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I’ve had the pleasure to interview the Planetronika creator Rafael Andaya and he was so kind that he even shared some concept art.

You can read our previous article on the pilot here.

Interview with Rafael Andaya

Hi, would you like to introduce yourself?

Hey! My name’s Raffy, creator of Planetronika. I’ve been an artist for about as long as I could remember and I love cartoons.

How would you describe Planetronika for someone who hasn’t seen it?

Planetronika the pilot is a classic gag centric “testing the waters” kind of pilot you would’ve seen a ton of back in the late 90s-early 2000s. Think something that’d air on Random Cartoons or something like Gorillaz Bitez. It’s about these two larger than life characters; a spunky tomboyish space explorer named Butterfly and her inventor best friend, a slime alien inventor named Freestyle, playing a game of basketball. It’s nothing most folks are used to with modern pilot episodes as its very light on plot, but there’s alot of slapstick, destruction and a peek into what these characters do in their spare time.

What is your main inspiration when it comes to the characters and character designs? 

Butterfly was actually directly modeled after three references. The main one was Ryoko Hirosue’s character, Yumi Yoshimido from the movie Wasabi from the way she looks down to her personality. Utada Hikaru specifically from her “traveling” music video sorta giving me the idea to have this tomboyish woman hang out with a bunch of weird aliens in a dream-like plant themed sci fi setting.

And as many picked up on, smile.dk’s song Butterfly which was both where her cargo pants came from and her name came from. And how I combined all those aspects, I really did want to channel that “this would be someone’s cartoon crush when they were a kid” energy so I pulled from the characters I was crushing on when I was a kid as well as the ones others were and went on from there.

And for Freestyle, originally he was this elven Interstella 5555 type blue alien. He was also named after a song, Freestyler by Bomfunk MCs, but I felt the reference might’ve been too on the nose with his original design having the kid’s hoodie on and the messy hair. So then he became what was essentially Gumby crossed with Flubber if he was a total egomaniac mad scientist. My dad came up with the idea for him to be a goo creature to give him an edge and the Bart Simpson spikes and morphing abilities was mine.

I wanted a 2D character that best captured the energy of an Aardman character and I remember being really into Doug Tennapel’s art like Earthworm Jim and Neverhood so I gave him the expressive brows and big mouth. Then I don’t know why, but I started hearing Ben Diskin’s British accent from Code Name: Kids Next Door coming out of his mouth and I asked my friend Beeache “hey man, could you please do your best Nigel Uno impression” and it just stuck.

Would you like to explain a little regarding the ball animals? What are they and what are their inspirations?

Those are the Minimals, and the concept was that they were the first alien species Butterfly ever rescued back during her highschool years. The purple one, Beary, is the one closest to Butterfly and is kinda like the leader of the Minimals. Which doesn’t work out all the time because he could be pretty lazy haha. This actually isn’t lore I got to depict very well in the pilot but its something you will be hearing about in the actual first episode once I get to it.

From their inception they were always just a bunch of loyal alien critters Butterfly found and kinda became like their mom. She messes with em as you see in the pilot, but she really does love and take care of them and vice versa. As for inspirations, I used to collect these toys called Gogo’s Crazy Bones.

I was obsessed with them growing up and those toys kinda did influence the direction their designs went. Moshi Monsters and Club BK too actually. I loved that game growing up and I wanted to design a “collectible mascot” type character younger audiences could enjoy as well as to give Butterfly a bit of an emotional core as this tender loving character beneath all the bravado.

In a pretty bold move the pilot is at most viewable in 480p. What was the thought process behind that decision?

Believe it or not, that was a bit of a happy accident! Initially, I did want to upload it at 480p to match the minimum resolution we all used to watch cartoons in on YouTube back in the day. But after talking it over with the crew, we realized it might look a bit too pixelated and rough on modern TVs. So, we spent some of time refining a custom “TV screen capture” filter—referencing old tapings of Cartoon Network—so we could release it in 1080p while keeping that old school feel.

