Animation Vets Joel Kuwahara & Mark Evestaff Launch 'The Salty Tales of Tony & Keith' AI-Assisted Series - Animation Magazine

FutureCel Inc. and Curbside Entertainment today released the first public look at The Salty Tales of Tony & Keith, an original animated comedy pilot produced with generative AI animation. The reveal includes a one-minute teaser built from original art and AI-assisted animation, plus a companion interview in which the show’s producers.

The project opens a new chapter for Joel Kuwahara, who left Bob’s Burgers studio Bento Box Entertainment last September. Kuwahara co-founded the studio in 2009. A 30-year animation veteran with credits including The Simpsons and The Simpsons Movie, he sold Bento Box to Fox in 2019 and has now founded a new studio, FutureCel Inc.

Bu yapay zeka destekli seri için Kuwahara, Mark Evestaff, an executive producer and showrunner whose credits include The Snoopy Show, Jimmy Two Shoes, Rocket Monkeys and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: The Series for Nickelodeon, Disney and Apple TV. Evestaff runs Toronto-based Curbside Entertainment, which is producing the series alongside FutureCel.

The Salty Tales of Tony & Keith was created by Canadian comedians Seán Cullen & Chris Locke together with Evestaff, and grew out of an improv bit performed by Cullen and Locke. The idea took shape during the pandemic, when Cullen and Locke began recording themselves riffing in character as Tony and Keith. The result is an adult-leaning comedy about two unflappable characters who stay perfectly calm no matter how chaotic the situation around them. Cullen and Locke voice their characters in the finished series.

Kuwahara discovered the project through a LinkedIn message from Evestaff, and the two producers sought a way to accelerate the traditional years-long development process while preserving the pilot’s distinctive charm. “The comedy was so unique because of the cast’s improvisation, and we wanted to retain as much of that as possible,” said Kuwahara. “We never touched the dialog. What we wanted to do was take it to the next step and start to see these characters move.”

“The guiding principle was simple: follow the funny,” said Evestaff.

The producers turned to Nura Studios and its animation platform, Nura Showcraft, which recently opened to public beta. Starting from the pre-production materials including the script, original character designs, background designs, props and storyboard which were done by human artists, along with recorded voice performances, Nura Studios Director Elvis Deane built character and background style sheets. “Working from detailed storyboard pages alongside the recorded dialogue allowed us to preserve both the hand-drawn styles and the timing of the original performances,” said Deane.

“Something that would normally take a week of back-and-forth with an outside artist, we could just do together and execute in minutes,” noted Kuwahara. “That’s when you realize how much faster you can move through the creative process.”

By speeding up the development process and lowering costs, the producing duo say tech like Nura Showcraft could give more independent pitches a better chance of reaching audiences, while the productions remain artist-driven.

“So many great pitches die on the vine because they can’t get past the development process,” said Evestaff. “That approach to development never really worked for creators. When yielded with care, this technology lets you get further, fail faster, start over and keep going. The creativity is still entirely human-driven, including the writing, the storyboarding, the character design. That’s where the soul of the show comes from. These tools just help us execute it.”

Kuwahara added, “I think it’s a rich time to be a creator right now. AI has been a big unlock that lets creators finally make things with less — and with more control, because they need fewer people and fewer resources to do it.”