The 11 Best Futurama Episodes "The sad part was that so many animators working on some of these shows really wanted to work with Rough Draft Studios," Groening recalled in the 2024 book The Art of Futurama . "There was also hesitation about working with Rough Draft Studios from some executives at Fox, since Rough Draft was run by animators. They compared it to, 'letting the inmates run the asylum.'" "We got off to an inauspicious start," echoed Katz, who now serves as Executive Producer, Executive Vice President at Rough Draft. "It was the show that almost wasn't. To me, it's always bonded us with Matt in an extra-special way because if he hadn't gone to bat for us, who knows what would have happened." Still, Rough Draft's small team of 15-20 people wouldn't cut it for the amount of work required on Futurama. And since they could not hire people already working in the industry, they had to get creative. FUTURAMA – “The World is Hot Enough” – The crew ignites a volcano in a desperate attempt to slow global warming. Photo: Courtesy of Disney/Matt Groening Why Futurama simply wouldn't exist without a bunch of fresh college graduates "We needed a crew of 100-plus [and] we were going to have to train every single one of them ourselves," explained Moore, who would go on to helm Wreck-it-Ralph and Zootopia for Disney. "We went to CalArts and hired a bunch of their graduating class," he added. "Using what we'd learned on The Simpsons, Gregg Vanzo and I showed them what we needed them to do. Assembling the team and training a fresh, brand-spanking new crop of animators from the ground up was a proud moment for all of us. Since then, some of the people we trained moved onto other things and really helped the industry a lot." Despite being new on the scene, Rough Draft proved to be leaps and bounds ahead of its contemporaries, "Because we had technology that integrates CG and 2D while making both feel like they exist in the same universe," Moore continued. "The Simpsons is a comedy about a suburban family. Futurama is a comedy about a workplace comedy traveling through outer space. So, it [needed] to look better than The Simpsons. A genre like science fiction demands the art direction be heavier and more consistent, otherwise it doesn't feel like science fiction." Read more about: Source: https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/futurama-how-a-batch-of-fresh-college-graduates-helped-make-matt-groenings-sci-fi-comedy