In PiRats! (Emphasis on the Rat), Izzy T. Rat has always dreamed of a different life. Being half-mouse and half-rat, she didn’t really fit in and never knew much about her rat side. Finally getting to set sail with her long-time idol, Grease Gorgonzola, she finds a new community she’d never dreamed of and maybe even a long-lost island of cheese.
PiRATs! is a crowd-funded animatic written by Matt Acuña. After previously writing for shows like Bob’s Burgers and Disney Jr.’s Ariel, PiRATs! is his first solo project. Teaming up with Avery Smithhart (Made in Abyss, Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon) as his voice acting director and lead, he hopes to make a show that’s reminiscent of the humor of SpongeBob SquarePants with the heart of Treasure Planet.
I got the chance to sit down and chat with Matt and Avery about their new project, their careers up to this point, and where they hope this project will go. The interview below has been edited for length and clarity. For the full, uncut discussion, click the video below to watch on ScreenAge Wasteland’s new YouTube channel, ScreenAge Wasteland Exclusives.
Valerie Morreale: Avery, you’re the main voice actress and also the voice acting coordinator for PiRATs. How did you get into voice acting, and what made you interested in getting into it in the first place?
Avery Smithhart: Yeah, so I am the voice of Izzy T. Rat, and I’m going to be the voice director. So I’m really excited to work with everyone both as an actor and as a director. Like every kid, I didn’t know what anime was, but I was watching it, and I was like, “This is cool. I want to do this.” And then I realized real people do that. It’s not just like a cartoon you watch on Toonami. There’s a real person. So I became obsessed with watching like con videos and behind-the-scenes and voice actor Q&As.
And I found a website, which is now defunct, called voiceactingalliance.com. And I did a bunch of just like indie projects, or if it’s like, hey, can you sound like this famous actor? Like back when fandoms were a thing.
I got my hands on it pretty early. My first setup was literally two red Solo cups that I put on top of each other and then cut out. And then I had a hanger and a really crappy little plug-and-play mic. And I was like, I’ve kind of made it, Mom and Dad! Like, I don’t think I need to go to college, we’re fine! (laughter) Of course, I did go to college. I’m originally from Texas, which actually has a lower barrier of entry for anime. I was near Houston, which is a hub, and Dallas. So that’s how I got started with that. And then I moved out to LA about four years ago.
Matt, what first inspired you to get into the animation industry?
Matt Acuña: Well, you know, I made a lot of comics and stories as a kid. None of them were very good, but I sure thought they were good.
Smithhart: They were good.
Acuña: Thank you. I just liked making stories my whole life, and that kind of manifested in high school into coding my own video games and stuff. That’s actually kind of how I met Avery, through the voice acting Alliance website.
We were creating a Werewolf visual novel kind of game. We met and started a little partnership there. But I realized I don’t really like coding; I just don’t like doing that part of it. But I really liked the writing part, and I love these fantastical worlds and stories so much that you can’t really do them in live action. So I was really drawn to animation.
In college, I was in a very small film department, and I was the only one who really had a focus on animation. Everyone was kind of focused on screenwriting for live action. But I had a love for it always. So I moved out to California for an internship, realized I really like it out here, and made it my permanent home in 2018. And then I went on to get my first animation job in production, getting lunches for people and that kind of thing.
Avery, you’ve done a lot of work in both voiceover and voice acting, and also anime dubbing. Do you have a type of job that you prefer? And what is your favorite job that you’ve done so far?
Smithhart: Yeah, so I originally came out here for like anime, video games, and animation because the sky’s the limit out here. Where I found the most success though was in commercials, which is baffling to me because I always thought I had a really goofy voice, and they’re like, “No, no, you’re fine.”
Now I would kill to be able to do an animation or video game role because I’m like, I want to create. But I think my favorite project that I’ve worked on … It has not come out yet, so I cannot say the name. But it actually was a video game, and I’m so excited I’m going to be one of six of the playable characters, which I didn’t know I would get to be. And I actually got to do some ad-libbing, which rarely happens, where we would play against its original language, obviously, and I needed to match lip flaps and things like that. But for stuff that was wider, like when you didn’t see the character’s mouth. They were like “What do you think something funny you’d say here?” And I was like, oh my gosh. So I’m really excited. I’ll hopefully get to announce that soon. And yeah, that’s probably been my favorite project that I’ve got to work on. And I can’t say what it is, and you have no idea. I could be making it up. (laughter) But it’s real.
