieces all over the place. It’s so much fun to draw. It’s our Eva, basically. It’s great.

As for the most difficult…if I had to go back in time, I would sit down and do a whole viz-dev, reference board pass on the city itself. I wish I had more time to create a whole identity for this thing. It’s just me working on this and that whole process would take a lot more people. It’s more collaborative in that environment to actually make it feel more lived in. Who knows? Maybe in the future I can make little reconstructions throughout the city and it will steadily grow and no one needs to talk about it. It just happens.

MB: My favorite design that Aisnworth did is Moonie, the Zordon parallel that lives in the basement. He’s a rabbit. He’s got a rabbit-esque design, and the reason for that is there’s a Japanese folk tale about rabbits being on the moon. He’s in the basement and he’s the supercomputer and is updating them on stuff. He’s got these tentacles too so he can interact with the character. I just think he’s neat.

He’s got a unique looking face that’s kinda scary but also kinda cute. That character is working for me on a few levels.

I’m an artist too but I’m not quite as talented as Ainsworth, in my opinion, so I struggle to actually draw the humans in his style. But! Occasionally in the book, Ainsworth does these cute, simplified versions of Maise if she’s feeling a strong emotion like STRESSED or wow, really excited. It snaps into a style that’s similar to mine and I really like that stuff. I love how Maise is drawn there. It’s really cute.

AL: I remember when I was doing research on how to draw more dynamic fight scenes I was looking at Yusuke Murata’s work on “One-Punch Man.” Absolute monster. Every once in a while throughout, he would snap back to One’s [the original mangaka] design and I really liked that.

MB: Yes! Yes! I know what you’re talking about. The comedy bits.

AL: It just goes back to that squiggly line.

MB: There’s a highlight on his bald head.

AL: Yeah, yeah! It’s definitely an inspiration for that.

MB: I see that now. I don’t think I noticed before but yeah, going from hyper-realistic anatomy and fighting to kinda silly-

AL: Especially in the beginning when Maise’s talking to Citlalli and she’s asking if they want to go out for a meal later. I was totally thinking of that meme, the okay Saitama meme.

MB: Totally. I love that stuff. Graphic novels are such a perfect medium for that because in animation, it’s sort of like, oh, is this just off-model? I know you’ve seen complaints whether it’s Steven Universe or Invincible and people are like, well this looks off-model to me. And I’m like, no no no that was intentional.

We’ve lost the ability to squash and stretch.

MB: Yes! I see I’ve found an ally here.

I love all the process stuff with animation and graphic novels. It’s interesting to me how techniques get applied in different areas. This is one of those instances where someone could look at it and be like, well, that outline is pretty shaky but it’s on purpose. It’s not just the comedy that you’re hitting the beats on throughout. You’re very good at hitting the dramatic beats, visually and within the script.

I really like this moment near the end of Chapter 2 when Maise is down in, what is it called? The lair?

MB: It’s just their basement. Ainsworth actually drew some boxes that say, like, Christmas Stuff, so it really is just….there’s like a bike and stuff [laughs.]

Their storage room headquarters. She’s sitting - it’s a splash page - and looking up. It’s a beautiful page.

MB: Yeah. It was beautiful. Ainsworth found just the right composition. Those moments were a learning curve for me with the script where I saw, like, woah! You don’t have to have so much dialog on every single page. Just take a minute and let it soak in.

Did you find that to be happening often early in the process or did it come throughout like, Ainsworth, you would see a scene and be like, well, we can change this around? How did that dynamic play out?

MB: I think we discovered it with some feedback from our experienced editor Alex being like, don’t be afraid to leave some silence. That’s how we ended up with some pages that are just her on the bed or just her and nobody’s saying anything. They’re just out here feeling their feelings.

I want to jump back real quick. Why did you decide to do chapters?

