Executive Producer Sean Coyle and Co-EP / Story Editor James Eason-Garcia discuss the characters, visuals and cinematic inspirations of new animated series Marvel’s Iron Man and His Awesome Friends, premiering Monday Aug. 11 on Disney Jr. and Tuesday Aug. 12 on Disney+. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity. Image Credits: Disney.)

Jackson Murphy: Sean, do you remember where you were or your experience seeing 2008’s “Iron Man” with Robert Downey, Jr.? It changed the game when it came to Iron Man’s popularity and our fascination with Marvel.

Sean Coyle: Yes, I do, actually. My wife was sick. She had the flu or something. I was just like, “Well, I don’t want to just sit around. I guess I’ll go see that Iron Man movie. People are saying it’s pretty cool.” (laughs) And I did. And my mind was blown. It became what it became. It’s amazing that we’re sitting here… rounding up towards 20 years later… that we’re talking about creating a version of Iron Man that’s an entry point for 2, 3, 4 and 5 year olds.

JM: James, I have a cousin who’s loved the “Spidey” show for several years. So going into this, how did you want to make it a companion piece to that in the programming block of Disney Jr. but distinct in its own way?

James Eason-Garcia: “Spidey”‘s success was so great. The show’s so wonderful. How can we match it? How can we make it its own thing? How can we make it feel like they can sit on the same shelf together and complement each other but also feel like different tastes? We really leaned into the space. “Spidey”‘s very Brooklyn, New York-y. Very ‘Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’. It’s about the neighborhood. Ours is very west coast inspired. We took that directly from the first “Iron Man” movie: his mansions on that Malibu coast overlooking the ocean. We did things to visually separate it: give it a different flavor, a different style.

JM: One minute into the first episode I look at the sky and the skyline and I go, “Alright. That’s cool.” This picnic atmosphere in the first episode. It’s very cool and really stands out.

SC: Thank you very much.

JEG: We knew we were gonna be in the sky a lot with these characters because they fly. The skies had to look just as cool as the iron armor does.

JM: That’s true. Sean, when you take the shots of Tony / Iron Man in the suit — they were so iconic in the movies too. Was that an interesting look, animation-wise to do that perspective?

SC: Those headshots were a challenge. There was a lot of trust involved. When you’re dealing with kids shows… Spidey is behind a mask a lot, but you can see the jaws and his eyes moving, so there’s still that sense of humanity where you can connect those dots a little bit. With these iron suits, it’s steel faced. We don’t want to have the masks up all the time because then they’re not the Iron characters. Collectively, we worked with Marvel and Disney Jr. closely on figuring out a way where we could have access and also the blessing to attempt that. It’s so important to the DNA of the MCU stuff and Iron Man as a character, even in the comic books. To not do that would’ve felt like we were almost cheating the fans a little bit. I’m glad that we were able to find some common ground and figure out an approach to do that where it’s easy enough for young audiences to understand, “Camera goes into the face and all of a sudden we see the human face. I guess they’re inside their helmets.”

JM: Iron Man, Ironheart, Iron Hulk and Iron Pup — what kinds of adventures are we gonna see them on this season?

JEG: We wanted kids to fall in love with not just the heroes in the suits but also the kids inside the suits. We start every episode in a grounded, really relatable way — a great entrypoint for preschoolers. Playing in the park with their dog or creating a new fun invention that’s gonna have them bounce around… hanging out with their friends. We always come in as them as kids — Tony, Riri, Amadeus and Gamma — and then the action kicks in. When that “Armor Up” sequence kicks in, it’s telegraphing to kids, ‘We were having fun before. Now it’s about to get totally awesome. The bad guys are coming in. The armor’s on. It’s about to get cranked to 11.’

JM: You bring in Ultron, T’Challa and others. Sean, what were the discussions like with Marvel about who to use, who not to use, who to save maybe for another season? How were those conversations?

SC: James and I had a wish list, which was probably 35 characters long. “Can we use [them]?” A lot of that was guided by Marvel. They were like, “These are characters that are important to our brand… diverse and unique characters that we feel like would fit in this Iron world a bit more.” Our guest heroes have an Iron-ified version of their suits. We have Sam Wilson’s Captain America, but it’s kind of an Iron Man-ish version of his suit — extra bulk, extra accessories, some extra capabilities. Similarly with Black Panther and Iron Spider. It’s a fun collaboration with the Marvel and Disney teams taking this massive wish list and figuring out which characters are best to use to complement the characters we already have on the show, but also visually which characters offer a fun and interesting visual power set. If you just have 25 characters and all they do is fly, that may not be as fun for kids.

JM: And James, John Stamos, who voices Iron Man on the “Spidey” show, voices Howard Stark here. That’s perfect!

JEG: It was such a blessing to get him. We were so grateful that he decided to join all of us. We love that we’re keeping him in the Disney Jr. Marvel “Friends” family. We were talking about, “Who could be that cool dad playing Howard?” John Stamos was the only voice and name that came up for us. He’s been such a blast to work with.