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SD'ohCC! Simpsons SDCC Panel: Guest Stars, Treehouse of Horror Preview
Welcome to the highly entertaining The Simpsons SDCC aka Comic-Con@Home panel! This year's panel consists of moderator Yeardley Smith and the show's creative team of Al Jean, Matt Selman, David Silverman, Carolyn Omine, and Mike B. Anderson. This year's panel is less of about what's new and more like a show and tell and nostalgia fact fest with animators, writers, and producers (as well as voice actor Yeardley, of course) and it's really entertaining. I mean, of course, people who create the hilarious original adult animation show will be pretty witty themselves.
Of course, we get a show-n-tell of classic animation cels and memorabilia, as well as an impromptu tuba recital (playing the theme song, of course) by Silverman. They didn't show up empty-handed, though – they have a tiny little clip from next year's annual "Treehouse of Horror" Halloween special titled, "What Happened to the Halloween Candy?" Out of context quote from Matt Selman, "He who is tired of Weird Al is tired of life." Hard agree, Matt.
The last half of the panel did my favorite thing this SDCC, they still did the live Q&A with the fans. One of the best questions was asking if the show would ever consider exploring Mexican culture. They've gone to Mexico a few times, but never in a position where they explored the culture. The panel all was enthusiastic about that and said they're game for that and it's an avenue they would consider exploring. Hopefully with a couple Mexican voice actors, nudge nudge.
Next season's guest stars include Hannibal Buress, Olivia Coleman, Ben Platt, David Harbour, and Sir Michael Palin. On their wish list of future guest stars are Elaine May as well as another cast member of Monty Python who shall remain nameless…for now. Of course, as for past guest stars, the late great Stan Lee was a crew favorite and a delight to work with and have on the show.
One of the fun fan questions was, "why did you choose yellow for their skin color?" And it's a great question! Early on in the shorts, a color was needed, and because of how the kids were drawn without hairlines, they needed something that would work as both a hair and skin color, because it would look beyond weird and destroy the "graphic integrity" of the character if the hair and skin were colored differently. So, it was decided that yellow was close enough to a natural hair and skin color without either being too strange, and the rest is The Simpsons history!