Matt, you were a production assistant on Bob’s Burgers for Bento Box, and then went on to write for Disney Jr.’s Ariel. What lessons did you learn in those positions that you’ve taken with you into PirRATs?
Acuña: Yeah, I got my start in production on Bob’s Burgers and also a show called The Great North, which sadly is not going forward anymore. But what I learned through my time in production, which carried over to my writing experience on Ariel and later PiRATs, is how to be an animation-friendly writer. A lot of writing can be putting whatever you want on the page, like I can make crowd scenes. I can make fight scenes. I can do these big bombastic moments that, you know, can only be done in animation, but someone has to draw that. Someone has to do that. Someone has to be the production coordinator on that. And changing someone’s shirt color five months in is not as easy as it sounds.
Same with the phrase, “And then they fight.” Never write, “and then they fight,” because someone has to draw that. So what I’ve really learned in my time writing for Disney Junior and working in production is just to be a team player as a writer and not just kind of like the person that writes and then you guys figure it out.
So I brought that mentality into PiRATs with our pilot script, which we had an amazing table read for recently. I want to be as visual as possible, and I want to work with the artists as much as possible, where they have as much of a say in what happens as I, the writer, do, because it’s a team effort. It’s a team collaboration. And, you know, it’s not just my way or the highway. It has to be collaborative and what works for the production. So that’s kind of the biggest takeaway in my industry experience as a writer.
That totally makes sense. I mean, it seems like writing for animation is a much different animal in that way than writing for live action.
Acuña: Yeah, no, it totally is because live-action has its own set of you know hurdles and issues, and one is not easier than the other, but they’re definitely just very different because with live action, you have the real world as a backup. You know you can just say like “a street corner” and we’ll find a street corner. But in animation, if you just say like here’s a street corner that they go to for two seconds, it never comes back. Well, someone has to go design that street corner and spend time on it. We have to pay that person to design that street corner. Can it be literally anywhere else? Does it have to be a street corner? These are the kinds of questions that you kind of have to start thinking about in animation is like, it’s not just like, we can’t just go there. It’s not just like the real world. So a lot of thinking ahead and thinking like budget-friendly, asset-friendly. What can we do with this script? Maybe in this episode, they’re going to sit in the room and stare at the wall. That’s very cheap. I don’t know.
Yeah, I mean, there have been some really interesting animation episodes with a limited setting. I’m thinking of the episode of Bojack Horseman where he’s at his mother’s funeral. That’s just one setting, but it’s a really good episode.
Acuña: Yeah, that’s a box episode. You put them in a box, and if the characters are strong enough, they can make it work. So budget-friendly and sometimes they become some of the best episodes in the show.
Avery, how has your previous experience informed your performance in PiRATs so far?
Smithhart: Yeah, so I am beyond excited because Izzy is a character I don’t often get to play. She is the heart of the show. She is super optimistic. She’s very young, and typically, my voice leans older. I have a deeper voice, and I’ve sounded like this since I was like 13 years old. Directors are like, “What did you sound like as a kid?” I was like, “I came out like this!” (laughter) But with Izzy, I get to push myself and go into a more open space because a lot of times you can play closed off characters, the really intellectual character, but like Izzy feels everything fully all the time. She wears her heart on her sleeve and I’m just so excited to exist as that. And a lot of times it’s just finding her weird quirks, like her laugh.
In our Kickstarter video, we got to do little snippets of physical comedy, which sounds weird because it’s animated. But Izzy’s just a goofball. I love her very much. So I’m very thankful to Matt for the opportunity to bring his character to life throughout the process. I kept being like, if I am not the right fit, you can say that. And he was like, “It’s fine.”
Anime experience came in a little bit, but animation is different because while it can be big and bombastic, it still needs to be grounded. We’re in this world of PiRATs and you can decide what that reality is and what that baseline is. I just kind of got to lead with my heart and be a big kid, which is the dream as an actor.
Matt, I wanted to give you a chance to just talk about PiRATs, since most readers may not have heard of anything about it. Where did the idea come from, and what is PiRATs?
Acuña: Broadly speaking, PiRATs is an indie animatic I’m making through Kickstarter. Right now, it’s an animatic, meaning it’s not fully animated. It’s like the blueprints, the storyboards, but with full voice acting. With Avery on board as our director and a full musical score that’s original and edited in an amazing way by our editor, who is also fantastic.
