Bob's Burgers and The Snoopy Show Veterans Launch 2D Series With Hybrid AI Pipeline

Joel Kuwahara, a producer of Bob's Burgers, and Mark Evestaff, who worked on The Snoopy Show, have unveiled The Salty Tales of Tony & Keith, a 2D animated series. The project follows a hybrid approach that combines traditional production with AI-based tools. Nura Studios, the developer of the Showcraft production platform, is involved in the work.

Kuwahara won an Emmy as a producer of Bob's Burgers. Nura lists him among Showcraft users in its press release announcing the platform's public launch.

What Showcraft is

Nura Studios describes Showcraft as a unified production environment. Work starts from a script, shot list, or concept and moves through storyboarding and animatics to animation and final editing. The platform connects several image and video generation models and supports ACES color management with HDR and SDR output. The company promises to add local real-time upscaling to 4K later.

Public early access to Showcraft opened on September 1, 2026. For now, the platform is sold as one-time credit packs that are valid for six months. The cost of a generation is shown before rendering. The company plans to launch subscriptions and additional plans on October 6. “AI can generate a single shot. Turning thousands of shots into a coherent production is much harder,” says Silvio Drouin, CEO and co-founder of Nura Studios.

Nura officially launched in late April 2026. It was founded by alumni of Unity, Adobe, Canva, Softimage, Roblox, and Apple. Among the projects made with Showcraft, the company lists the series Rainbow Hollow and the vertical microseries Astro Burn. Writer and director Jerica Cleland is using the platform on a feature film. According to her, combining Showcraft with traditional animation cuts production costs in half.

There is no word yet on where and when The Salty Tales of Tony & Keith will be released.

What this means for the industry

The project fits a noticeable trend: generative AI in animation is gradually moving from experiments into production pipelines. Within a few months of its launch, Nura itself has gathered several projects in different formats, from a vertical microseries to a feature film. Who is taking on this kind of work is telling, too: the hybrid approach is being used by people who built their careers on major animated TV series.

Hybrid pipelines typically leave writing, design, and performance to humans. The first thing to be automated is the animation stage, which in TV 2D animation is often outsourced to external studios. Creators and small production companies stand to benefit: a pilot with moving characters becomes cheaper and faster to make. Animators and service studios that depend on work for this stage are likely to come under pressure. Generative AI is already a topic in negotiations between industry unions and employers.

If the approach catches on, the pitching stage will likely be the first to change: broadcasters and platforms may start expecting creators to bring nearly finished animated pilots instead of storyboards. The test for the hybrid pipeline will be whether a distributor picks up such a project as a full series and whether AI animation can meet quality and consistency requirements across an entire season.

Will the hybrid AI pipeline from FutureCel and Nura Studios become the norm for 2D series, or will it remain a one-off experiment?