MB: You know? That’s such a good question because, actually, I didn’t know there would be chapter breaks until pretty late in the process. I saw one of the early comps and was like, OH, there’s a page that says six! You know what I mean? I thought it was all going to roll into each other. When I thought it was going to be one continuous piece, I just thought it was a good way to pace the story.

In storytelling for film, we have the three act structure. I thought having a ten chapter story for a 200 page graphic novel felt good and snug. Then, luckily, when I understood there are actual breaks, we were able to bake in a little more of that fun cliffhanger feeling at the end of chapters. I think, ultimately, it ends up helping the book feel a little more like a TV show where it’s “episode one, episode two, episode three, episode four,” even though it’s one continuous story.

I guess what I’m saying is it wasn’t a creative choice so much as it was a suggestion that we went with. Now I’m like, why ARE there chapters?

I think what I like about the chapters is now you can be: chapter three is where shit hits the fan. And maybe it was a structure thing. Now we can see the shape of the overall long-form story. I liked having chapters. Whether or not you have chapter breaks, however, is up to taste because if you took these out, I think it would still read great.

How far out do you have planned? You were talking about the overall structure of this specific book but how much of the greater narrative do you have?

MB: If you get to the end of this book, there’s a juicy sizzle, like a little bit of a tag, where you’re like, woah. What’s going on? What’s happening here? We know the answers to those questions but how we get there and how long it takes is up in the air. This could be a three book series, this could be a ten book series, depending on how the public receives the first book, receives the second book.

For me, I was hoping this could be a longer story. In a perfect world, this would be ten books. We could really sink in and spend time in this world with these characters. If it had to be three  books, I think we could do it pretty neatly. This is so funny because it took two years to make this book. The artwork is so beautiful. This is, like, an hour long read at the longest [laughs.]

Which is so funny, Ainsworth, because you’re like “oh my god. That is my whole two years.”

AL: Like a year and a half of work.

MB: When you think about it like that, though, this thing is a 45 minute to an hour long read, then three books would be three hour-long specials, if we were thinking of a television show. I think it would be better at ten. It might feel a little like “and then we’re done” if it’s just three. You want time. You want more time.

I certainly want more time with these characters.

MB: Yeah. Don’t rush it. I feel like if you give this series more time, we could do some really more stuff. We promise all these branches across the world. We’ve gotta meet all of them! We gotta have a big family. We gotta have a tournament arc between the families!

AL: Oh my god [laughs].

MB: There are so many cool things that you can do, time allowing.

Ainsworth, do you have some of those other characters modeled out?

AL: Not yet. Still working on-

MB: On the writing? [Laughs.] He’s chomping at the bit to go and we’re almost there to where he can start doing that design work.

AL: I have…In the first book, there are hints at characters that we may be able to see later on. Whether they get replaced or not down the line depends on my mood. Who knows. I might decide to change them. Or keep them. Or give them a name, finally. We’ll see!

I think I left a few things in the first book we can circle back to eventually.

MB: We definitely set up the idea, because Daichi comes from Tokyo, he has a different costume design. We really want all the family branches to have different costumes. That would be so sick.

AL: I remember when we were doing the concept art, I wanted to give Daichi a completely different look, like a completely different suit. I think we scrapped that for the interest of time; we just slightly altered his suit for the next one. 

MB: Is his suit the same as theirs?

AL: Very similar, if not the same. I don’t remember if I added any differences.

MB: Aah, he’s got a scarf. He’s got a cool scarf.

AL: My headcanon is that this is the newest iteration of the suit and maybe by the time we get to the future, their suit is outdated and they’re testing out new ones.\

MB: That would be awesome.

AL: We do see the generational differences in the suits in the prologue. We see the first suit, then a second generation suit, and now we’re on the third generation suits.

MB: So many details!

I’m looking through some of the pages and I’ve noticed you are very good about changing expressions between panels, even if not much has changed with the character. I’m wondering if that was something you were conscious of or if you carried it over from animation? I ask because often, if there are repeated panels, the facial expressions will repeat.

