"Stan's concept for Spider-Man was more reality based than the Batman material with a real student, quite poor and down on his luck, living with his Aunt in a real city � New York. It grounds this character so well with a contemporary audience, that when he goes through this life changing event of accidentally acquiring superpowers, the audience can relate to him even in this extraordinary circumstance. In theory, it could even happen to them. Even the super villains are more interesting, when they are placed in a realistic city environment. So this was the key to the direction we would take in developing the style of the show. Spider-Man would be designed to be more realistic than Batman and in an environment that was more authentic and as contemporary as possible. Consequently, it was a lot harder to achieve, because doing reality in animation on TV budgets is no easy problem. The drawing and design skill as well as the animation expertise is very demanding with less room for error. We also did quite a bit of research to make sure that New York City was as accurate as we could make it."