Design, Bones saw classmates getting internships with major TV networks. After learning that some internship programs require artists to pitch an animated series, she figured she’d better have an idea in mind. In 2016, she sketched Spike for the first time. Beneath the image, she scrawled ‘The Other Town.’ “I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know what this means, but I’ll make it something.’ Bones initially didn’t feel prepared to enter the industry, and she moved to Los Angeles with no prospects. After a challenging year, she flew back to Akron to stay with close friends and regroup — all the while, developing “The Other Town” in whatever ways she could.
Marcy Bones tells a strange, heartfelt tale in animated series "The Other Town" WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY H.L. COMERIATO; ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARCY BONES At the iron gates of Brahamsville Cemetery, Spike McCaulkey brandishes a squirt gun. The gun — like everything else in the town of White Hill — is slightly unusual.
To do that, Spike will have to cross over into the Other Town — a mirrored, ethereal place that exists within the town of White Hill itself. “The Other Town is a world overlaid onto ours, the ‘backstage’ to our reality,” reads an early description of the series. “It’s a world inhabited by spirits, demons and even ghosts of the past!”
In fact, Spike says the gun is more like a key than a weapon — a way to open doors and passages between realities by harnessing the energy of emotion.
Spike aims the gun and pulls the trigger, opening a tear between worlds where matter and emotion collide.
Tonight is Mischief Night, the night before Halloween. And Spike’s ghost-hunting grandma, Carol-Anne, has sent her on a mission to free a distraught ghost from a painful past.
In a single day, Spike grapples with an unrequited crush, frees the ghost, fashions a last minute costume for the annual Pumpkin Mash Halloween dance, fends off a clique of high
school bullies and defeats a dark, shape-shifting entity in the attic of a church. Marcy “Bones” Jones, who was born and raised in Akron, has been developing “The Other Town” since she was in college. Today, she lives in Burbank, California, where she’s worked on several major productions as a TV animator and storyboard artist. Currently, Bones is working on the third season of Hulu’s animated series “Solar Opposites,” an adult comedy about a family of extraterrestrials forced to live in middle America. More than 2,000 miles away, “The Other Town” ties her back to her Akron roots. “It’s a show about teenagers. It’s a show about humanity, and it’s a show about Akron,” Bones says. “And I hope those three things will be interesting enough for people to want to watch it.” “I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know what this means, but I’ll make it something.’ Bones, 26, developed “The Other Town” with help from cocreator and fellow Akronite Colin Daugherty. “The setting is just a fictional Akron,” Bones says. “There’s a rubber corporation that’s a big part of the plot. It’s our world, just a little bit different.” Nearing graduation from the Savannah College of Art and
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In 2019, Cartoon Network selected Bones as one of six artists to participate in their inaugural Storyboard Artist Training Program. She was selected from over 2,000 applicants, according to a January 2019 press release. Bones moved back to California to attend the program, where she met other animators, learned about expectations within the industry and honed her craft as an artist and a storyteller. Afterward, she landed a job writing for “Close Enough,” an adult comedy also produced by Cartoon Network. After years of focusing on intricate world-building, Bones says working on “The Other Town” has redirected her focus to more complex character development. As her life changed, so did Bones’s vision for “The Other Town.” “I thought I’d take suburban supernatural horror and make that into an interesting thing and do some world-building with that,” Bones says. “But giving it more autobiographical elements has really helped me write better characters — characters who I care about and who I feel like are people.” “I keep going back to places that I’ve been before.” When Bones came out as transgender in 2016, emotions and experiences from her own teenhood surfaced, spurring autobiographical elements that appear throughout the series. “When I was a teenager, I was going thedevilstrip.com