AL: I’m one of the weirdos that actually likes drawing people. It’s fun for me. There’s a joke that a lot of artists like to say: if you walk in on us working, we’re going to be making weird faces.

MB: It’s true.

AL: We’re trying to reflect and we unconsciously start pulling our muscles into that position. We look like freaks. But it’s fun!

I’ve never really thought about that. More seasoned comics artists would reuse assets because it saves time. There’s no need to, sometimes, especially if it’s the same dialog.

MB: There’s that Invincible meme.

AL: Oh yeah! Where one panel is, what, 16-panels of just staring?

MB: I think you did it intuitively. Your animation background, your eye-direction, making sure where your characters are looking in every panel is really clear.

AL: It’s so funny. I’m in such an animation-pilled mindset that that’s how I view the world sometimes. I really get confused for a second when I see photos of people because people, real people, do not look directly at you. Their eyes pull slightly outward and so I would get confused when I looked at photos of myself or my friends, like, where are you looking? But no no no. That’s how people are. They’re not cartoons. Cartoons are altered because we have to communicate the idea of they’re doing this thing, they’re doing that thing.

It adds a dynamism to the work.

AL: Technically, everyone’s cross-eyed in animation.

Really?

AL: To communicate the sight line, everyone is very slightly cross-eyed.

Is that more common in American animation, or American full-animation, like what a lot of Disney does, or something with more limited animation?

AL: I’d say anyone with big eyes. If you go for a more realistic style, like a lot of French animation or some experimental American animation, that’s where you’ll see characters with the “correct” way humans look. Though I still feel like that’s limited to the big-eye thing, where you’re watching where this character is looking at just a small point.

I’ve talked to many animators who do comics and they’ve all got a different process and I’m always finding new things to learn about the industries.

AL: Yeah. I come from a character design background. Matt from storyboarding. It works out well. We’re both familiar with the language so we can pass our ideas back and forth easily.

MB: There’s also some comedy to having characters have the exact same staging for multiple panels, but only slight differences between their expressions. That feels very modern to me.

I know Steve Lieber has done a lot of good panels like that.

MB: Yeah. Because the staging is the same, you’re picking up on the slight changes that are happening across them.

I wanted to know a little bit more about your color process, Ainsworth, because they’re so beautiful.

MB: Yeah, they’re outstanding.

They’re very varied from scene to scene. There’s a lot of vibrancy to them. So I was curious. Start to finish, picking palettes, picking the mood. How you worked through that. Was it more serendipitous?

AL: I was telling one of my friends the other week how my process was on this thing and she kind of freaked out when I didn’t have a color script for this because we had our deadline to hit so I was just kind of feeling out the entire thing. She was losing her mind. She was like “why didn't you use a color script? Why didn’t you organize it?” And I was like, “I didn’t have time. I just felt it out. It was fine.”

The colors were definitely a challenge in the sense that I had a ton to do. Matt was a hero and came in clutch for a few chapters with the character flats. Anything that would alleviate a few hours of work was welcomed. As far as how I colored, I dunno. I just felt out the entire thing.

I also wanted variation. I’ve been using Clip Studio - actually, that’s where my color script is, because I was able to zoom out and see every page of the entire thing. So, organizing like that and then taking a screenshot and using that palette to color the other pages. Ok. I did have a color script the entire time. I lied.

MB: Yeah, but you were color scripting by chapter, which, see? It was nice that we had chapter breaks so he could divvy up the story and the emotional beats with color that way. Because if it had just been one thing, you might have lost it.

And I think you intuited certain things. You knew the little trick to a high intensity action scene might be hot pink behind it. It makes for a very striking page where there’s fighting and the background is this awesome, high-saturation pink. To me, you’re intuiting that this needs to feel special and this needs to feel dangerous.

I love those pinks. I think it’s an underutilized color.

MB: Here here!

AL: I’m glad they came out well. I remember when we were first doing this, I think my files were all set to RGB and printers need CMYK.

MB: Oh shit.

