In the Apple TV+ children’s animated series Pine Cone & Ponyhis characters are literally designed to subvert and defy expectations.
“Pinecone is all about being a warrior and you have to be a warrior in a way,” said Stephanie Kaliner, showrunner of the series based on Kate Beaton’s New York Times best-selling children’s book The princess and the pony† “But with Pony’s help, she sees that you can be a cute warrior or a cuddly warrior, or be a warrior in ballet slippers. That’s the main lesson of the book, so we tried to translate that message from the book to the show in every way possible.”
That meant both narratively and through the actual character design for the series, which debuted its first season in April and comes from DreamWorks Animation†
“You think a wizard should look like this, like Gandalf the Grey, but we always wanted to show that, no, a wizard can look more like this. Or you see the really beefy muscular guy in the competition from the first episode and think he can wear a floral suit and dress like a daisy,” Kaliner added. “That was a big part of the conversation. Anything that felt like low-hanging fruit or a trope that feels comfortable because we’ve seen it before, we try to go in a different direction.”
Kaliner said the team always wanted everyone watching to “just feel like they can be a part of this world.” But they also wanted to do it without pointing it out in “overt” or heavy-handed ways. So they never wrote in specific discussions about physical, visual or identity diversity in storylines and dialogue in an effort to avoid accidentally adding anyone to their young viewers.
“We were talking about showing the world the way you want to see it,” she explained. “We didn’t want anyone in Sturdystone ever to say to each other on screen, ‘You are this too’, ‘You are that too’, or you can’t do this and you can do that.”
So while lessons on obvious physical differences between the show’s human-coded characters are lacking, main and background characters include racially diverse, LGBTQ, have disabilities, some wear hijabs and, in another move that’s rarely shown in animation. have different body types and sizes.
The body diversity that exists among the show’s warrior characters and the larger group of magical mid-medieval community residents – whether more or less muscular, shorter or taller, rounder or thinner – makes it a standout among both animated and live-action kids and family. series. Within the genre, there has been a historical focus on educating children about healthy lifestyles through diet and exercise, but rarely an intentional portrayal of what that might look like on various off-screen bodies.
“A reflection of the world is not something I constantly see in animation,” Taneka Stotts, Pine Cone & Pony‘s story editor, told THR† “I feel like we tend to lean towards an art style that we want to see in order to live a happy and healthy lifestyle. But we can lead a healthy lifestyle in many different ways and that does not meet certain body standards.”
The story editor would help take charge, their work being motivated in part by their own experiences of varying magnitudes at different times in their lives. They also hoped the show would “finally set a precedent that fantasy doesn’t have to exist within one realm of ideals,” especially when it comes to inclusion.
To help the show do this through character designs, the story editor organized time early with Kaliner, Beaton and the other writers to discuss the lack of body diversity in children’s cartoons, the results of which were later presented to the storyboard artists of the show. show and character designers.
Conversations would directly affect how at least one of the show’s couples, Wren and Gladys — described by Kaliner as a “badass warrior from another era who is a female Thor but also a female Worf from star trek” – pale. Through them, Stotts spoke of how when gay couples are brought together in animation, they are “usually juxtaposed as one larger body and then as one thin or small body.”
“We like to show children shapes, and sometimes we go to extremes for that,” explains Stotts. “We put a block next to a rectangle and then we make it smaller or bigger. But I wanted to see a block next to a block.”
Kaliner confirmed there was “a lot we threw at the character designers on the show,” who were led by Victoria Evans, but the Pine Cone & Pony executive producer also highly credits Beaton’s book for inspiring her broader, inclusive approach to the show. That includes creating the character Pony, a (farting) horse best friend with a rounder body.
Beaton said her own discussion of pony design started between 2008 when she first saw the . wrote hear! a hobo webcomic and 2015, when she published her children’s book. After affectionately calling him “little fat pony,” Beaton began to worry about how young readers might come across as pointing out Pony’s size in the book before the princess initially rejects him (because he’s “not the warrior horse of her dreams.” ‘ is).
“I have no problem with the word fat. I just didn’t want it to have a negative connotation. I didn’t want kids to read it and think ‘I don’t want this pony’ because it’s thick,” she explained.
That care was then applied to all the characters in the book and eventually to the show. Beaton drew inspiration for Gladys from bodybuilders, looking to older American gladiators to be true to what happens to their bodies, including developing “a little belly.” The writer also specifically pointed to the treatment of Pinecone’s father, Arlo, as another example of how the series felt about his representative posts and responsibilities.
“I was like, I really don’t want him to be a bumbling dad; the inept father – a Daddy Pig from Peppa Pig or Homer Simpson type – because he has a bigger body type. There are so many on TV and I feel like when you start ascribing certain traits, it’s easy to fall into stereotypes that we don’t want,” Beaton said. “Arlo is a capable father. He is a loving father. He is quick with affection and very comfortable with his masculinity.”
That desire to have a positive body representation also impacted the residents of Sturdystone, who young viewers are likely to identify with most: the children of the show. For both the Wiz Kids and Lil Rumblers, the creative team provided personality contours but didn’t provide body notes, which helped the show deliver a series of season one episodes that feels refreshingly and effortlessly representative of all of its characters.
Among them was a Wiz Kid named Celestia who uses forearm crutches and whose real-world-meets-fantasy design was informed by Evans, consultant Kirsten Sharp and Chris Auchter, who designed her.
“We tried to find a mixture where you could see her crutches, which look like elk legs,” Kaliner said. “We wanted to make them cool and imaginative, but we also wanted to make them functional. So Chris helped show us where the support would go and also sent videos to share with the animation team about how Celestia would move and how she would lay them down when seated. We really wanted to make that feel for a kid watching.”
And in yet another way, the show worked to subvert and defy expectations while supporting the message of body diversity, Pine Cone & Pony creatives told THR they were able to execute their take on character-driven comedy, while never laughing at a character’s body.
“I grew up with comedy and one thing I’ve learned is that knocking down isn’t funny,” Stotts said. “For me, it actually makes the show stronger if you don’t rely on old jokes, old stories and old tropes about someone’s body. There are so many other things we can do to make someone laugh, especially a child. You have to focus on what they think is funny, and making fun of their friends isn’t what they think is funny.”