However the export still came out on YouTube locked at 480p for some reason despite the export being 1080p, I think it might’ve been a glitch that kept my old settings. But people REALLY loved the immersion just as I planned with the teaser so it stuck.

The pilot pulls pretty heavily from 2000s cartoons, did you have any specific in mind and how have they helped shape the concept of the show? 

It’s one big mix of CN city era Cartoon Network (Powerpuff Girls, Teen Titans), Ribbon era Disney Channel (Kim Possible, Yin Yang Yo) and of course those smaller but still very popular international cartoons from Europe, Canada and Asia. Totally Spies, Winx, Pucca, Mucha Lucha, Hero 108. Even the smaller ones that weren’t popular enough to get a gigantic following like the Sushi Pack, Shuriken School or Chop Socky Chooks. Those old foreign cartoons that were clearly very inspired by anime and martial arts cinema just as much as western cartoons were at the time.

Initially Planetronika was gonna be pretty derivative from the usual pool of influences other 2000s inspired projects would pull from like parappa or space channel 5, and the series was actually gonna be called ‘Oddjobz’ being focused on these space everymen who went around the galaxy helping aliens solve problems mundane to them but crazy to us. The throwback angle was mostly because this was a concept I had back in like 2023 when I got this blast of inspiration after walking around the old malls I used to hang out with my friends in.

It also had me thinking back to what exactly was the entertainment I grew up with and how it shaped not just me but gen Z as a whole with the way these old shows are being talked about online. The moment I started realizing just how much artistry was hidden in these old gems was when it went from a shallower “two slackers helping aliens in space” concept to a much more fleshed out idea still built off that initial concept

Do you have any other artistic influences outside of 2000s cartoons that you have had in mind while creating this pilot? Any specific artists?

Stephen Silver, Glen Murakami and Genndy Tartakovsky were big ones for me, they’ve all been big inspirations for me growing up and as much as possible I was also trying to take a page out of Genndy’s book by letting visual storytelling take center stage over alot of dialogue. A part of it was definitely for watching the budget, but it was also because I did really want to go harder with visuals rather than dialogue. Though if we’re getting outside of the cartoon space it was definitely 90s-2000s Euro pop and Japanese music as I said earlier when we were getting into the inspirations behind the characters.

Music has always influenced the creative process for me in such a huge way, it paints a picture in my mind in a way no other art forms have. And the concept for Planetronika actually came to me one day because of the concept of “What if Aqua or Toy Box were the stars of a sci fi comedy cartoon?” They also had such fun music videos and even funner fashion, Aqua’s Cartoon Heroes and Utada Hikaru’s “Traveling” both as songs and MVs were responsible for giving me that spark to create this short and inevitably the rest of the show.

What is your ambitions with the project? How big do you want the show to be in scope?

My ambitions with this project are probably gonna stay small for now. I’ve always had alot of more narrative focused ideas in my head for both Planetronika and my other projects, but with my current resources that could often be a trap. So I’d probably be happy to be making like 8 episodes or less at least or 12 at most if I’m lucky. I intend for the coming episodes to have more of a narrative focus though while still maintaining the episodic structure.

The goal for this project is not just to tell a bunch of fun stories about a girl and a slime guy, but to show that there’s definitely still a market for these kinds of cartoons and to give the current generation both young and old something fun that actually does feel like something from that peak of animated entertainment and hopefully it’d inspire more creators to do the same as well. I want to keep doing this for as long as I’ve got ideas for adventures to send these guys on and for as long as people want to see more I guess haha.

Is the plan to keep the show as an indie production?

For as long as I could yeah. That way I’d still have that controlled environment with full creative control without alot of pressure. Plus a bit more wiggle room to learn the ropes as I’m still learning how to do the whole showrunning/indie thing and I don’t think I’m ready to have this show picked up by a big studio just yet.