AL: So I had to go back and convert everything and then I had to do color checking to make sure everything was printable. Printers hate purple! It sucks. It gets washed out really easily - you can’t get the right saturation, although maybe modern printers can handle it. I dunno. All I know is CMYK files don’t like purple.

Interesting. It kind of makes sense? I know nothing about printers and colors.

MB: Me too. No way.

I’m constantly fighting with the ones at work. Constantly. I’m like “why won’t you print this color?” And it’s like “don’t wanna.”

OK. I’ve got a couple more questions for you. Of the weird food blocks that Daichi feeds the family, what do you think each one is - I know you wrote it - and what would you eat?

MB: So I was imagining that this was, like, astronaut food. Dehydrated, synthesized stuff so it was getting right to the nutrients. I guess I would be all about texture and that’s not something you can communicate super well just with a drawing. If any of them were dry and crunchy, I think I’d be okay with that but if any were wet and slimy, I would struggle.

AL: I’m looking at it now. I think that vaguely meat-protein cube would have that squishiness to it. I thought it would be really funny if Daichi thought he was so clever and did that little chef’s sauce smear.

MB: Oh that’s funny.

AL: It’s so unnecessary and really silly. You’re giving them cubes.

MB: I think I’d also struggle with shakes. I’m not really a shake guy. God. This looks awful. To me, eating is one of the most wonderful things that life has to offer and if you’ve removed the flavor and the experience, I’m like, are you even human?

AL: I imagine this is vitamin-packed starch blocks.

MB: Exactly right. And maybe yeasty.

AL: To keep your stomach filled with all the nutrients.

MB: It says to me there’s something wrong with Daichi.

AL: Oh, definitely.

This is the breakfast of champions.

AL: This miscellaneous block food.

MB: We’ve got to keep this going in the next book. Daichi is still rolling out stuff for them. Like Daichi made lunch for the twins and, you know…

AL: Like a deconstructed PB&J. It should also have a smear, too, for no reason. It’s on the bread! It’s always there.

MB: Gotta have style.

Why did you choose to have the student newspaper as their hobby/club?

MB: Maise’s an artist. She’s sort of doing these posters and comics strips for the school newspaper. I actually did that in high school, so to me that’s your first taste as an artist of having to produce something in a semi-official capacity so I gave it to Maise. Maybe this budding artist is having the same experience. It was a fun way to bring her art and to bring her close to this character, Citlalli, who would also have a mother who’s a journalist who has a need to expose the Moon Troopers, so we’re building this jenga tower of stuff.

But that’s the real reason. I used to do that. It was a good experience. People would be like, I didn’t get your last comic. It didn’t make any sense to me.

Do you miss it?

MB: No! It was unpaid!

Which characters are you hoping to do more with in the next book, to see more of, and which do you think readers will be latching onto and demand more of? I know those things aren’t necessarily the same.

MB: They really are not the same thing. That’s a great question.

Who I want to do more with are definitely the Twins. Right now, the Twins - I love the twins - there wasn’t enough space to have little character arcs in the first book. I think as you continue to make Family Force V, one should expect to see more of the rest of the family.

As for characters I think people will like, I think people will like Savisa, the mom. The reason I think people will like her is because she’s buff? She’s really cool. She’s the leader. She’s built. You know what I mean?

MB: She has surprising layers. When you see the flashback with her, she was cool even in college. She had a leather jacket and a cool biker style. She was a Judo champion in her youth. I just think there’s a lot of meat on the bone there and people will like her.

AL: I think I like Daichi the most. He’s such an asshole. It’s fun. We love to see character growth and I like his suit. I like the red with the dark green/grey thing he’s got going on. It’s just cool. You’ll notice that Ken only has gold on his vest because it’s mandated but Daichi has gold all over his body cause he’s like “I’m the leader. I need more gold.” It’s so silly.

As far as audience, I think I agree with Matt. Probably Savisa.

MB: Maybe Citlalli. Citlalli’s pretty cool.

