‘Scavengers Reign’ Team Talks Through The Worldbuilding Process For Their Sci-Fi Thriller Series – Exclusive
Max’s adult animated series Scavengers Reign debuts its first three episodes on the platform today, and we’ve got an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the visual development process for the new show.
Warning:The artwork below may contain mild spoilers.
The sci-fi thriller series follows the surviving crew members of a damaged deep space freighter stranded on a beautiful yet unforgiving planet. As the small group uncovers the true nature of this planet, they must do everything in their power to survive long enough to escape or be rescued.
Scavengers Reign was co-created and executive-produced by Joe Bennett (From God’s Mouth to Your Ears) and Charles Huettner (Ghost Stories) and is adapted from their fantastic 2016 short Scavengers. The duo served as executive producers on the series alongside Green Street Pictures colleagues and co-executive producers Sean Buckelew and James Merrill. The Green Street team recently spoke with Cartoon Brew about the visual development process employed to create a diverse and believable alien planet, and the narrative benefits of creating symbiotic ecosystems.
According to Huettner, “Each episode has its own story, but there is a larger narrative arch for the entire season, and sometimes, we had to come up with ways to put characters in certain positions because we knew where they would end up. So, we were coming up with interesting ways to get them where they needed to be, like putting puzzle pieces together.”
Often, that meant creating unique landscapes and biomes, some of which would only be used once. Despite limited screen time, that didn’t mean less thought went into the design process.
“In the show, the characters travel a great distance and see an incredible variety of environments. So, we worked hard to keep the creatures and plants localized to their native spots,” Huettner explained. “We had to feel it out and maintain a uniqueness for each location. There are creatures in some episodes that don’t ever appear again because we don’t return to their habitat.”
“We also considered natural processes that would happen on a planet over thousands and thousands of years and what would happen if a person just dropped down in the middle of that,” Buckelew explained. “For example, if there is a spore that infects ants and brainwashes them to climb trees so that birds can eat them and spread the spore around, that’s a closed loop. But in the Scavengers version of that, we ask what happens if a person gets in the middle of the loop, and what if that person is in a precarious psychological state?”
According to Bennett, many of the series’ strongest influences were far less alien than one might think. “When Charles and I were doing the short, because it was a purely visual narrative, we dug into the concept of exploration,” he explained. “We watched a lot of animal docs, and I think we pulled a lot of influences from nature on Earth. We got to a point where we sort of realized it was almost impossible to find something that doesn’t already exist here on Earth.”
That said, the show’s concept artists were given plenty of leeway in their designs. While almost all the wildlife in the series looks like it could have come from somewhere on Earth, it also has an otherworldly quality that creates a constant sense of unease while watching, even during the most mundane scenes.
The first three episodes of Scavengers Reign are available on Max now. Each week, the streamer will add three more, until all 12 have been released on November 9.
