A Glowworm and a Witchwolf

I am very excited to share that for the first time ever you can buy Summer Camp merch in my shop!! The first offering is a Puddle and the King which you can buy as a kids t-shirt, adult t-shirt and adult sweatshirt.

$5 of all sales going to Brave Trails, a brilliant LGBTQ+ summer camp.

We’re beginning our journey through the show today, and it only felt right to start with our main squeezes, Oscar and Hedgehog.

Animation by Summer Camp storyboarder Abby Magno

Oscar and Hedgehog’s friendship was based on my own with fellow British animator Tom CJ Brown. Tom moved to New York from London 5 months after I did and immediately eased my homesickness. I was no longer one Brit wandering aimlessly through the streets of New York, but one of two - and there is nothing funner than a co-conspirator. Our friendship is deeply platonic, although my late aunt sandy was always convinced we would one day marry.

Here we are circa 2013:

and here we are last month, where her prediction partly came true when he married Raviv and I:

When I wrote the pilot I briefly lost sight of what made Tom and I’s relationship so special. Lured in by my love of rom coms and teen movies, Oscar spends the pilot navigating a crush on Hedgehog. By the time we started writing the series it became clear that what made Oscar and Hedgehog’s relationship so magical was that there they were deeply and sincerely the best of friends. Or as Cole Sanchez our EP once put it:

Although I would argue friendship is very romantic. My friend once told me that she likes to think of her friendships as tiny romances - you go out on dates, you take care of each other, you make each other laugh, you make each other soup. She’s a huge advocate for cultivating friendships like you would a relationship, believing that if you think of friendships like their own kind of romance, you don’t need to get all your romance from your partner. It helped me realize during a period of singledom, that an evening with one of my friends could feel just as warm, comforting and firey as it might with a romantic interest, and I didn’t need to rush to fill a hole in my life, as there wasn’t one there. Really all i’m ever looking for in a friendship is someone I can read quietly next to until we’re both ready for lunch.

Here are a few of my favourite friendship based pieces of art:

George and Martha by James Marshall

Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel (although they are more than friends of course)

And I also really loved a recent post by Haley Nahman from MaybeBaby about applying Newton’s Third Law to friendship.

If you recall, Newton’s third law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Here are some examples of times I apply it: sad feelings after fun trips, anti-social feelings following busyness, bursts of energy following lazy days, humbling moments after ego trips. I guess you could think of this as standard-issue duality, but I appreciate the Newton framing for how it implies direct causation. Sometimes you simply can’t enjoy something without enduring a contrasting experience soon after. And luckily, vice versa.

When it comes to friends’ annoying but seemingly unchangeable traits, I try to challenge myself to think how this trait “causes” something I love about them. A friend who’s always late but has a calming way of not taking life too seriously. A friend who’s really bad at planning ahead but is always down for a spontaneous hang. A friend who’s bad at answering texts but is unusually present with you in person. A friend who’s a little messy and chaotic but magical and addicting to be around. Almost every annoying behavior pattern has an equal and opposite upside. This isn’t just a consolation prize, it’s a necessity: very often if you were to fix the annoying thing, you’d lose the special thing on the other side. This can be helpful in your own self-assessments too. No one can be everything good without occasionally being everything bad.

Friend love is complicated and vulnerable and just as worthy of celebration as romantic love is, and it was a joy to explore those endless dynamics through Oscar and Hedgehog.

One of my favourite lines from the first episode, which got cut for time, came from Pajamas, Oscar’s closest confidant, on how Oscar felt about Hedgehog:

“Oscar thinks you’re the coolest person in the world. He said it out loud when he thought he was alone.”

Above is Naomi Hansen, who plays Pajamas delivering that line (voice director Kristi Reed in the background).

It transformed into:

and then ultimately, the planet.

But the second half of the line still gets me.

The writing for the show came from a place of boldfaced sincerity - drawing from Charlie Brown and Frog and Toad, we wanted the gags and the emotions to resonate because they were so much more sincere than we sometimes allow ourselves to be in real life.

I thought it might be fun to share some of my favourite Oscar and Hedgehog moments by showing you how an episode changes transforms from an outline into an animatic.

Glowworm

This beat from Glowworm shows Oscar’s therapy session with shark after Hedgehog goes off into the night to be a werewolf and Oscar is left behind. The episode was outlined by myself, Kent Osborne, Sarah Lloyd and Leah Beckmann, and here is that beat in writing:

Here is final animatic boarded by Graham Falk:

Tortilla Towel

Little known fact : this episode was based on real life events that happened to our head of story, Sarah Lloyd, when she started a Tortilla Towel company with her friends that was an overnight success.

In this beat, written by myself, Kent Osborne and Sarah Lloyd, Oscar and Hedgehog await their towel deliveries:

And here is the final animatic, boarded by the absolute legend that is Ako Castuera, who added one of the greatest Oscar lines in the show:

“Hedgehog, I would never cross out your two.”

One of things I always hoping streaming services would invest was categories for characters emotional arcs.

By way of example:

Netflix —> Gilmore Girls —> all the episodes with Rory and Jess.

Here is me watching them with my best friend:

In lieu of this invention, in each substack post I will be sharing my own custom Summer Camp categories.

This week:

OSCAR AND HEDGEHOG FRIENDSHIP EPISODES

1. The First Day 

2. Oscar and Hedgehog’s Melody

3. Feeling Spacey 

4. Basketball Liaries

5. Computer Vampire

6. Time Travelling Quickpants

7. It’s My Party

8. Monster Visit 

9. Fuzzy Pink Time Babies

10. Cosmic Bupkiss

11. Radio Silence

12. Director’s Cut

13. I Heart Heartforde

14. Susie’s Fantastical Scavenger Hunt 

15. Mop Forever

16. Pajamas Party 

17. Susie Appreciation Day 

18. Campers Above the Bed

19. Midnight Quittance

20. Meeting of the Minds

21. Ava’s Yard Sale

22. Molar Moles

23. Tortilla Towel

24. French Toasting

25. We’ll Just Move the Stars 

26. Wild Hearts Can’t be Caboodled

27. The Later Pile

28. Honeydew Hatch

29. Oddjobs

30. Glowworm

31. Emily Ghost

32. Hall of Mooms

33. Honeymoon Dog

34. Royally Bored

35. He’s just Not Here right now

36. Tomorrow’s Bananas

37. Hark the Gerald sings

OSCAR EPISODES

1. The First Day

2. Monster Babies

3. Saxophone Come Home

4. Pajama Pajimjams

5. Computer Vampire

6. Moon Problems

7. Radio Silence

8. The Haunted Campfire

9. Space Invasion

10. Pajamas Party

11. Puff Paint

12. Dungeon Doug

13. Spotted Bear Stretch

14. Glow Worm

15. Mushrumours

16. Oscar and his Demon

17. Jeremiah

18. Hark the Gerald Sings

19. Sea Bunnies

20. Unaccompanied Oscar

21. Tiny Outburst Society

22. Witches’ Brew

HEDGEHOG EPISODES

1. The First Day

2. Hedgehog Werewolf

3. Fuzzy Pink Time Babies

4. Mom Soon

5. Mop Forever

6. Campers Above the Bed

7. Twelve Angry Hedgehogs

8. Spell Crushers

9. Meeting of the Minds

10. Acorn Graduation

11. Tub on the Run

12. Light as a Feather

13. Just You and Me 

14. Tomorrow’s Bananas

15. Hall of Mooms

Thank you so much again for following along with me, i’ll see you next week.