I wouldn’t mind it though at some point, so as long as I’ve still got that control over my vision it’d certainly be really cool to have folks tune in and watch the show on TV just as I did with the shows I did growing up. It probably wouldn’t be on old TVs with commercial breaks and bumpers anymore with the streaming age and YouTube being a thing, but it’d be something I would love to happen regardless.

What experiences do you have in art and animation? What are some other projects you have worked on?

I’ve mostly done fan art/animations as well as projects for YouTubers like Planet Dolan, B-Where and Chris Oakland. My art’s been around for a bit longer than that as I got my start during high school, but I really started to animate more frequently around the tail end of that with a couple reanimation projects. Like I did a Smash Bros one, a Mario one, did some fanfiction on the side. All that nerdy stuff kinda helped propel me to start publishing more of my original stuff.

How has it been working as a freelancer? 

Pretty freeing but also comes with it’s own challenges unique to working at home. I did consider a regular office setup at some point just to experience what the work life and y’know, that’s the way I grew up knowing how a career in animation would go since that was kind of the norm for a while. But the pandemic really kinda shifted alot of people’s minds on remote work, and I feel the benefits are what really makes it feel like the right way to go for me!

Have you had any issues with finding stable work or commisions as a freelancer?

Freelancing definitely comes with alot of ups and downs naturally because not everyone’s gonna have a job up every time or sometimes there are gigs where the slots fill up really quickly. But that’s why I started looking into alternate streams of income like the Planetronika shop! So I could continue making cartoons while having a steady flow of funds coming in, both for day to day life and to make the show better. I also had a couple of clients who gave me work multiple times so they’ve also been a huge help during those early days as a freelancer.

Is the store the main way to directly support you and the show? Have you considered crowdfunding?

Apart from commission work and my animation services, yeah. These cartoons take a long time to plan and produce with a small team and I would be putting alot of hours into it away from finding work, so anytime someone buys like a shirt or a laptop case or commissions me to draw their favorite character, that’s money to cover me while I go back into making the cartoon. Plus seeing sales on the shop also lets me know that there are still people that want to see this become an actual show and that they did love watching these characters so that also helps give me the drive to keep going with this series.

I did consider crowdfunding too like patreon or something, but that comes with it’s own challenges considering I would be handling alot of people’s money on a subscription basis with the promise that there will be a ton of content as opposed to them supporting me whenever they can and no matter what happens they would get something out of it which is the merch. I still need to look into how to manage a crowdfunding platform at some point though, like that definitely isn’t off the table for the future!

What makes you interested in animation as opposed to another medium?

There’s just something about storytelling with animation that you can’t get anywhere else. It’s like filmmaking but you have total control over every minute detail from how the actors move to the way the environments look or what material or medium you want everything to be in. You’re the camera crew, editor, casting director, concept artist, and the entire acting cast all rolled into one and that’s always fascinated me about the medium forever. I can’t remember when the obsession first started but for the longest time, I’ve always wanted to make cartoons.

How long has the pilots production been? What has the production looked like?

The pilot took me about 6-8 months to finish. I’m currently working on growing my funds and finding better techniques and methods to help speed things up as I did all the art and animation which was alot to deal with, but at the same time it was alot of fun.

Most of the time it was just me figuring out how to direct properly, what works, what doesn’t work, and most importantly to actually BE HAPPY with the final product. Because there were times I would go back on every little detail going “I can make this better, just one more tweak and I’m done”, and it’d spread to all the other shots. Going through those 8 months were a big eye opener for me for alot of things because of this pilot.

What was your favorite part of the production?

Definitely coming up with the gags and seeing how it made my friends, family and crew laugh. It was a neat experimental phase where I got to find out which gags worked or didn’t work considering everyone has a different sense of humor. It was also really exciting because this was technically my first time animating slapstick and absurdist humor.

