'Corner Gas Animated' star Brent Butt ready for season two premiere

Corner Gas Animated Returns Brent Butt tees up the second season of Corner Gas Animated.

"Corner Gas Animated" will return for a second season next week.

Show creator and star Brent Butt said the cast is excited for the start of this season, after a great response to the show's return last year.

“It’s a pretty big departure from live action,” Butt told CTV Morning Live Regina. “We tried to give it the same feel, and it’s the same actors, but you can’t get around the fact that it’s animated.”

Butt says animating the show gives this version of "Corner Gas" a bit more freedom.

“In the live-action show, we always had these little fantasy pop-outs where we could stretch our reality. In the real world, you’re kind of limited by what you can do, with your budget or the law,” he said. “In the animated world, you can really have a lot of fun and stretch those boundaries when you do those fantasy pop-outs.”

Whether live-action or animated, the show loves its cameos. The season two premiere features Michael J. Fox, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will appear on the show later on this year. The animated show makes things a little easier, since Butt can show up with recording equipment, rather than flying characters out to Rouleau, Sask., the former home of Dog River.

Animating also shortens recording time, Butt said. An episode used to take four days, and now can be recorded in as little as three hours in the studio.

Logistics aside, Butt said there are definitely things he misses about taping the show on the Saskatchewan prairies.

“In between takes, when the cameras turned around and you have five minutes, we would go sit out in a lawn chair and look out at the field and it’s very calming. You see the fields of wheat or canola just blowing in the wind and giant blue sky, it’s very calming and peaceful,” Butt said. “You don’t get that in downtown Vancouver.”

The second season of "Corner Gas Animated" premieres on the Comedy Network on July 1.