Bringing animation's most fragile worrywart to life took a team of Twin Cities artists, financial backing from a red-hot streaming service and the support of showbiz heavyweights. But right now, all the voice of Phillip the Egg needs is water. Buckets of it.
An employee at Pixel Farm studio in Minneapolis' North Loop obliges with a tray of comically undersized bottles.
"Can we get any tinier water?" parched actor Eric Knobel says from a sound booth. "Eighty-seven caps should do it."
Phillip's creator, Mike Owens, smiles from a nearby couch but refrains from indulging in one of his disarming falsetto giggles. There's too much work to do.
Their new cartoon series "Danger & Eggs" is streaming on Amazon Prime, but the team reunited in July to record material for an app in time for San Diego's Comic-Con, where comedian Chris Hardwick hosted a panel about the show — evidence that ambitious animation can be hatched half a coast away from Disney.
The inaugural show from Minnesota company Puny Entertainment, "Danger & Eggs" is built around a preteen daredevil named D.D. Danger (voiced by "Saturday Night Live's" Aidy Bryant) and her shellshocked sidekick, Phillip. The series' frantic pace would leave the Road Runner panting for air.
"So much of what I watched as a kid was slow and sweet, but this doesn't condescend to kids," Bryant said by phone from New York. "It's got the pace of a normal comedy like '30 Rock,' where there's a joke every 10 or 15 seconds."
The character also appealed to Bryant because "this girl is not trying to be quiet or polite. The way she examines the world is bold."