Beforehand I’ve only done really straight forward anime-ish projects, but with the pilot it was kind of an opportunity to see just how much of that boyish cartoon humor I could’ve fit into 6-7 minutes and how much I could push the experessions on the wild takes which I don’t get to do alot.

Did you face any difficulties with the production? If so, in what ways?

Finding the right balance with scheduling is always a challenge when you’re running an indie project, and ever since we wrapped things up on this pilot I’ve working on building healthier production habits. Budgeting for voice talent and sound design also required a lot of careful planning. I’ve still got lots of learning too, as I’m still a new indie creator.

Because we were working within independent limits and a really REALLY low budget, I had to intentionally write the script to be highly visual with minimal dialogue to keep things manageable. Especially since this originally started off as a silent 44 second short. Navigating those creative boundaries was tough, but it taught me incredibly valuable lessons about production that I plan on applying to the coming episodes.

Who else has helped with the production of Planetronika? What did they do?

I am incredibly lucky to work with my two composers, Beeache (Klawtro)and Meta Crystal. We’re a small team, so everyone wears multiple hats. Beeache composed about ninety percent of the score, voices Freestyle, and gave me great feedback on graphic design as well as the short itself.

Meta Crystal created the little elevator music rendition of the theme song during the “Moments later” gag for the short and threw out some awesome conceptual ideas—like making Butterfly’s ray gun, the Papillon 9000, shaped like a caterpillar. She wasn’t involved with the writing process but I also have to give a shout out to Bella Sapphire who lent her awesome voice to Butterfly. She was really professional and showed alot of enthusiasm for the project.

And my friend Jeremy, who voiced the rat with his voice sped up, also helped me figure out the design for the cop character; Officer Foxglove.

And of course the surprise guest appearance from YouTube legend Guru Larry, who was just so damn nice and it was actually pretty surreal talking with the guy. It was so much fun working with these guys so please give all of these people support. Hire them too! Give them work!

How do you feel about the finished pilot? Is there anything you would have wanted to do differently?

I’m super proud of it and feel we achieved exactly what we set out to do, which was just to make a funny little introductory short to these characters. But I do wish I had integrated the story and dialogue elements earlier in the writing process rather than focusing so heavily on the gags. I also wish I had paced it out better with the editing.

As I mentioned earlier, this was originally a 44 second long gag short and it wound up just getting bigger with scope. So next time the upcoming episodes will definitely have more structure, giving everyone a better look into the format of the show, the plot and the lives of these characters all while keeping the episodic comedy aspect.

How does it feel to have so many eyes on your work?

It’s a little scary but really exciting, especially receiving all these super nice emails about how this got people inspired to start drawing again or how it gave hope to them that there was gonna be a return to form with animation one day. Not to mention all the viral fan art, seeing Butterfly being drawn in all these different art styles was just the best.

I especially loved the ones with experimental art styles. Like I remember seeing one that made her look like she jumped straight out of an edgy MTV music video and another where she looks like a Parappa the Rapper character, and I really loved those ones. I do hope people also start drawing Freestyle more, he was alot of fun to animate and I’d like to see people go crazy with his ability to mold and shape his body.

Have you started working on the next episode yet? What can we expect from it?

Expect these characters’s personalities and dialogue to shine more, a better showcase of the premise of the series, as well as an introduction to the main antagonists and a couple members of Butterfly’s family. Something resembling more of proper cartoon rather than a proof of concept. I’m working on a rough draft of the script as we speak and I can’t wait for you all to see what we’ve got in store!

Where can people find you online?
You can find my work on the usual spots: @ArtofRaffy on Instagram, Newgrounds, and X. We also have the official Planetronika storefront up at shop.planetronika.com, which features custom apparel and accessories I designed. Running the shop helps maintain a steady foundation so I can keep making cartoons independently, so if you want to support the show or just grab a cool t-shirt, that’s the place to be!

Visit his website: rafaelandaya.com

Previous interview: Thomas Browne The Handymen creator