AL: Ooh yeah.

MB: Those kinds of characters, you will think, oh, their design is so cool. That’s a really good starting point to get stans.

AL: All you need is to have a general idea and people will roll with it.

MB: But, you know, we’ll find out. That’s one of the most exciting things.

Of the shows I’ve worked on, sometimes the most popular characters were really surprising. You can lean into that for future works or not. It’s up to you. At that point, the work belongs to the people.

What were a couple examples of that?

MB: The most popular character in Amphibia is Marcy. By far. I feel like that’s inarguable. I know people love the other characters as well but, you know, Marcy didn’t a) show up until the middle of season 2 and b) not that she had a smaller role in the story, but she wasn’t one of the core-core. But It was so noticeable that whenever she would show up, people would go wild.

And probably, to date, the most cosplays from our show went to Marcy. There’s just some X factor that some character have where they’re a combination of relatable but also adorable. That’s what people really gravitate towards. “She’s just like me! And happens to be extremely appealing.”

AL: It’s interesting too because she really messed up.

MB: Yeah!

AL: That might be part of it. She’s just trying to be happy and…oh god.

MB: She’s a tragic character. You make a great point. People love tragic characters. Snape or whatever.

Catra.

MB: Zuko. Vegeta. Take your pick of these wounded, wounded souls. Darth Vader.

AL: Everybody wants someone they can fix.

MB: Yeah. Yeah. The Winter Soldier. The list goes on. He’s just so broken.

I’m just thinking of all those Zuko AMVs.

MB: Oh my god. So many Zuko AMVs. Shadow the Hedgehog. You know what I mean? There’s this tragic, disturbed, but maybe a little bit of an arc that’s appealing. Sonic’s great and Goku is great but that’s a story about a good guy getting better.

AL: It’s rarely the main character that’s the favorite.

MB: Usually not. That’s a tricky thing to pull off.

I really appreciated the cast of characters at the front of the book. Always helpful.

MB: It’s so funny because that wasn’t there in early versions and I was like, we gotta have one of those things. I can’t tell you how much more I’ve loved graphic novels, especially long ones, that had at the head, here’s the cast. In case you ever forget, you can come back to this page.

You don’t have to flip through to find the names. Speaking of…how is the Class President’s name pronounced? [Future Elias: This will play well in print…Guess I gotta break out the IPA.]

MB: Oh man. So, I’ve always said gif with a soft g ([dʒ.]) Even in the Gravity Falls episode, we’ve got a character named .GIFfany. Soos has a joke that was directly inspired by an off handed comment I made: “Or is it dʒiffany.” It’s a soft g to me. Genevieve, Giffany.

AL: I’ve always said gif with a hard g (⟨g.⟩)

MB: Oh my god.

AL: I know that the creator calls it dʒif. That is a thing. The joke I’ve heard from people like me is that…that’s cool. The creator is wrong. Death of the author.

MB: You gotta say what’s right to you. Would you say her name is Giffany?

AL: No, I’d say it dʒiffany. It’s interchangeable. I’m fluent in this manner. I’m not out here on the front lines, fighting.

MB: I do think Giffany sounds more like Tiffany, which is appealing. How about you, Elias?

Now I don’t remember. Now I’m thinking about it.

AL: There are two genders in this situation.

For a while…there’s a YouTube channel called Idea Channel, hosted by Mike Rugnetta, and he had a whole episode on pronunciation for it. At the end, he was like, well, there’s another pronunciation we could do and pulls an obscure IPA pronunciation of the g (same as genre) so it becomes Zhaif.

MB: It’s ze German Zhaiffany.

I’m wondering if that will be her teenage rebellion, changing the pronunciation of her name.

MB: That’d be very funny and is a hard joke to make in written form. [Future Elias again: Don’t I know it.]

Or it makes it so much easier to read it as they want.

MB: That is so funny, like, what do you hear in your head?

I think the Class President might be my underdog fav.