It’s a very big step for me because I’ve never done crowdfunding before, but I really am passionate about this story to just bring it to life. And it you know takes money to make money, to do stuff. For me, this is something I need to do in my life right now. Things have been really crazy in the animation industry and in my personal life, and I just need some grounding. I need some creative output.
I have a lot of friends and a lot of cool people who feel the same way about it. So PiRATs, I got the idea from Pizza Rat, the TikTok from 2020. There you go. That’s your emotional, heartfelt answer.
But Pizza Rat was actually a big part, not going to lie, just in terms of like, where’s that little guy going with that big slice? But the real truth, like the actual answer, is… PiRATs is about Izzy, who is a half-mouse, half-rat girl. And she’s just joined this pirate crew with being led by her mentor and idol, whose name is Grease Gorgonzola. He’s this legendary pirate captain who used to be like this Robin Hood of the seas. He would steal cheese and pizza and give it to the rats and the mice that were hungry and needed it. And Izzy’s always wanted to be a rat like that. And truthfully, being half mouse and half rat, she never really knew her rat side growing up. She was always just pure mouse and she felt like there was this part of her that was missing.
And I’m mixed as well, I’m Mexican and Irish. And growing up, I didn’t really get any of my Mexican side ever. It wasn’t taught to me really. I wasn’t taught Spanish until moving out here to California, where I was able to spend more time with some of my extended family who are more fluent in Spanish. They are more ingrained in the culture.
I didn’t really get that part of my life. And so Izzy, in a lot of ways, is me and that she’s searching for this missing identity that she was never able to get growing up. And so she joins these PiRats, hoping that she can find it. She can find this community and she does, but she also kind of shows them a community of their own that they weren’t looking for.
So it’s a silly story. It’s heartfelt and slapstick, but it’s really got an emotional core that is very important to me. But it’s about the right to food. People should have the right to eat. Everyone deserves the right to eat.
And Izzy wants Grease to remember who he was because he used to be the Robin Hood of the seas. Now he’s this washed-up jerk who just steals for himself. And most of his crew has deserted him for that. So she wants to bring him back to his core and find cheese pizza to save the sewers and feed these hungry rodents because her core ideology is everyone deserves to eat.
So Izzy is just a very special character to me. a lot of myself and her, but also just a lot of what I want to be. So that’s the story. There you go. Pizza rat.
What is the current status of the production? And what are you hoping for next steps? Are you looking to get a distributor or would you go independent?
Acuña: So currently our Kickstarter pre-launch page is live. You can find it on Kickstarter right now if you search PiRATs! (Emphasis on the Rat). But our full campaign launches on April 14th, 2026. The goal is to fund a full 11 to 15-minute pilot animatic.
We plan to independently distribute on YouTube, possibly Newgrounds, or Vimeo as well. TBD on that. The goal is to gauge interest, to get people interested in this series, because this is the first step. This is the first episode. It’s where Izzy’s journey starts. It’s where we start putting pieces together for a bigger story. They’re searching for this mythical Eldorado of cheese that will be the key to feeding the sewers.
From there, we’ll introduce villains and new characters. It’s to pique interest. With this full animatic, we would take it to studios to see if they are interested in this now tangible product.
But also, an animatic is eligible for film festivals. It’s eligible for these animation film festivals or larger film festivals. So I would totally be looking into submitting it for those.
Smithhart: I think this is a story that should be told. I think it’s deceptively simple, but it deals with a lot and the characters are really enjoyable. And I think even from the brief bits that we’ve shown people, like Matt’s running our TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and our LinkedIn, and it’s like, people want this.
I think we’re in the age of Indies. People crave good stories that aren’t backed by mega corporations. And I think that that’s something we’re doing and a lot of other people are. So I am just excited to get eyes on this. And maybe inspire others because we’ve certainly been inspired by a ton of really cool indie animatics and Matt can speak more to those specific titles. But it’s great. It’s a network and it’s very exciting.
Are you kind of hoping then to go more like The Amazing Digital Circus route, of like starting on YouTube and then like growing from there? Or just like, would you want like YouTube to be your home base and kind of just stay there and maybe not go with a distributor?
Acuña: To me, like right at this stage, the world is kind of our oyster. I am open to either path. Because indie is, I think, what Avery was saying, indie is the future of animation studios. As much as I love them, love being employed, studios are not making things really anymore. It’s a much more volatile market. Risk-taking is just kind of gone. Even major IPs aren’t a guarantee anymore. So originals are kind of just like not being made. So if you have a story that you want to tell, studios used to be the middleman.
