Pictures courtesy of Josh Palmer
Over the past year, Netflix has been making aggressive moves to champion the booming world of indie animation, bridging the gap between viral YouTube hits and mainstream streaming. The latest indie darling to make the leap is Monkey Wrench, the Patreon-backed sci-fi comedy series that officially touched down on Netflix this week. Following the misadventures of two aliens—Shrike and Beebs—trying to make ends meet amidst a galaxy-wide conspiracy, the series is a passion project that perfectly blends 80s mecha anime with early 2000s cartoon aesthetics.
To celebrate the release of the show’s first five episodes on Netflix, we sat down with series creator Joshua Palmer to discuss the incredible journey from Newgrounds and YouTube to a global streaming platform. Interestingly, the bridge between the indie sphere and Netflix was actually built following a fantastic deep-dive interview Palmer did with Toon Boom last year. We highly recommend reading that piece for a detailed, behind-the-scenes look into the show’s early creation, influences, and animation pipeline.
In our exclusive Q&A below, Palmer breaks down how Netflix executives first slipped into his DMs, the grueling 12-week process of bringing a crowdfunded indie project up to Netflix’s rigorous broadcast standards, and what the future holds for Shrike, Beebs, and his dedicated crew of artists.
Congratulations on your show jumping to Netflix. We know from the original that this deal was in the works for about eight months. Can you walk us back to that original engagement? Who contacted who, and what were those initial conversations like?
If I recall correctly, it was just after my interview with Toon Boom. I was a part of their ambassador program at the time and they had featured Monkey Wrench on the site. We went over how we used Toon Boom software in its conception and production. Over the days that followed I kept getting friend requests from new and empty accounts on Newgrounds. Me, who usually likes to be left alone, ignored it for the time being.
A few days later I get an email from the Toon Boom folks saying people from Netflix have been trying to reach out to me. We passed over details and Aaron Davidson and Jon Zimelis got in contact a day later. We set up a Google Meet, had our introductions and talked about the show, how progress has been and what it was generally like running our own thing. This was happening about a week after ep 3 was out on YouTube and Newgrounds. They said they’d keep an eye on our progress, wanted to know how long til Ep 4 was done, and would reach out again once it’s finished.
Lo and behold, 8-9 months later once Ep 4 was out to the public they reached out again. We talked about the process again and said they were considering extending an offer to us, but weren’t sure if it would happen during Ep 5’s production or completion.
Once Ep 5 was finished and out to the public, they reached out again, and after a few months of back-and-forth, we hammered out a deal and bang! Here we are!
Picture: Monkey Wrench / YouTube
As an indie creator, what was it like navigating those industry conversations, and how does it feel to finally see your Patreon-backed sci-fi comedy sharing real estate with mainstream studio shows?
To tell you the truth it feels… odd? It’s hard to explain.
I’ve been animating for myself and doing freelance jobs pretty much non-stop for the past 18 years, and only in the past 6 did I decide to take the plunge and try to make something large scale and narrative based. I’m not going to lie, it’s been a very hard road, but one that I continue to tread as it’s something I just love doing.
Seeing our stuff up on Netflix truly is bizarre. Our scrappy little homemade piece of art is rubbing shoulders with the giants of the streaming world. Never thought I’d see the day.
Picture: MonkeyWrench / YouTube
Can you give a quick elevator pitch for somebody who’s never seen the show before? What would be a good comparison mashup of the genres you play in and what the show is inspired by?
Oh boy, let’s see… Definitely sci-fi with a mix of old 80’s anime and early 2000’s cartoon aesthetic.
“Two aliens team up to try to make ends meet in a strange and unforgiving universe that get caught in an unfolding, galaxy wide, conspiracy.”
The Netflix drop consists of the first five episodes of the series. Given how much the show’s production has evolved since episode one, especially with your runtimes expanding to over 30 minutes in later episodes, how did you approach packaging these specific five installments for a mainstream debut?
I’ve always said to my crew that, given the chance, I’d love to go back and fix some things that slipped through the cracks when the Eps went up on YouTube. Animation errors, some sound balancing, standardizing the credits, that kind of stuff.
