Adult Swim’s ‘Women Wearing Shoulder Pads’ Hosts Annecy WIP

“It’s [like] a film by Pedro Almodóvar, but animated,” “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” creator and director Gonzalo Cordova said during an Annecy Work in Progress session on Friday.

The influence of the Spanish filmmaker can be seen in the very structure of the show’s title and the bright colors of the sets and costumes appearing in this upcoming Adult Swim show.

Pitching in a Work in Progress panel at the Annecy Animation Festival, Cordova, once a writer for “Tuca & Bertie,” linked the show back to his familial connection with Ecuador. The initial idea came from Cordova’s move to the United States at age five and his estrangement from the practice of people eating guinea pigs.

This turned into the overarching plot of “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads.” Primarily set in Quito, Ecuador, the show follows a wealthy woman who moves to the country, seeking to exploit the guinea pigs and turn them into a business. But the series is also touched by the absurd: for starters, the guinea pigs are massive. “These ones are the size of people and can be fought in bullfighting rings,” Cordova explained.

The work-in-progress session showed off other intentionally silly clips of non-sequitur scenes, like a woman being told to adopt a duck in her meat business, and in response, imagining herself dancing and romancing one of the waterfowl. Others featured a character explaining being bribed with a slideshow and a woman finding the priest’s side of a confession booth occupied by a pigeon.

To build the show, Cordova connected with the studio Cinema Fantasma, which is also debuting “I Am Frankelda”—the first stop-motion animated feature produced in Mexico—at this year’s festival. Episode director, art director and production designer Ana Coronilla, and Cinema Fantasma founders Roy and Arturo Ambriz spoke at the panel about their collaboration with Cordova.

Coronilla spoke extensively about the design work and how “when you design for stop motion, you have to think about all the other departments of your studio—how the costumes are going to affect animation and construction.”

In an interview with Variety following the session, Coronilla, who directed some episodes of the show and worked on developing its look, described how they used mixed media to manage time and the cost of set building, which also allowed freedom to experiment with the spaces.

3D printing came in handy for the puppets, too. The pilot of the series was entirely handmade, with Roy Ambriz describing how much of it evolved, particularly with puppet parts being 3D printed. “At first we were a little afraid because we like to do everything manually,” he said, “but then we figured out that it’s also manual. The programs still allow you to use them like clay.”

But much of the production design, particularly the costumes, came from somewhere even more personal: the fashion school designs of Cordova’s mother. Her designs were among the first images Cordova showed the Cinema Fantasma team. The filmmaker’s wife, Rachel, also consulted on the fashion elements of the series, pinpointing the most accurate shoulder pads and silhouettes associated with the era.

Their feature film “I Am Frankelda” came up during the panel, as the productions were happening simultaneously. “The sets were literally right next to each other to the point they were just separated by black fabric,” Cordova said. “So you just walk in, see a monster, and then you’d go to the other side and see a puppet dancing.” (Coronilla chimed in to clarify that the puppet was dancing with a duck.)

Crew was often shared between the two, a process Roy Ambriz describes as “crazy” because the productions each had their own identity and mood. “We have a system in our ‘war room,’ as we call it, where we take all the decisions,” Ambriz said. “It was full of whiteboards with a lot of cards, and it was like if we were paranoid, connecting things” (he mimed connecting threads on an investigation board). He continued to explain that the logistics came down to the characters in “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” using many different wardrobes.

For the extras, they would reuse bodies and change the heads. Coronilla explained that just keeping track of all of the moving puppet parts was a challenge in itself, especially with mishaps. “You’ll have different situations: ‘Oh, this puppet broke a finger, you have to adjust the wig on this one, we have to change the clothes on this one,’” she said. “And you are running all the time, and sometimes you need to know exactly which puppet which animator has in which set.”

As well as keeping the timelines straight, it was also a challenge overall for the studio to work in a new style, according to Arturo Ambriz. “That was one of the main directions why [Roy] and I didn’t direct any of the episodes,” he added. “We were involved in the direction of the pilot, but we thought we have created a toolbox, and now Gonzalo needs to have access to the full toolbox, but without us interfering.” Cordova responded that he learned a lot from them about working with stop motion, one thing being flexibility: “You do have to let the soul of the shot be what guides you and not the specifics of the shot.”

Coronilla also spoke about meeting in the middle regarding the physics of the puppets and the set. “The camera movements you can do in this environment, you have to have some flexibility because Gonzalo would have this reference, and while they’re amazing, there are some things which are physically impossible to do,” she said. “But at the same time, we had freedom and creativity to change things which we knew how to do.”

The two sets existing in parallel may have created logistical chaos, but it also solved as many problems. Ambriz said that the opportunity itself was enriching, saying that for the animators, the switch from animating monsters to more everyday circumstances was a good experience. He described the process as being like a dance, the partnered productions each learning from the other. Sometimes the solutions were of a more direct nature. The team recalled cinematographer Fernanda G. Manzur using pupils from a “Frankelda” puppet as replacements for one on “Women,” for more expressivity.

Cordova also studied erotic thrillers when considering the show’s tone. “People like Brian De Palma, we also were looking at ‘Working Girl,’ which was a big influence,” he said. “What I found is if you try to imitate them, you just get a copy of a copy.”

So in order to get the right fit, they went to the source. “Back when Todd Haynes did ‘Far From Heaven,’ that was like a gateway drug to Douglas Sirk,” Cordova said, “Which was a gateway drug to, you know, ‘Leave Her to Heaven,’ which was a big influence. William Wyler’s movies like ‘The Letter’ and ‘Jezebel’ and all these things with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford—I wanted to tap into that same inspiration.”

In discussing John M. Stahl’s “Leave Her to Heaven,” Cordova recalled that the team “actually referenced that scene where [Gene Tierney] throws herself down the stairs because she doesn’t want to have a baby,” replicating the tension as well as the heightened tone. “There’s also the one where she’s scattering her father’s ashes while majestically riding a horse, chin held high,” Cordova added. “A lot of this series comes back to that ‘chin held high’ influence.”

A love of kitsch is important to “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads,” but the creators recognized that chasing that tone is a delicate balance. “If you’re doing camp intentionally, you have to forget you’re doing camp, and you have to be really sincere.”

The team admitted that sometimes they found that sweet spot and sometimes they didn’t. But the earnestness remains important. “You have to think that you’re going to make the audience cry even though the scene is about a fucking duck,” Cordova laughed. The conversation turned to a scene from “Shin Kamen Rider,” where the main character has a serious conversation and ends it by solemnly doing a standing backflip before leaving on his motorcycle. Cordova responded: “There might be a scene like that here.”

“Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” will be released on Aug.17 on Adult Swim.