Especially in America, because in other countries, you know, Glitch Productions, which makes The Amazing Digital Circus, they’re based in Australia and they get government grants for the arts. So Australia, Ireland, all these other countries, they fund the arts. America does not. So we would have relied on studios to be able to make visions happen, and that’s just not happening anymore.
So indie is a much tougher beast in America, but it is worth pursuing. So I am open to studios if they would like to chat after we release our pilot, our PiRATs pilot.
But if indie is the path forward permanently, I’m comfortable doing that. It’s a lot of money. It’s a lot of work. It’s scary. But having the right passion for it, which I do, is the key. Because if it were a project that I just was not passionate about, I wouldn’t be doing this, because this is stuff a crazy person does. I’m posting every day on TikTok. I hate TikTok. It’s a lot of money that I’m investing in this, but I care a lot about it. So I think that the key is just passion.
Smithhart: Big slice, big dreams. You know what I mean? Pizza rat. What are you going to do?
Acuña: Hey, there you go. Bringing it back.
What kind of audience do you hope would kind of tune in with this and what kind of show could folks checking it out for the first time expect in terms of like genre?
Acuña: PiRATs is very comedic. It’s very adventurous and it’s a mixture of heartfelt and comedy. I think the best way I can explain it is SpongeBob SquarePants meets Treasure Planet. It’s an amazing pirate adventure, but you still have some peak comedy in there.
A big goal of mine with this was to create an indie show that can be enjoyed by all ages. I think a lot of indie animation skews more adult, like Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss, The Amazing Digital Circus, and Knights of Guinevere. These are amazing indie shows, and kids enjoy them too. But there is a lot more adult content in that. There’s swearing, there’s blood, there’s suggestive themes. And I really wanted to make an indie show that you could watch with the whole family.
We do go to dark places. We do some stuff that’s crazy, like with like rats getting eaten and stuff like that. But it’s more like how Disney movies used to get dark. They were still enjoyable by all ages, but they weren’t afraid to tackle darker themes. So that’s kind of our goal, to create a kids’ indie show. But adults are going to like it too, because adults love Adventure Time, SpongeBob, stuff like that.
Smithhart: It’s also very hopeful. And I think in today’s climate of just about everything, we could use hope. And I think it is that grand adventure, and I think it engages your inner child. As Matt said, whether you are a child or you’re an adult, I think it puts you in a good place just to play and to get excited.
Are you allowed to talk about your cast and crew? I understand you have some pretty great folks involved.
Acuña: I’m really excited about our cast, but I’m gonna talk about the crew first because I want to talk about everyone. We have amazing board artists Aaron Chen and Christina Mijaris-Doung on board. They’re fantastic collaborators who really helped bring the project to life.
Our character designers were Chen, SugarPlumWine, and Hailey Austin. We also worked with additional artists: Arin Scalfo, Aleisha Marmon, Andy Scherman, and Teri Hendrich Cusumano, who are all great artists. Our editor is Katie Parody and our composer is Aaron Jacob. That’s the crew.
Our voice cast is really, really coming together. Obviously, we have the amazing Avery right there on the other screen, and she’s our voice director. But playing Grease Gorgonzola, we have Jason Marnocha, who was in Chainsaw Man as Katana Man, and he is Megatron in Transformers: War for Cybertron.
Our character named Squeaky Jean is voiced by McKenzie Atwood, who was in Catching Up, an indie series on YouTube, and Wastelandia, also on YouTube. Playing Wensleydale, who is our himbo rat with a big heart, is Craig Lee Thomas, who was John Helldiver in Helldivers 2. He also played Superman in DC: Dark Legion.
And then our villains, we have two villains. We have Shelliot von Turtleton, who is played by Jalen K. Cassell. Most readers will probably know him from One Punch Man and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, as well as Persona 5, where he voiced Kaneshiro. Then playing our main villain, Sassparilla, who is this devious, devilish snake, we have Allegra Clark, who is Maki in Jujutsu Kaisen and Dorothea in Fire Emblem Three Houses.
Wow, those are some big names. Remind me again, what date is the Kickstarter launching?
Acuña: April 14, 2026. It’s going to go live at 9 a.m. Pacific time, 12 p.m. Eastern time. You can find it by searching for PiRATs! (Emphasis on the ‘Rat’).
Thank you both for coming on to talk about this. This has been really fun. And thank you, Screenagers, for sticking with us the whole time. And we’ll see you all in The Wasteland.