Phungus is an always anxious, but dangerously curios little yellow “snailien”.

Initially I envisioned him as an alien always wearing a full space suit, but the you couldn’t see his face and his ‘alien-ness’, so I took his helmet off. For inspiration I looked at the most alien species on earth, and molluscs (snails, slugs, squids) fit the bill perfectly and so Phungus took shape.

Mowld is the muscle of the operation. I made him into a stereotypical loudmouthed guy who’s not very bright, but has a good heart.

Initially I imagined him being more muscular, but I thought he’d come across as less imposing and more likeable if he had short legs and kinda skinny arms. As the second protagonist people need to be able to care for him, too.

The ALIS acronym name was actually a backronym, because I wanted to include the line “Alice, Alice, who the f*ck is Alice?!” in episode one. We used to sing/shout that as kids in between the chorus of “Living Next Door to Alice” by Smokie. The line appearing in episode 1 turned out to be not very funny, but ALIS’ name stuck.

For the appearance of ALIS it had to be something convertible into a ‘spider’, and to make it iconic I had to keep it simple, so I made it a walking sphere.

Gluk was originally conceptualized as an antagonist in episode 2 by the name of Otto von Katz. A catfish-like alien wearing steampunky German Empire paraphernalia. Don’t ask, it made perfect sense in the script. That antagonist morphed into Tricklefizz (all that remained, was the kind of but not quite German accent he had).

I kept Gluk a fish, his pickelhaube morphed into a hard hat, but he had to be a more likeable fish. I thought bright blue skin gives a more clean look. The blowfish gag was made-up ad hoc, when I animated the argument scene in cabin 315. It wasn’t even in the original script.

Gluk will only be having irregular appearances in future episodes.