Although her perspective on gender roles often made her feel alienated when she was younger, it has informed her worldview as an adult, and at 31 years old, Rebecca Sugar is the most influential showrunner working in animation today. She wanted to see scrappy, imperfect girl heroes who were as compelling as the boys in shows like Transformers, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Disney princesses clad in pink? Heck no, not for Sugar. Growing up in as a cartoon mega-fan in the 1980s, Rebecca Sugar never liked shows with female leads. The room fell silent when Sugar opened up about just how personal “Steven Universe” has become.ELYSIAN profiles the creator of “Steven Universe,” the first animated series to be independently created by a woman on Cartoon Network. “We were really encouraged to do things that were personally interesting … and not even my personal work was as personal as the stuff I’d be writing for” the character Marceline the Vampire Queen. ” ‘Adventure Time’ taught me that I could do personal work in a commercial animated show,” she said. Starting as a storyboard artist, Sugar learned from Ward and his team how to adapt her indie ideas. “There’s no one sausage formula - you have to reinvent the sausage every single time.” “The interesting thing about how the sausage is made, in terms of (the show) being a sausage: It’s as if the sausage factory had to make a different sausage every time a sausage came out,” Sugar told the laughing crowd. “Everything is incredibly planned ahead, but day to day, there’s also three or four emergencies you have to solve.”Īnd given the textured depth and ever-developing characters of “Steven Universe,” nothing is cookie-cutter about creating the show. “I’ve tried to learn to take things as they come,” the Emmy-nominated animator said. On Saturday, returning as a hero crowned, Sugar shared a window into running a show like “Steven Universe,” which centers on innocent half-human boy Steven (named for Rebecca’s real artist brother) and his fellow magical, nonbinary Gem guardians. That led to Sugar getting a shot at her own series, as she became the network’s first female solo showrunner. Sugar got her first big break on “Adventure Time,” Pendleton Ward’s Emmy-winning animated show that had its series finale this month, ending an immensely popular run. “I’ve talked with them ever since about story,” said Sugar, who grew up a gemstone’s throw away in Silver Spring, taking art classes that helped pave her path to animation stardom. She recalled bringing her teen ‘zines and trading books with such creators as “Hellboy’s” Mike Mignola and “The Goon’s” Eric Powell. “Independent comics are a great training ground,” Sugar told a rapt audience in a packed conference room at Small Press Expo, the annual two-day bonanza of indie art at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center. Only now, two decades later, she was the undisputed rock star of the event. Rebecca Sugar, the pioneering showrunner of the Cartoon Network smash “Steven Universe,” returned to her native terrain over the weekend - to the very Maryland comics festival she had attended as a teenager with her handcrafted art in tow.
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