The hardest was making sure everything was up to proper broadcast standard. With YouTube it doesn’t really matter. You can slap any old thing up there, but with Netflix we have many new standards we have to adhere and get the eps up to. It was a bit of a shock, but we soldiered on and spent a good 12 weeks doing just that before they got put up on Netflix, and I think they all sound and look better for it.
You’ve completely remastered and re-engineered the audio and included a new intro. Can you speak a bit about this remaster? Because you have a unique process of storyboarding directly to the audio track inside Toon Boom Harmony, what was it like going back into those earlier episodes and upgrading the sound design without disrupting the visual timing you originally built?
Haha, oh, man.
So for a bit of context, Ep 1 (the pilot), we basically winged everything. I had done a bunch of small short form animations in the past, stuff around 3-8 minutes, but nothing on this kind of scale that had a proper narrative, so I pretty much learnt along the way. Everything, and I mean everything for Ep 1 was pretty much baked in. So making edits and adjustments was a nightmare. Lesson learned; we won’t do that again for eps 2+
In the 6 years since we made the first ep, I had completely forgotten everything was baked in, especially sound wise. So when it came to upgrade the eps and get them up to broadcast standard we had a monumental task of rebuilding Ep 1 from the ground up with the voice, sound and music.
We cracked down, dug up all the raw voice lines, sound and the like, even re-recorded some lines for extra clarity, and got it up to snuff in about 2 weeks of non-stop work every single day. I can’t thank Matt (our head audio engineer) and Ockeroid (our composer and audio balance assistant) enough for their hard work during that time.
Can you speak to Netflix wanting to get more into indie animation (The Amazing Digital Circus arguably led the way here) and pulling more talent from YouTube across all different types of content – what do you think that speaks to for Netflix’s needs?
Hard to say, really. YouTube itself is a vast, VAST ocean full of wildly varied content.
It’s a very open platform where almost anyone can put something up and almost anyone can get an audience, have access to, and enjoy. This can allow people with the time, patience, and drive to create what they want, be it a video game let’s play video or, like us, their own little animated show that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to do unless they went through the usual studio like system.
I think, for Netflix anyway, YouTube is a good proving ground to see what works and what might not.
Netflix does have the funding that we little folk could only dream of having being independent like we have been so far, like for instance we cannot afford to have multiple language dubs with our own crowdfunded budget, but Netflix easily can.
Netflix has that premium feel, can aid heavily in promotion and funding, but it is locked behind a paywall and limits who has access, whereas YouTube is far more accessible but you are at the mercy of the dreaded algorithm, new sudden detrimental site changes you have no control over, and awful returns in terms of ad revenue to fund things such as our show. (Fun fact, in the 6 years we’ve done Monkey Wrench we have never made a profit).
Ventures like these do run the risk of things not panning out, but as one of our characters in our show says “No risk, no reward”.
You gotta take chances. You gotta take some risks. I’m happy to see Netflix take a risk on us, and ourselves with them.
We’ll see where we go, see how we’re received to a more broader audience and hopefully with each other’s support and guidance, just maybe, if it works out, then I hope Netflix reaches out to other small creators and gives them a similar opportunity to stand on a grander stage.
Though at the end of the day I try not to worry too much about the risk and all the nitty gritty. I’ve always wanted to tell stories, and having the ability and drive to do so, I don’t see myself stopping any time soon. Failure or not.
Picture Credit: Monkey Wrench / YouTube
Can you speak to what’s next for you and your team? More episodes planned? Further expansion?
Currently, we’re finishing up ep 6, which should be releasing on YouTube hopefully in late September, and after that it’s straight onto ep 7.
My wife and I have the whole series planned out. 3 seasons at 10 eps each.
Whether Netflix decides to pick us up and we complete it all in 3 years or we stay indie and complete it in 20, I hope to have it done and see Shrike and Beebs’ story to its end and then move onto other stories I have cooking on the side.
I just hope it doesn’t kill me in the process!
Monkey Wrench is now streaming on Netflix globally. New limited edition plushes have also just gone on sale via Youtooz.
