After the pandemic broke out, many tv producers turned to animation — a relatively pandemic-proof form of production — to get projects over the line. Shows suddenly featured animated inserts or specials; one series switched entirely to the medium from live action. Tig Notaro: Drawn was ever so slightly ahead of the curve. As the first fully animated stand-up special, it looks exactly like the kind of innovative project to have formed from the chaos of Covid. But HBO actually greenlit it weeks before all hell broke loose in March 2020, as director Greg Franklin tells us below. The 50-minute special doesn’t just use animation: it revels in it. Notaro’s laconic comedy is married to an array of styles, each of her sketches getting a distinct treatment. Franklin and his team at Six Point Harness (where he serves as a creative director) use everything from wild, cartoony hand-drawn animation to clay-puppet stop motion and cg, working with Notaro to decide which technique fit which part. The sketches are intercut with segments in which a cartoon Notaro interacts with her audience.