![\"Jarrod](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Jarro-Prince.jpg\")
<\/a>Jarrod Prince<\/p>\nThe real production cost landed hard anyway. \u201cI was giving up freelance gigs to work on Olive Place,\u201d he recalls. \u201cNot only did it cost money to make it, I hate to think of the money that I lost,\u201d he chuckles.<\/p>\n
A Punk Rock Way Out of Burnout<\/p>\n
The pilot began as a way to combat burnout. Prince had spent roughly 15 years freelancing in Australian commercial animation, eventually moving into art direction and design lead roles on internationally co-produced shows. One job in particular pushed him over the edge. He won\u2019t name names and is careful to praise the people he worked with, but the scale of the production was punishing. \u201cThese shows were getting so much bigger than what they could probably contain,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd so we caught the brunt of it, which was brutal.\u201d<\/p>\n
What emerged from that suffering was a deliberately unruly approach. Prince calls it punk rock. Rather than pitching another series into a development pipeline he hoped to escape, at least for a while, he decided to upend his own process. He\u2019d worked in 2D for years, so for Olive Place, he pulled in puppetry, stop motion, and pixel art, often inside the same scenes. The mix worked partly as a way to stop being a perfectionist long enough to actually finish.<\/p>\n It also became, almost by accident, an authorial voice. \u201cI felt like for a long time I didn\u2019t really have a voice at all,\u201d Prince says. \u201cI was just really good at mimicking styles. So I was like, what happens if I mix them all together? Maybe this is what my voice is, an amalgamation of all these different things.\u201d<\/p>\n OP\u2019s framing gives the show a long leash to be silly. Belle and Burt\u2019s hotel is, by design, a place where logic is optional, so a Ralph Bakshi-style character can share a frame with a pixelated sprite and a hand-built puppet without any on-screen justification. Prince cites Sesame Street, SpongeBob SquarePants, and The Mighty Boosh as major influences.<\/p>\n His wife, who works in marketing, has gently suggested he do the next episode entirely in 2D. It would be quicker. Nobody, she argues, would miss the puppets. \u201cI think I\u2019d miss the puppets, maybe,\u201d Prince laughs, saying that any return to Olive Place is likely to be just as, or more, multi-dimensional.<\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a>
\nA Hotel Outside of Time<\/p>\n