Toonstruck was published by
Virgin Interactive Entertainment and developed by Virgin's internal development studio
Burst, based in
Irvine, California and headlined by Chris Yates, a veteran of
Westwood Studios, and Neil Young, who worked at
Probe. After
David Perry and his associates left Virgin in 1993, the company struggled with internal development and hired Yates and Young to lead this division. In an interview by
Edge, Yates stated that all senior producers at Burst had between "eight and ten years of experience", and that the studio was focused on having quality tools and technology to develop products with high production values. Virgin Interactive invested much money in the project, and aimed at impressing audiences with high production values. "So much of the game was handled like a full-scale movie production", said artist John Pimpiano, who was originally tasked with doing background art for the game, but became involved with other realms of production such as character development, storyboarding, color styling and marketing promos, among others. The studio was inspired to take CD-ROM technology "even further" after the success of Virgin's
The 7th Guest, and to make the game "as cinematic as possible". Overall, 230 people worked in the game. In 1994 Burst switched its early engine to that of ''
The Legend of Kyrandia: Malcolm's Revenge'', offered to them by
Westwood. Since the programmers had to re-code much of the game, only about 5% of the original source code remained in the final game. By the end of development,
Toonstruck had a high budget of over $8 million ($17 million in 2025 figures). According to
Next Generation, Virgin Interactive always acknowledged that
Toonstruck would be expensive. However, once Bishop's concept was passed on to co-writer and designer Jennifer McWilliams, it went through several revisions to make it more adult-oriented, with comic violence and touches of parody and cynicism. According to
Le Monde, Richard Hare wanted all players to be shocked at some point with the game's sense of humor. The final screenplay was credited to McWilliams, Richard Hare and Mark Drop. McWilliams wrote the second part of the game to be more psychological, with Drew facing his fears, living out his fantasies and eventually restoring his creativity. The character of Flux Wildly was created after that of Drew Blanc, as a companion and "fun-loving" sidekick, because he gave a window "into the 'real' Drew". To McWilliams, Flux was also "a great addition" for the puzzles and humor. Developers aimed at creating a world that felt as though it was "living" and that evolved as the story events progressed. To accomplish that in writing, the NPC dialogue was programmed to change as critical events happened in the game so that characters commented on these events instead of just repeating dialogue from earlier. With the delays to the game's production and the release date getting closer, Virgin executives decided to split the game's content in two and expected to have the unreleased half be included in a potential sequel. Due to Virgin's decision to divide the game in two, the writers had to come up with an ending that properly concluded the game "halfway through, with a cliffhanger that would, ideally, introduce part two." Since the entire story arc was carefully thought-out, McWilliams felt Virgin's decision "definitely disrupted that", but nonetheless believed the studio did well under the circumstances. In the later half of the story that was cut from the final game, Drew and Flux took a train ride to an island in the sky, where Drew faced off his fears in a carnival setting; scenes included a Wild West shootout, an encounter with Drew's idol
Vincent van Gogh and a visit to a mad dentist. There were also animation cels and characters that were developed and keyframed by Burst and finished by Rainbow Animation, in the Philippines. Burst's animators did much of their work traditionally, sketching characters and their movements on paper and then animating these frames. The company used computer technology from
Silicon Graphics, as well as software such as
Deluxe Paint and
Autodesk Animator, which were used for coloring and finishing of the animated sequences. Over 11.000 animations were made by Burst during development. The full-motion footage of the game's live-action actors was shot in Burst's own motion capture studio, with hundreds of hours of performance against a
green screen. An eight-camera
Digital Betacam set-up was used in order to allow Lloyd's character to be "perfectly scalable" when viewed from every possible angle. In order to make post-production more efficient and easier, Burst first filmed empty scenes and then introduced the actor. A program by Silicon Graphics was used to calculate the difference in lighting and color between the two types of footage, thereby speeding up the process of color correction. The footage was then composited and edited together with the animation by Burst's in-house animators. Richard Hare served as director of the live-action production. According to voice actor
Dom DeLuise, the makeup and costume design for Lloyd was purposely done in a way that footage of his could be easily manipulated for the game; for instance, Lloyd's jacket costume had no buttons and his hair was combed right in the middle so that his likeness could be flipped right or left without being noticeable to players. McWilliams noted the team designed many ideas they felt were funny and interesting, without focusing on what was achievable within the budget and schedule. For the most part, the company gave the team creative freedom, but intervened when more content was made than could be included in one game and decided to cut half the material from the final game. This forced Burst to rework the game under this restriction.
Casting and sound portrayed Drew Blanc. According to Jennifer McWilliams, most of the writing for the game was completed before the actors were cast, but the character ultimately voiced by
Tim Curry was written with him in mind. Burst had initially cast a different actor to voice Flux Wildly, but replaced him with
Dan Castellaneta, known for voicing
Homer Simpson, after the studio decided the first choice would not be a good fit.
Christopher Lloyd, then-known for his roles in the
Back to the Future series and
Who Framed Roger Rabbit, was cast in the live-action role of cartoonist Drew Blanc.
Ben Stein played the role of Blanc's boss Sam Schmaltz, also live-action. Curry voiced the antagonist Count Nefarious.
David Ogden Stiers, known for his work in
M*A*S*H and
Beauty and the Beast, voiced King Hugh, the king of Cutopia.
All Dogs Go to Heaven voice actor
Dom DeLuise voiced Fingers, the octopus who is a cashier at the arcade. Additional vocal performances were given by
Jeff Bennett,
Corey Burton,
Jim Cummings,
Tress MacNeille,
Rob Paulsen,
April Winchell and
Frank Welker. Keith Arem was
Toonstruck's voice director, animation music and sound designer. While Arem composed original music for the game, he also included a mix of public domain classical music, such as
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy by
Tchaikovsky, and
production music supplied by
APM, such as "Happy Go Lively" by
Laurie Johnson. Sound effects from classic cartoons were also included in the sound design for
Toonstruck. ==Release==