Draining Pure Fun from God’s Zits with Titmouse Founder Chris Prynoski

Chris Prynoski is the president, founder and owner of Titmouse, an animation production company with offices in LA, New York and Vancouver. The studio is known for its work on ‘The Venture Bros’, ‘Big Mouth’, ‘The Legend of Vox Machina’, ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’, ‘Black Dynamite’ and more. 

Before launching the company with his wife Shannon in 2000, Chris’ animation career took him from MTV shows ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’ and ‘Daria’ to Disney, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Adult Swim. But long before that, his creative interests were sparked as a child, growing up in an artistic household with his art teacher father and hippie mother.

“They had a lot of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec books. I was fascinated by him,” says Chris. “He was an adult but he was my height, he drank green potions, and he was always hanging out with women in their underwear.

“I would look through my dad’s albums, studying the covers while he got drunk and listened to the music,” he adds. “I loved the Parliament albums the best. Especially ‘Funkentelechy vs the Placebo Syndrome’. That one had a bananas eight-page comic and a poster inside, illustrated by the legendary Overton Loyd. That comic made a huge impression on me. Little did I know that I’d meet Overton when we were both working at MTV in the ‘90s. We’re still good friends to this day.” 

Three distinct moments guided Chris towards a career in animation. The Disney short ‘Donald in Mathmagic Land’ and its high quality look – compared to Saturday morning cartoons – prompted him to start thinking about how animation works; the anime classics ‘StarBlazers’ (‘Yamato’) and ‘Battle of the Planets’ (‘Gatchaman’) exposed him to more adult themes; and finally, Grumbacher’s ‘The Art of Cartooning’ book revealed the magic of how animated characters moved. This cemented his interest and led him to the Disney book by Bob Thomas, ‘The Art of Animation’, among other discarded books brought home from the school or library by his father and uncle to feed his growing passion.

“It had a page featuring the view of an animator’s desk,” he explains. “It was a first person photo from the artist’s perspective showing an animation disc with a layout from ‘Sleeping Beauty’ on the pegs. He had his sleeves rolled up with a pencil in one hand and a cigarette in the other. It looked cool as fuck. I decided that’s what I wanted to be when I grew up.”

Chris went on to study at New York’s School of Visual Arts (SVA), working freelance on Liquid TV shorts before being recruited by MTV ahead of graduating, as an “animation boom” began.

“It was early days for adult animation and MTV was about the hottest place to land my first full-time gig. It was one of the best experiences of my life,” he says. “It was a rogues’ gallery of weirdos and bad asses from all over the world. I thought this was what the industry was like until I moved out to LA and worked at the big studios. No place was ever as cool as that shop.”

Retrospectively, Chris believes that he subconsciously modelled how Titmouse is run after this unique experience, saying that MTV knew “how to create a vibe” akin to working on a crazy art project.

“None of the big shops in LA felt like that,” he says. “Comparatively, they had a corporate atmosphere. Most employees wanted to do their 10-6 then go home and do non-art stuff at the end of the day instead of furiously obsessing over cartoons (or go wilding in the streets, 12 beers in). I wasn’t used to that scene. But, I did learn a lot of pipeline and process and some overall ‘what not to do’ stuff from working in-house at those places.”

Some of these key lessons from his post-MTV time in LA with Disney, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and more, include the importance of quality over quantity, quick decision-making, and speaking often and early if something is not working. “You can always tell when a project is working,” he says. “When I was on ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’, ‘Metalocalypse’, ‘Big Mouth’, and certain others, there’s a feeling that’s different. You know it’s good. You know you’re working on a hit.”

“And draw every day in your sketchbook,” he adds. “Not just at work! I don’t always follow this advice, but I should.” 

For Chris, animation shines not only in the world of TV, but also in its ‘channel-stopping’ abilities in the commercial realm. Popping with colour and dynamism to stand out from its live action counterparts, Titmouse’s animated ads don’t have a house style, but they do follow a “house sensibility”, as the founder explains:

“I always try to find the authenticity in every project. What’s the nugget we can dig into and make surprising, funny or action-packed? One that actually compliments the creative concept and doesn’t feel like tacked-on bullshit, glossy wrapping paper?”

One of his favourite commercial projects from Titmouse’s two decade-plus lifespan is an early piece for Budweiser’s ‘Real American Heroes’ campaign called ‘Mister Footlong Hot Dog Inventor’. The spot combined traditional 2D animation on paper with sophisticated digital compositing for the era. “It was dumb and funny, and I think I nailed that tone,” says Chris. 

“But one of my recent faves is the ‘Adventures of Murder Man’, a fake trailer spot we did with Liquid Death. Will Carsola, a creator of [Adult Swim’s horror-comedy cartoon] ‘Mr. Pickles’ and the iconic Liquid Death logo designer, directed the spot. He’s a friend, so it was tons of fun. Maybe we’ll make it into some full-length episodes one day.”

Marketing renegades Liquid Death is a like-minded brand that Chris has especially enjoyed working with in the last 12 months, saying that it “doesn’t even feel like work” as both teams speak the same language and chase the same goals artistically. “It’s like you are all friends, jamming together in a free-flowing brain train that builds upon itself with jokes and drawings until you are all cracking yourselves up so hard that you collectively reach up into heaven and pop a big old pimple on God’s face, but instead of pus that shoots out, it’s just pure fun and it drips down onto your soul and you’re like, ‘I can’t believe this is my job’.

“It isn’t always like that,” he adds. “Not everyone wants to pop God’s zits with you. We are in a fortunate position in that we are able to turn down work. If a client doesn’t feel like a good fit, we don’t do the job.”

Looking ahead to the outstretched 2025, Chris says that Titmouse’s focus lies on producing more of these direct-to-consumer projects with other brands, as well as their other animation projects in TV, adland and beyond. Not to mention the company’s growing merchandise division, its live theatre in Hollywood, The Titmouse Warehouse, and continued expansion in the gaming space. So keep an eye out for the upcoming tabletop RPG drinking game ‘Drunkards, Druggies & Delinquents’, and the usual standard-setting cartoons from the studio in 2025.