Pictures via Titmouse and Netflix
Titmouse is like a fountain of creativity. Twenty-five years ago, the animation company was founded by Chris and Shannon Prynoski. The pair, along with hundreds of wizardry artists, have worked on shows such as Scavengers Reign, Beavis and Butt‑Head, The Legends of Vox Machina, The Venture Bros., and, most recently, The Mighty Nein, plus a bunch for Netflix, as we’ll cover below.
The Cullen Crawford–created Strip Law is packed to the brim with visual gags and grimy wonders faithful to Las Vegas. For Chris Prynoski, he’s proud of Titmouse’s portrayal of Vegas. “People say this about every show, that the environment is a character in the show,” Prynoski said, “but in Strip Law, it’s true.”
Recently, Prynoski told us about his journey with Titmouse and — something Strip Law proudly celebrates in its opening credits — humans making art.
Titmouse, for anyone unfamiliar, has a huge body of work and has worked with Netflix on many of their animated projects over the years. Their most recent project, as mentioned, is Strip Law, but they’re also the outfit behind Haunted Hotel, several episodes of Love, Death and Robots, Agent Elvis, Trivia Quest, Chicago Party Aunt, We The People, Arlo the Aligator Boy, The Midnight Gospel, Human Resources, and Big Mouth.
Some of their other biggest hits have also been licensed to Netflix, including Pantheon, Scavengers Reign, and most recently, Digman! (in the US).
Congratulations on another great year for Titmouse.
We’re lucky. I’m always amazed that any of this ever happens. Getting anything happening in entertainment is a miracle. The fact that we’ve been able to consistently pull it off, I’m a lucky, lucky guy.
There’s obviously a lot of anxiety and fear in Hollywood right now. As someone who’s weathered storms in the industry for over two decades now, how are you feeling about the industry today?
I don’t know. I feel old now. I’m a solid Gen X. When I started in the industry, there were three adult shows on the air, and that was considered a boom. It was a miracle that there were three. I’ve seen after 9/11, after the financial crisis, all these things — I think the industry took worse downturns than it’s in now. While it is very bad, it is not the worst I’ve ever seen. Just hang around long enough and you’ll see a lot of bad shit.
That’s a healthy perspective.
We were talking about this when I was working on Beavis & Butthead and Daria. When Toy Story came out, we were like, “We’re sunk. This is over. Nobody’s going to want this anymore.” We just saw the future, and it was so not true. There was a path for both kinds of things, and I think that’s what’s going to happen with any new technology. It is crazy. It’s crazy times right now, but it’s kind of always crazy times in the entertainment industry.
What does the opening credits of Strip Law, in which it’s celebrated humans made this show, mean to you?
It’s cool. We employ humans to make all the decisions. I mean, computers are used in everything. We’re talking on a computer right now, but the humans are making all the creative decisions.
You’ve always talked about Titmouse being a business run by artists. How does that trickle down throughout the company?
It’s just the way it is. If a statue is made of stone, it’s not made out of metal. So that’s just what it is. Shannon and I founded the studio and brought on a bunch of people in all different disciplines, but they’re all artists or creatives in their own way.
Even Ben Kalina, who’s our chief operating officer, who mostly deals with production and business, went to film school and worked as an editor and a compositor before he got onto the production side. Really, everybody who’s running the company is an artist so we all care about it.
What were those early lessons while transitioning from artist to boss?
Man, I think this is the first time I’ve told this story, so you got to scoop on this one.
Thank you.
The first time I had to fire somebody was so hard. They just weren’t the right creative fit, it wasn’t working out, and I had to fire them. I was so visibly distraught that the editor at the end of the firing patted me on the shoulder and was like, “It’s going to be okay. Don’t worry about it.” I was so upset.
Unfortunately, you have to develop a thicker skin, which sucks because it would be nice to, in a way, be that emotionally distraught every time. You kind of get used to it. That’s a tough transition — having to realize the business side, that there are times you have to do stuff you don’t want to do for the health of the show or the business.
Being an artist running a company, you know how to communicate with artists. Whether it’s working on Strip Law or any other show, do you have a general philosophy for bringing out the best in artists?
Early on and up until even the last maybe three years, I was always on a project or a couple projects specifically as a creative. Now my role is much more overall. There’s sometimes one or two clients, like if it’s Netflix or sometimes even a production company in between us and Netflix. A showrunner or creator is going to get notes from that client. Why contribute another set of unsolicited notes? So I’ve taken this tact now, and it worked well with Cullen of like, “Hey, I’m not going to give you notes, but I’m here for you to ask me any question. If you need help with anything.”
Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
Such as?
You’re stuck on a joke, you want to bounce it off somebody who is not in the middle of it, because sometimes it’s hard to see. You want a fresh pair of eyes on something; you are having trouble with the network and you need someone to step in. That’s what I’m here for.
There were a couple times in animatics where Cullen brought jokes, and I was like, “Hey, here’s another way to look at it.” He always came up with his own solution. He never used mine, but I would pitch him other solutions, and it would help him get out of the way he had been thinking of it previously.
