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INTERVIEWS

To celebrate the Blu-ray release of The Spectacular Spider-Man: The Complete Series, hitting shelves April 22nd, 2014, Marvel Animation Age has once again caught up with Supervising Producer/Director Vic Cook to talk about his work on the acclaimed animated series. Take it away, Vic!

MAA: How did you come to work on The Spectacular Spider-Man and what did your duties include?

Cook: I was called in to pitch to the Sony Executives how I would direct the show. They liked my ideas and hired me. My day-to-day focus was setting the directing style of the series and creatively supervise the directors, artists and animators.

MAA: What thought goes into assembling the designers, storyboard artists and directors to work with you on the show?

Cook: Characters and environments needed to be stylized for the animators to pull off our action, but also be representational enough so the drama and emotions feel real.

The directors and board artist had to have both a dramatic live action filmaking sensibilty, combined with an animators sense of humor.

When I met with the Sony Executives, I pitched over-the-top Hong Kong-style action choreography for how Spidey would use his abilties and that we would do it with squash and stretch animation.

Sean Galloway's character designs fit that equation with a lot of flair. Vince Toyama's backgrounds painted by Joey Mason matched that with the environments.

I directed the Comic-Con promo which featured a rooftop fight that served as an example for the action choreography. Dave Bullock, Kevin Altieri, Jennifer Coyle, Mike Goguen and the other directors expanded on those ideas during the course of the series while also infusing thier own directing styles, they did an amazing job. The storyboards by Adam Van Wyk and Sahin Ersoz are simply mind-blowing!

MAA:The series followed the highly successful Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy. Were you a fan of the films? Where there any mandates thrust upon you because of the movies?

Cook: I really liked the first two films, not so much the third. I don't recall any mandates thrust upon us. But the movies had amazing action, and it really pushed us to want to match or surpass that choreography.

MAA: The show was originally announced as a direct-to-DVD series, rather than a televised show. Did this change your approach at all?

Cook: No. The visual directing style was the same for TV or DVDs.

MAA: You've mentioned one of your goals of the series was that Spider-Man had to move as fluidly as his live-action counter part in the aforementioned films. Given Spider-Man's complicated model in the comic books, what steps went into ensuring this could be done?

Cook: As mentioned above, we stylized and simplified him. We didn't need to keep every indiviual, detailed muscle. We distilled the number of Spider-Man's webs to as few lines as possible and still have a web pattern. In fact every design was distilled to as minimum amount of lines as possible. Though we didn't keep detailed, more illustrative look of the current comics, we did want to use some of the iconic graphics from the Ditko/Romita-era comics - The half-Spidey mask on Peter, Spidey-Sense squiggles, the webs in the sky at end of episodes.

MAA: The fight scenes are among the best ever in superhero animation, often topping the live-action Spider-Man fight scenes. Did Broadcast standards and practises have any objections to them?

Cook: I am kind of amazed we pretty much did our fights as we wanted. We might have been asked to tone down or change sound effects sometimes. I recall we couldn't have "real" guns shots or bullets.

The biggest standards and practice note I remember was about a family picture of Flash as a toddler streaking. Flash's rear end was bare. The S&P said the network couldn't show his naked tush on TV, they wanted us to put pants on him. I remember Greg and I being very upset about this because this picture of Flash is the reason for his name. Our Line Producer, Wade Wisinski, suggested we put a daisy in front of Flash's tush - a la the Austin Powers gag. Problem solved, rearend covered and we didn't have to put pants on Flash.

MAA: Are there any characters you were looking forward to working with that you never got the chance to?

Cook: I wanted Norman to return!

MAA: The show had amazing web-slinging scenes - fast, fluid, beautifully choreographed. How did you go about designing these sequences?

Cook: We start with the hint of what is written. You find things in the environment that can be utilized. You make the character do things in the fight that fit his personality. You build and add, build and add. Every once in a while, in middle of all the cool stuff, add a gag. It was a very conscience decision to expand and pad out every action sequence.

MAA: Sandman must be a complicated character to utilise in animation, but "Competition" is among the shows best episodes. Was there a conscious effort to top his appearance in Spider-Man 3?

Cook: I didn't really like Spider-Man 3. We wanted to top what we did with Sandman in his previous appearances in The Specatular Spider-Man.

MAA: Spider-Man has a diverse cast of villians, many dating back to the Lee/Ditko/Romita days. Which villain would you consider your favorite on the show? Who was the most difficult to adapt?

Cook: Tombstone and Green Goblin are my favorites. The Shocker's shock wave effect was difficult to keep consistant.

MAA: What are you working on now?

Cook: I'm an Executive Producer at Hasbro on a new series. I can't mention what it is until they announce it.

MAA: What's your overall opinion of The Spectacular Spider-Man?

Cook: A lot of fun! I'm proud of it.

Marvel Animation Age would like to thank Vic for his participation in this interview, and his amazing work on the show. Cheers Vic!