With the help of animation majors, comedy writers get the opportunity to expand the boundaries that live action inhibits
Saturday Morning is a student-run production that combines the talents of comedy arts, sound design, theater, film and animation students to create short comedy sketches in animation format.
“If you like Adult Swim, if you like Robot Chicken-type animation, that is what we made,” said Stephanie Posey, the animation production coordinator.
The production was created by executive producer Ollie Grishaber and head writer Adam Cox, both comedy arts students.
“It was something that I pitched to [Cox] two years ago, saying like ‘Hey, we already do weird comics and draw together, so what if we just went full throttle and made a whole performance of it?’” Grishaber said.
And Saturday Morning was born. Posey, an animation student, organized and recruited animators for the show.
“We [Grishaber and Cox] both really love animation and we wanted to create more opportunities to work with the animators of DePaul,” Cox said.
To jumpstart the process of writing out the sketches, Cox asked the writers: “What’s something that you’ve really wanted to put up and produce and put up in front of people that you haven’t been able to do, because it’s kind of impossible to do live?”
11 original animated shorts were then created as the writers and animators took that prompt into their own hands. The show has a crew of 32 people — 19 animators, 10 writers, two sound designers and one cinematographer. They have worked tirelessly since May 2025 to bring these ideas to life.
“It’s crazy to me that these people, especially the animation students, have so many projects with all their classes,” Cox laughed. “And it’s crazy to me that they are still like … yes, sign me up for this extra thing that will, like, eat up my winter break, you know?”
Posey in particular received the final scripts and was responsible for delegating and helping convert those scripts to animation, which was an almost eight-month-long process.
“The summer production was a pre-production phase where we were focusing on identifying the scripts that we got and then creating storyboards out of those scripts,” Posey said.
The second phase of production happened during fall 2025: “In fall, we converted the animatics that we had and the storyboards to final animation, and that’s what’s going to be seen at the premiere,” Posey said.
One sketch brought up by both Cox and Grishaber was a project written and animated by Rebecca Coleman, called Demons Procrastinate Too. It is about a girl who falls in love with a video game character, according to Cox.
“She wrote and animated that piece, and it really shows that,” Grishaber added. “Her comedic voice shines through there, really excited for that one. Has a lot to do with being overly attached to gaming.”
Grishaber wrote a piece herself titled Rat vs. Mouse.
“Imagine a world in which rodents had politics,” Grishaber vaguely teased.
There are also pieces that feature 3D animation and other unconventional animation methods. One sketch, for instance, titled Lack of Respect, features an animated sphere.
“It elevates beyond traditional animation, something I’m really interested in,” Grishaber said.
They had their second-year debut on Saturday, January 17, at Mess Fest, DePaul’s student-run comedy festival held at The Annoyance Theatre and Bar.
Cox hopes that he gets to write for animation one day, as he loves the medium and the collaborative process of developing an animation short. He got inspired by hearing people’s different ideas and inspiration that they brought into the initial meetings.
“There was one meeting where we had people just bring in videos — animated things that they love the most,” Cox said. “And it was this huge, wide range of different things, and that’s what we kind of love about Saturday Morning, is because we have so many different writers, so many different animators.”
Because the animators and writers have worked tirelessly to make this production come alive, they didn’t want to merely upload the animation sketches to YouTube and be done, according to Grishaber. She wanted “to actively be in that room, feel the energy and watch the animations with the crowd of people who also love animation.”
Artistry and creation are often misconstrued as a solitary thing, but many films and animations we see today would not have been possible if it weren’t for the multiple-person crew behind these ideas, and the same goes for animation. Grishaber and Cox ultimately wanted to create an opportunity for animators to work with writers.
“We love animators. We love what they do and their talent, and so how can we give them the same amount of the same situation that we theater makers often get to have where it’s constant communication, playing around with each other, and then being able to feel the audiences’ love in the space?” Grishaber said. “And I think that’s what makes Saturday Morning really special.”
If you want to see Saturday Morning yourself, they are having a second screening of the production on Friday, January 30, at 6 p.m. in the Richard Daley building — theater LL105.
Header Image by Stephanie Posey
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