You work with the creatives that you want to work with because you value their creative voice. You don’t want to step on that. You don’t want to make your voice the voice of their show, but you want to help them make the best version of their show. It’s lending support rather than saying, “Here’s my notes.” Because I think a lot of people who are in positions where traditionally you would give notes feel like they have to give notes. If they don’t give notes, they’re not doing their job, but I don’t think that’s the case.
What questions do you typically ask to get a sense of a creator’s vision?
One of the jobs that I’m super proud of, one of the shows that I think came out really good, wasn’t a comedy. It was this show, Scavengers Reign, that premiered on HBO Max and then was also on Netflix. With [creators] Joe [Bennett] and Charles [Huettner], that show was 100% dependent upon the execution.
That show had to be executed at a high level of animation or else it wasn’t going to work, because it wasn’t a dialogue-driven show. The very first seven-minute pilot that we helped them make for Adult Swim had no dialogue. And when we worked on the first 22-minute pilot, that was even a question.
It’s like, “Hey, do you think you want to add dialogue?” And that was a debate mostly that Joe was trying to figure out — do we do dialogue? Ultimately, you made the decision that you need some dialogue in a series of 22-minute shows, or you might paint yourself into a corner.
A lot of my job was trying to sort out the schedule and budget that we had, trying to get the best production value on the screen that we could with the parameters that we had.
Scavengers Reign – Picture: HBO Max
How do you accomplish that?
Some of them are very different or some of them are very specific. Beavis and Butthead is one of those ones that is so specific because it’s a non-traditional style of drawing, especially in the early days. People think it’s going to be easy to draw, but some of those jobs are the harder ones to draw.
Why’s that?
It has so much specificity to it. You can’t do a construction of Beavis or Butthead’s heads. They’re so irregular. Well, now it’s a little bit easier that everything’s digital because you can copy and paste and resize stuff. We’ve done a bunch of shows with Brad Neely (China, IL), and that’s a show that deceptively feels simple. Even though it’s absurdist comedy, Brad’s blocking and staging and posing, he wants to be much more based on real nature.
For China, IL — the Professor Brothers, as they’re known — wore these blazers. Brad really wanted them to hang and work like a professor’s blazer would. It’s not a cartoon shorthand of how that works. Like, “Hey, when somebody’s got their hand in their pocket, how does the blazer work, or how does the lapel of the blazer fall?” Brad’s philosophy, I thought, was really good.
Picture Credit: Titmouse
What was Brad’s philosophy?
“I want people not to draw badly, but to try and draw the best drawing they can as fast as possible.” Your speed will contribute to having that little bit of rough-around-the-edges style, but the intention should be to draw it as well as you possibly can. That’s something that somebody could wrap their head around.
Do you often use a lot of real-world references for Titmouse Productions?
It’s a lot easier to use real-world references. I guess it depends on what you mean by real world because the Google search is always ever-present there. Antonio Canobbio, who’s our chief creative officer, used to be an art director on many of our shows. Now he advises the art directors and people who are concept designers on things. He’s always saying, “Don’t rely on the first page or even the first few pages of a Google search. Dig deeper.”
Although the internet and Google have opened up the reference globally, there’s so much more reference to be had. The low-hanging fruit reference gets used the most because if you just search Vegas or if you search circus, everybody’s first-page Google results are going to be pretty similar.
So be inspired by the world, not just other animation?
Whenever possible, go out and look at stuff with your eyes. I mean, that’s what the nine old men at Disney and the early animators would do a lot of: real-life observation. We’re over a hundred years into animation, mostly looking at other animation as reference. It’s hard because you could develop a bag of tricks that you know are going to work, and it’s hard to go and do something from scratch to look at the real world, analyze it, and figure out things.
Chris, circling back to what you said earlier about tough times in the industry, any advice for aspiring or young artists struggling out there?
I’d say you got to love it. It’s a weird job, any kind of creative job, but specifically animation, it’s so labor-intensive. It is so super competitive that it has to be something that you just can’t not do. If you’re looking at it like, “Hey, maybe I’ll be an animator, maybe I’ll be an architect, which way can I make a living?” Probably not for you, so be an architect.
It’s akin to being a professional basketball player. If you want to put in the hours to be one of the best — even as somebody who sits on the bench of a professional basketball team — you’ve got to be one of the best in the country. If you want to get staffed on the show, like a concept designer or character designer, you’ve got to be the best. You’ve got to draw eight hours a day every day, because you can’t not draw eight hours a day every day. Make sure you love it or maybe look for something else to do.
And you can do it as a hobby. If you want to do it as a hobby, do it for fun. You don’t have to do it as a career. You could be a potter that makes plates for fun, make ceramics that you have in your house to display. You don’t have to sell them to people to eat off of. Do it for fun. If you want to do it as a career, make sure you really, really are passionate about it because if you’re not, it might be frustrating.
