If you're a fan of Robot Chicken and/or The Walking Dead, you should be aware of The Robot Chicken Walking Dead Special: Look Who's Walking coming to DVD/Blu-ray tomorrow. We've already shared a deleted scene from the Blu-ray's excellent bonus features with you, and that came with the bonus commentary from our own interview with co-creator Seth Green. Now, I'm happy to bring you the full interview with Green about the special, working with the AMC drama's cast, and what's ahead for Stoopid Buddy Stoodios.

If you missed the Walking Dead special when it aired on TV, now's the perfect chance to pick up this fantastic one-off. It features the bulk of The Walking Dead lead cast, past and present, starring in their famous roles, with a comedic slant to them, of course. The soundtrack--yes, the special features hilarious original musical numbers--is also available now through Adult Swim, making it a perfect pair for the Blu-ray when it arrives tomorrow. Look for my Blu-ray review tomorrow, and read on for Green's behind-the-scenes take on the special, starting with our deleted scenes discussion.

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Image via Adult Swim

On the ‘Patches’ Deleted Scene – I believe this was one of Breckin Meyer’s scene suggestions that got cut. What was it about this scene that didn’t work?

Seth Green: There’s nothing about it that didn’t work. The whole hard truth of editing, especially editing for broadcast, is that you have a finite amount of time that the program’s going to be. So it comes down to seconds, you know? When we have sketches that are made up of microseconds, you only have enough time … you do math in either direction: If I keep these two things, it means sacrificing this longer thing, or if I sacrifice this longer thing, perhaps I can keep these four little things. Once you get into that conversation of, “Alright, guys, we’re losing 30 seconds wholesale; where are we taking that from?” in something like The Walking Dead or even in previous specials that are more storytelling, it’s anything that’s off-topic. So if you watch the narrative of the special, it’s all very thorough in a relatively straight timeline, and it does service to as many characters as we can in a timespan.

And then you look at a sketch like “Patches” [laughs] and say, “Alright, well this is cutable for broadcast.” And it’s not because it’s not hilarious, or something that we all loved and laughed out loud at, it’s just the time. It becomes very clear, when it comes down to cutting this many seconds, what you’re going to keep and what’s off-topic.

Speaking of Deleted Scenes, I was happy to see the Square Dance scene make it to the Blu-ray extras. Why did that not make the final cut even though it went through all phases of the animation process?

Green: It was just last-round. It was in the absolutely last round of cutting and I think we were in exactly that conversation of, “Alright guys, we have to remove 16 seconds from the broadcast program; where can we take it?” There were two sketches that we kept by cutting the square dance. That’s even luck that anything is animated that doesn’t make it to the broadcast. Nobody understands how much this costs or how complicated the production is. If we’ve done our magic trick correctly, they never will; they just watch the program and enjoy it. The rarity of something actually being animated and then not making it to broadcast is high.

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Image via Adult Swim

Can you talk about why you were in the minority regarding the Lucille origin story sequence?

Green: I love the bat with a cape. It’s so silly. It feels very Robot Chicken. But, again, we come down to this argument of seconds here and there. Even that summation felt … I had to say, is this on or off topic? They way we argued for it, the way it ultimately works so well, is because it’s imagined in the post-whatever the apocalypse is. So now we’re looking back at how humanity was almost destroyed and it’s probable that the legend would be, A) wildly misunderstood, and B) sensationalized for the audience. So that’s where it’s funny. And Carl is furious about it. “None of this is true and a fucking bat killed my friend!” It really feels very Robot Chicken to me.

Why else are we doing this? If we’re saying there’s something meaningful to our point of view on this intellectual property, then we have to back that up. We try our best to entertain the hell out of you.

In the commentary, you mentioned that viewers should zoom in on the bookshelf in the final scene—the Talking Dead bit—for a surprise. (I tried but couldn’t see anything there; what am I missing?) Is there anything actually there?

Green: I doubt it. [laughs] But we live in a James Halliday culture, so happy hunting! I could speculate though, because our crew is mischievous and we absolutely support burying stuff everywhere. We never like to lean toward an Easter egg, but any time you can sneak something in that only Wade Watts is going to find, then do it.

Our crew, all of the artists who work on the show in various categories, are very talented. Everyone works incredibly hard. And we always encourage everybody to improve something if they have the opportunity to. I can’t even claim credit. We’re fortunate enough to be backed by a tremendous gang of people who are all swinging for the fences on this kind of stuff.

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Image via Adult Swim

I loved the behind-the-scenes look at the production process, including insight from Kei Chong and a look at the rapid prototype 3D printers: What’s one thing that has made your production process easier since starting way back in 2005?

Green: The number one thing that makes the job easier is talented, competent people at your side. Always give opportunity to people who are talented, on your behalf. [laughs] It’s just information. You just learn through making mistakes, you learn by totally blowing it and then realizing that you can kinda start over again. Keep swinging, keep trying. That’s it. Obviously technological innovations have made the whole thing a little bit easier, but all that’s done is make financiers encourage you to make it faster for less money. [laughs]

I will say this, and I always like to say this, but the big difference between what’s available to the average 10-to-14-year-old with respect to technology is exponentially evolved since I was that age. If I had half, even one of these things, let’s say YouTube as a democratized distribution platform, let alone a movie studio on my personal device… [laughs] Anybody who asks me, “How do I do it?” I say, “Just do it. Do it.” No one’s going to notice you until you’ve done something worth noticing, so if you have something to say, say it.

What’s something people might think they know about the stop-motion animation process from watching your productions that they really have no idea about?

