Greg Hahn, at left, with Alan Denton at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles. Growing up in Marlboro, they joked around with comedic shorts. Now they're writing partners on 'Sonic Boom,' a Sonic the Hedgehog series debuting this weekend on Cartoon Network. (Courtesy Alan Denton
From slipping scripts into the hands of A-list actors to slaving as a production assistant, the image of making it as a Hollywood screenwriter is one of struggle and hard-fought success.
But what if you want to make it in cartoons? To give voice not to human protagonists, but instead animated characters, for whom hyperbole is reality, and boundless slapstick is par for the course?
This weekend, two writers who yukked it up in Monmouth County as kids will see their lines come to life for a national audience by way of a rascally blue hedgehog. On Saturday, Alan Denton and Greg Hahn will appear among the credits for "Sonic Boom," a Cartoon Network series starring Sonic the Hedgehog, of Sega video game fame.
As with many other opportunities, theirs came about through networking — in this case, with each other. Having grown up together in Marlboro, they reconnected as writing hopefuls in Los Angeles. On any given day they can now be seen sitting at a computer, riffing in the voices of their characters. That's all part of the creative process.
"It's kind of a world where there's no limitations," says Hahn, 30. "With animation you can go as crazy as you want and there's no ceiling on that."
The first step to writing for animation? Watch a whole lot of cartoons.
For Denton and Hahn, that was easy, since they never really stopped. Long before he could see his writing become part of the Saturday-morning cartoon canon — and long before network TV demolished Saturday-morning cartoon lineups — Denton, 29, had the habit of consuming three episodes of "The Simpsons" per day.
"I can count it as research towards my career," he says.
Slick and colorful, "Sonic Boom" is a computer-generated cartoon series, but there's also a few character changes from the Sonic the pair grew up with on their Sega consoles — for one, Sonic's nemesis, Dr. Robotnik, is now called Dr. Eggman. But he's still a source of endless sarcasm, they say. And while there's plenty of action — Sonic, after all, is known for his speed — humor is key. The "Sonic" ensemble series, starring the same voice actors from the latest iterations of the video game, emphasizes the wittiness of the hedgehog that launched a franchise.
"This show is more like an animated action sitcom," Hahn says. "It's a lot more comedy-focused."
'Sonic Boom,' also the name of forthcoming video games featuring Sonic the Hedgehog, is a CG cartoon series. (Sega of America)
Also crucial, he says, is writing for every possible audience, and not "down" to a young age group.
"We're writing to make anybody laugh," Hahn says. Both he and Denton attended Marlboro High School, and were bussed to Howell High School's Fine and Performing Arts Center, where they spent part of the day in video production classes, learning about writing, editing and lighting.
"We actually met in Marlboro Little League," says Hahn (Denton's dad was the coach).
Denton remembers exercising his potential for humor on stage at Marlboro High School, where he was once class president.
"I would just kind of go up there and give funny speeches," he says. Hahn, who names '90s series "Animaniacs" and "Freakazoid!" as his animated inspirations, remembers listening to Insane Clown Posse.
"I wasn't a popular kid," he says. "I thought I was cooler than everyone else." But the pair collaborated on comedic shorts, with Denton directing and Greg acting. Denton went on to study film and TV at New York University and Hahn did the same at Rowan University.
In 2007, Denton moved to Los Angeles. Three years later he was writing for "Rekkit Rabbit," an animated series on Europe's Disney XD that he says had a "'Fairly OddParents' vibe." Hahn moved out West 2009, paying the bills by editing reality show casting reels — MTV's "The Real World" and Oxygen's "Bad Girls Club" — in which the human characters often proved quite cartoonish in their own right.
Living in the same apartment building, Denton and Hahn bounced scripts off each other, and started collaborating, though they didn't just focus on animation. In 2011 they worked together on a spec script (a speculative script, meaning no one had commissioned it).
"We both had an idea for 'Curb Your Enthusiasm,'" Hahn says. "We found that there was a harmony, there was a yin and yang between us." Ultimately a spec script for the Cartoon Network show "Adventure Time" helped them get a job on the Sonic series.
Sonic first blazed onto Sega consoles in 1991, and has been the subject of several animated series since. (Sonic of America)
The CG show echoes the names of two other upcoming Sonic games, "Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal" and "Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric." The character first reared his spiky head on Sega consoles in 1991, later arriving on TV in "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" (1993), followed by "Sonic Undergound" (1999) and "Sonic X" (2003).
The "Sonic Boom" team initially asked Hahn and Denton to work on a script rewrite. Happy with their work, the show's producers recruited them to write another eight episodes and serve as creative consultants on 20 more.
"You never know who's going to think of you and say, 'They're right for this job,'" Hahn says. Bill Freiberger, co-showrunner for "Sonic Boom," first connected with Denton by way of a New York University alumni site.
"I saw that Alan had posted this message on the forum," say Freiberger, a fellow NYU alum who lives in Los Angeles. It went something along the lines of "I just graduated and I'm moving out to L.A. — any leads?" They went to lunch and Denton ended up working as his assistant on "Warren the Ape," a "fake reality show" and live-action MTV spinoff of "Greg the Bunny."
The cast of 'Sonic Boom' is a bit different from the first Sonic game. (Sega of America)
Later, Denton teamed with Hahn. "When 'Sonic' came up I knew that I wanted to give them a shot," Freiberger says, adding that their scripts didn't require a lot of rewriting.
"I think the single most important thing is to write characters with consistent, recognizable personalities that are appealing ... or horrible," says Evan Baily, co-showrunner of "Sonic Boom," which he calls a "comedy action" series. Yet even within writing for animation, there is variation, says Baily, who attended Montclair High School and lives in New Jersey.
A CG series like "Sonic" can't be approached with the same sitcom timing as a 2-D series like "The Simpsons," he says. "You want it to be more cinematic," he says, in the spirit of installments from Pixar or DreamWorks.
Baily started his own animation career at Nickelodeon, working as a writer for "CatDog" before becoming a network development executive.
"As a writer, you have to explore all the avenues because you never know what's going to pan out," he says. "Sometimes it's your uncle's cab driver's brother-in-law who really is the person who can come through with that opportunity."
Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup. Find NJ.com Entertainment on Facebook.
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