‘Psi Cops’ Masters: Meet Bart Batchelor and Chris Nielsen, the Duo Behind Adult Swim’s New Comedy

If you are looking for a fun, diverting and hilarious animated show to binge this summer, you should check out Adult Swim’s offbeat new offering, Psi Cops. The Canadian series, which made its U.S. debut in early July, follows the adventures of goofy paranormal investigators Kydd and Felixx as they explore alleged sightings of aliens, ghosts and demons. Think Mulder and Scully (The X Files), but much less competent, funnier and animated.

The show’s talented creators, exec producers and lead voice actors, the Vancouver-based Bart Batchelor and Chris Nielsen, talked to Animation Magazine about their addictive new show, which is also exec produced by the heavyweight team of Robert Kirkman, Chris Ferguson, Brian Kavanaugh Jones, David Alpert and Catherine Winder. (The series was commissioned by Corus Entertainment, produced by Wind Sun Sky Entertainment and Oddfellow Labs, and is distributed by Skybound Galactic, a division of Skybound Entertainment.)

Here is what Bart and Chris told us about their show:

Bart Batchelor: The beginnings of the show go back about 15 years ago. Chris and I were doing a lot of comedies together and putting them on YouTube. Then, one of our shows (World Doctors, 2014-2016) landed in front of David Alpert, the CEO of Skybound, and he loved it. He said, “I work in the genre space, so give me a genre version of that.” So we pitched him a bunch of stuff. Once we hit the idea of a paranormal investigation show run by two idiots, we knew that we’d have unlimited stupidity — a real dream!

Chris Nielsen: I don’t know how many shows we pitched in that grouping to David, but I know this was the one we really loved it because we get to play in The X Files world.

Did you have a background in improv comedy?

Bart: Not professionally, but every show we’ve done was done basically by us recording to a mic first and then transposing that into a script after and this show was a hybrid of that. We usually sit in front o f a script and improv an then pick the best material out of that.

Tell us a little bit about how your show’s animation is produced please.

Bart: We made the first demo for the window back in 2016. The animation, from the animatic, story and voice is done by Smiley Guy Studios in Toronto. The voice records are done in Vancouver.

Chris: We used a whole bunch of unconnected software and forced a bunch of people to relearn how to animate in janky 3D programs! We loved using Daz 3D, which is kind of like the root of our 3D side. Then, we run it through After Effects, and then I think the team at Smiley Guy played around with Animate.

Bart: Daz is often used for a lot of funny things in the industry, but it’s not necessarily on the forefront of most people’s minds when they’re making a new Marvel movie, for example. It’s non-traditional but really fun software to use and to force people to learn because it takes you out of what’s familiar and expected, and creates a very unique look.

Chris: Our previous show, World Doctors, was done by using a lot of “bad 3D.” We did a lot of breaking models and kind of playing with the that uncanny valley sort of space. For this show, we wanted to kind of be able to pull back and be visually clean and more comedy focused. I think we we landed in a place where we have full 3D models that are animated 2D: It’s a 2D presenting show, but we can do full 3D action scenes whenever we want we needed to. We both always referenced Futurama when the show was 2D, and then the Planet Express ship would be fully 3D all of a sudden. That’s the kind of look we wanted to play with.

I heard in a podcast interview that you guys both like to write many more pages than is usually needed for a 10-minute show, and then you go back and cut it down to get the best scenes. Oh, and that you don’t mind drinking a bit before getting creative on the page! … How does that process work out?

Bart: Oh, you got some good intel on us. The funniest thing about this show is that it goes really fast. The old kind of one page per minute definitely doesn’t work for us. Everyone looking at our show told us that we need way more than 18 pages for 11-minute episodes. But 18 pages only got us to seven minutes. So we had to go back and add four minutes to each episode! That was so stressful. Initially our scripts ended up being 26 or 27 pages long, because that’s how many pages it took for us to fill our 11 minutes! Chris and I probably write 45 pages and then cut that down to 26!

Why do you think this type of paranormal hunting show lends itself so well to animated comedy?

Bart: It may sound kind of weird, but for Chris and I, comedy works best when the rest of the world is real. That may sound weird in the case of supernatural cases, but it’s really about two guys who just think way outside the box. They are unnecessarily confident and everything that they do is just is so overblown. So if the rest of the world is simple and gettable, it it makes everything so much funnier. Another nice thing about the paranormal is that all these stories are kind truly deep in the urban or human psyches. For example, we don’t need to over explain anything about vampires. We can just get in there and mess around with vampires and instantly be blowing up the concept.

So, the first season of the show (24 episodes) started its run on Adult Swim in early July. Is there a second season in the works?

Chris: Oh, we want it! We’re going to have to wait to see how the first season does!

Do you guys ever worry that you’re going to run out of paranormal things?

Bart: I was thinking this morning that we need a list because I always have to remind people that already covered something in the first season I really feel that we’ve only scratched the surface.

OK, we have one more minute to go: Can you tell me about your sources of inspiration in the animation world?

Chris: Space Ghost and whole Adult Swim oeuvre have been hugely inspiration for us. That’s why this is such a monumental moment in our lives.

Bart: I would also add Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Bill Plympton, Ren & Stimpy, South Park … Those were very big when I was young. We love everyone who was breaking the medium!

Psi Cops airs Sundays at midnight on Adult Swim.