Green: I think it’s the total number of crew members. On Robot Chicken, we have over 100 people working at any given time. With that many people on the same project, communication becomes critical, just understanding what everybody else is doing so everybody can help each other instead of getting in each other’s way. That’s the kind of thing that, when anybody comes to visit the shop, they’re knocked out by the scope of it. You just don’t anticipate it being as large an operation as it needs to be to accomplish it in the timeframe.

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Image via Adult Swim

Have you guys ever thought about doing an episode in “chuckimation” style, like the ‘Action League Now/Kablam’ series?

Green: Oh man, I loved Action League! In the first season, we really were experimenting with styles. We did … as if a third grade class had produced their own stop-motion and are still filming but their radio play had descended into fighting. I love all that stuff. The studio got to do some work for the Mystery Science Theater reboot. That was the same kind of practical ship builds and hyper-basic in-camera animation and stuff. The studio is really getting a huge opportunity to experiment in different mediums on all different kinds of projects.

With Robot Chicken, we always style whatever the sketch is toward whatever the joke is. Every season is a little bit different in the way the sketches are photographed, or the way the puppets are built, or what we do depending on what the sketch is. So whenever somebody writes, it’s required to make that a part of the story.

In talking about effects work, what’s the ratio of practical effects versus digital?

Green: It just comes down to time, how much time you have to accomplish a particular shot. That was the craziest thing I had to learn as a producer, that your budget is exactly how much you have to cover everything associated with the completion of the project. So it’s every person that you hire, during every day that they’re hired for, in every category, plus all your rentals and contingencies. It really just comes down to that. We’ll schedule each shot based on its complexity and its requirements, and then we’ll spread that out across the duration of our shoot based on how much time we have, and then everybody makes it work. So there isn’t a direct ratio of how much is digital clean-up versus what’s capable of being accomplished practically; it sort of changes all the time. But we do as much in camera as we can because it looks cool! And then we’ll enhance things digitally where it will make it look cooler.

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Image via Adult Swim

With all these Walking Dead models and puppets, is there a possibility we’ll see sequels like Look Who’s Walking Too or Look Who’s Walking Now?

Green: I don’t know! I would never say never. We’ll definitely encourage our writers in the upcoming season to write some Walking Dead stuff, but making a second special requires a convergence of titans that’s beyond my control. We love those guys, we love that show, and we had so much fun making this, it was kind of insane.

How has the reception been from both fan bases?

Green: Everybody’s been really positive in their response to it, which has been great. We’re so excited, we love this thing. There’s always that terrifying “giving it to the audience and not being able to put anything else into it or even say anything about it.” There’s no excuses after the fact. No one knows how little time you, how little money, or what when wrong… nobody cares. So that’s always terrifying whenever you hand it over to the audience. But everybody’s been really positive about it, so phew!

So how much fun did The Walking Dead cast have on this special?

Green: The cast of that show, they’re all unbelievably accomplished actors who have spent several years now defining details of their characters. The story is dramatic and emotional and sort of scrapes at the edges of the most basic humanity, what it is to stay human. It’s such powerful material…

What I got from them is that it was fun for a second just to get to goof around and be silly with zero consequences. And yet, everybody … nobody did anything that betrayed their character! In the definition of our jokes, it’s just a comedic take on it, it’s not a betrayal of their character. And that’s the balance of each of the actors.

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Image via Adult Swim

It seemed to me … I was the most nervous about Andrew Lincoln because Rick Grimes is … I can’t believe this cast hasn’t been nominated for Emmys, because they’re outstanding in any of the categories. I guess because it’s genre, people have a tough time with it. From the pilot on, I was so blown away by Rick Grimes, by this character, the depth of it, the rises and falls of it, how long he’s been in darkness and the times he finds light, the kind of man he wants to be and the way that’s chipped away at. So I was really nervous. I’ve seen some really powerful drama from Andrew Lincoln and I, A) didn’t know how he felt about the material aside from agreeing to it, and B) what kind of mood he was in, because you meet people in every kind of mood.

We were on Skype with him, which made it a little bit better because you can see each other, but it’s still kind of awkward because you’re not in the same place, which as actors, it just creates an extra level of awkwardness. He was so game for everything. He brought the same level of intensity and emotion to really comedic moments that he brings to the show, and as a result, it’s hilarious. It’s almost painfully funny. We spent like 90 minutes on Skype with him getting all the tracks. That was a real highlight for me. He’s so awesome to work with.

How great was it working with Josh McDermitt on this? He seemed up for anything and everything.

Green: Man, we just love him so much. And he is such a cool person. We were doing a couple of things on the same day so we got to put him a different places and he was game for it. He ad-libbed a bunch of stuff for us, too. The bullet-spitting machine, which is one of my favorite gags, we ran out of material for him very quickly and we wanted him to keep going. He was like, “Don’t worry, I got this,” and just ad-libbed a bunch of incredibly complicated detail about bullet-making. His idea, [since the machine was a bust of his head] was that when his head spits the bullet out he’d go, “Bleh!” And I was like, “Well, obviously I want that.” [laughs]

What’s up next for the studio?

Green: We’ve got a bunch of stuff. We’re making couple of pilots, we’re in production on SuperMansion, we shot a movie [Changeland], a live-action feature last year that I got to direct, and we’re finishing that, and then we’ll figure out how we distribute it. There’s definitely stuff that’s not ready to talk about, but we’re workin’!

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Image via Adult Swim
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Image via Adult Swim
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Image via Sony Pictures Television, Stoopid Buddy Stoodios
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Image via Sony Pictures Television, Stoopid Buddy Stoodios