MB: She’s very funny. There’s a really funny part, and Ainsworth you did such a great job, where she’s like, check it out. I wrote Go Greg on my eyelids and we see it and I was, like, that is strangely very appealing. Oh, you’ve got all this confidence and what a funny thing to do.

AL: If I had time, I would have loved to make a hyper-realistic rendition for the Spongebob gag.

MB: That’s very funny.

AL: You get the close-up and it’s just a person.

It’s just a photo.

AL: Yeah, it’s just a photo.

MB: You gotta turn down the opacity on your brushes and go to town.

AL: She was a lot of fun to draw too. Everyone kind of obeys one rule and the Twins, and specifically Gif, obeys another rule where they’re more anime.

MB: More cartoony.

They bounce a little more?

AL: Yeah. They’re also more fun to draw, sometimes.

MB: It’s very subtle and it’s hard to do in a book like this, but my feeling is Giffany wasn’t really in the group and then over the course of the book gets into the group, and I kind of like that feeling. Cause they only kind of interact with her later but she’s with them in the journalism room. In my headcanon, this is someone who doesn’t have many friends becoming part of this group, which is something I found appealing.

AL: We love a found family.

MB: Yeah. I’d love to see more of her in the next book.

And she’s an interesting character in terms of the space she occupies. She’s the class president and does everything straitlaced but that’s not the personality she has.

MB: No, she’s very wacky.

It’s an interesting contrast between the two. Confident, kind of awkward, but very outgoing and charismatic without being the Daichi, very rigid, no-fun.

MB: I totally agree.

You had an earlier question about balancing these things and I think it was really important that Maise has school friends and Maise has her family and those are her two worlds. We had to make those characters as appealing as her family otherwise you would groan every time there was a scene that took place in the school. So we were trying to lift up all the characters to the same playing field.

And then, at the end of the book, the two worlds smash together.

Like the glass jelly parfait.

MB: Yes! Again, if you want to talk more about the weird structure and the jenga tower we’re building, it was important that…and this is one of my favorite chapters too. It doesn’t have any action. There’s no fighting, no punching aliens. It’s just Maise finally taking space to be. She hangs out with her friends and she hangs out with her family and then the chapter just kind of ends.

It’s only in Maise getting away from all the noise that she has this interaction at the mall where she sees the dessert and has the idea that, hey maybe we can defeat this thing by freezing it. That’s sort of me arguing that, hey, going outside of your house and hanging out with other people and participating in the outside world, you will have experiences that make your life better and help you with your problems you’re having back at home.

Not that I’ve over thought it or anything but all these things are moving towards this one idea that Maise needs to balance all of these parts of her life.

Yeah. The grass jelly. Very Asian thing. Very Asian choice. I was like: grass jelly! Someone is going to google that after this. THey’re going to be like, what?

AL: Oh definitely. Listen. It’s good. It’s nice.

MB: It’s kind of like Daichi’s flavor cubes.

AL: A little bit! It does need that sugary syrup to help it out because if you’re not used to that herby, grassy flavor?

MB: I like it. Maybe we can convince Skybound to sell some tie-in, grass jelly product.

AL: At my high school, they had that bluegrass event where a bunch of students would create a bunch of stalls and sell a bunch of things in the main courtyard.

MB: Ooh nice.

AL: For the science club, they would always do freezing oreos with nitrogen or whatever it was.

MB: That is so fun.

AL: I think it would be kind of cool to try with grass jelly.

MB: I wonder if it would even work, man. I didn’t try it [laughs.]

AL: It would be kind of cool, liquid nitrogen pouring on top.

MB: It would be awesome. Super safe. You could definitely eat it.

AL: Put your glasses on. Put your gloves on. Do not take those off.

No. That stuff’s scary.

MB: I just remember in, I think it was The Mighty Ducks [Ed.: Mighty Ducks 3, apparently] someone poured liquid nitrogen on their jerseys and they smashed them on the glass and I was like, oh my god.