Titmouse Art Director Otto Tang on Bringing New York to Life in Netflix's ‘DANG!’

otto tang on creating netflix series dang

Picture Credit: Netflix / Titmouse

Few animation houses have a history with Netflix as strong as Titmouse. The relationship between studio and streamer goes back to 2013 with the series Turbo FAST and has gone on to bear fruit with shows like Big Mouth, The Midnight Gospel and The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants.

Throughout that journey, Art Director Otto Tang has been almost ever-present. A veteran at the studio, Tang has been responsible for the signature look of some of Netflix’s most iconic animated series, while also directing short films outside of his work at Titmouse. Now, Tang turns his attention to Titmouse’s latest Netflix collaboration, DANG!, where he once again serves as art director. DANG! follows three Asian-American siblings in New York: the younger two, who are wild and reckless, and their professional older sister, whose life is falling apart.

We caught up with Tang to discuss the vision he had for DANG!, his journey through the industry and what the future holds.

What first got you into animation?

I always liked to draw, but I didn’t know I could work in animation at all. I grew up in Hong Kong and then went to film school in Vancouver. I had a film degree, I wanted to be a filmmaker, so I moved down to Hollywood. I worked in a motion graphics company and then one way or another, the company that I worked for got contracted to do something with Titmouse. That’s when I found out that I could actually be in animation and then when the chance came I jumped ship.

Titmouse is the rare studio that gets to work on a wide range of products, not just kids or just adult animation. Is that one of the reasons you have stayed for so long?

Most definitely. Titmouse is the only animation studio that I’ve worked at so I don’t know what’s out there, but I’ve been so lucky to be with them because they allow artists to express themselves. When I started, Titmouse was much, much smaller with everyone in the same space and you got to see how a show is put together. That’s the benefit of working for a company that’s starting up just as you are, you grow with them and you watch how they develop.

What was your first reaction to hearing the concept for DANG!?

That it’s great to see an Asian-American themed TV show. It’s hard to find something that I can relate to. It felt right when it landed on my desk because you’re always waiting for something that’s meaningful and important.

What were the first visual ideas that came to mind?

I’m not from New York, so the first thing I did was take my family there to see it again. I wanted to be there to try to feel the city. I’m looking at it like an outsider, and being Asian-American, I look at American culture as an outsider as well. I like that I can make it personal for me because I think that’s where the soul comes from in the art.

We’ve gotten very familiar with the standard look of an adult animated sitcom. Was there an intention to evolve that style and make it more dynamic?

I don’t think we were going for dynamic and cinematic. Those are terms that always get thrown out because like when we hear them, we think it means ‘good.’ For this one in particular, I was trying to do less. I was trying to pull back and see how little I could put on screen. If I can describe something with two lines, I don’t want to draw the third line. The reason why all the shows we claim look very similar is because they go through the same pipeline, and after working in the industry for almost 20 years now, I feel like I understand the pipeline enough that I know where I can exercise my creative power and where I should pull back. If I need to teach 20 artists who are not in the office, most of them overseas, to draw something that I have in mind, it needs to be simple and effective.

What were some of the visual ideas you were excited about bringing?

The background style of the show. I leant heavily on some of those New Yorker covers, Adrian Tomine, artists like that, because I really love when you get those magazines and it feels like something you want to hug. There’s something special about them. The content of the show gets crazy sometimes, but there’s this metropolitan feeling that I’m always drawn to, it’s simple and effective and it puts you in the mood. It’s very melancholy, really. It’s weird to say that for an outrageous comedy, but I think it adds another layer to it.

What were some of the biggest challenges?

In animated sitcoms we end up designing a lot of apartments, living rooms and bedrooms. New York apartments have a uniqueness that is hard for me to grasp. Also, I need to design a space that is production-friendly; it needs to work with where the director wants to put the camera. That’s always the hardest thing, regardless of where it is, even if you’re working on a fantasy show. A bedroom and a living room are so hard to design, especially for a season one. You don’t really know the character; even the creator might not have a very clear idea of who the character is. So we have to do a lot of sketching and photo reference to see where we want those characters to live because we’re gonna see those things constantly, like in Friends with the couch. We want to recreate that for every show, so we want something unique about a couch in the middle of the room.

Is there a balance to be found between making sure a background is detailed enough to be authentic but not too cluttered?

One thing that I found challenging is drawing a desk full of stuff because you want to make room for the action, but there’s so much story when you look at someone’s desk. It took a while to find the living room, but when we found it, I put some of my personal things in there. I think every artist put a little bit of themselves into the backgrounds and you can tell when an artist loves something that they draw.

How much impact did you have on character design?

This [project], particularly, a lot. When it first started, we had sketches of the three main characters, but it was more illustrative than animation-friendly. We had to simplify them to make them fit in the pipeline, and I think that’s where we try to strip it down. For example, with the character of Andrew, I didn’t draw the arm of his glasses; it’s freaking weird to not have it, but if we put them in, it creates a lot of problems. My hands are more on the design with this show than most others.

Can we expect more personal projects from you away from Titmouse?

I’m making a short with my girls, and I’m putting it on Patreon for free. It’s called Well, Well, Look Who’s Here. It’s about a tadpole living in a well and the people that he meets in the well. I developed this so that I could make something with my girls and I can remember this time with them before they become teenagers and think that I’m lame. I don’t know if anyone will get it, maybe it’s just for the two of them, but I had such a good time making it.