Neon Genesis Evangelion for its dangerous entities to fight. While similarities to Tron have been noted, Romain admitted to not having seen the film yet when the series was being developed. When the concept on the virtual world was added, Antefilms suggested animating it with CGI to help make the series unique, promote a video game theme and make the separation between the virtual and real worlds clearer. While incorporating it, Palumbo and Romain wanted to avoid making the series "too playful and superficial" and sought to "get around the censoring done by TV channels that tend to soften youth programs" by writing episodes "with tension, suspense, even tragic scenes. Things that are hard to imagine seeing in a cartoon series for kids." The desire to further separate the real world from the virtual world lead to the characters losing their powers in the real world, which was present in Garage Kids' pilot. A team of artists were also recruited in order to give the backgrounds of the real world a realistic appearance. The factory and boarding schools specifically were modelled after locations in France. The factory was based on a Renault production plant in Boulogne-Billancourt (Île Seguin), which has since been demolished. The school, Kadic Academy, is based on Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux. Palumbo and Romain were adamant on keeping the locales based on "the France we knew", as they wanted to avoid what they perceived as "fantastical" or "Americanized" locations other French cartoons used at the time. Networks were hesitant to Garage Kids due to its serial nature, as they feared it would alienate potential viewers who missed the first episodes and they wanted to rerun the series without worrying about episode order. This lead the writing team to shift to a more episodic format. Romain ultimately chose to leave the series after this change in 2003 to work on the French-Japanese anime series Ōban Star-Racers. Tania Palumbo remained on the series through its conclusion as creative director. She designed and named the main characters, with Jeremy being named after one of her and Romain's classmates at Gobelins. The series' human character designs were primarily influenced by Japanese animator Kōji Morimoto's style. After the series was sold to France 3 and Canal J, producers felt "Garage Kids" was too unclear for a title and requested it be renamed. Palumbo and production manager Anne de Galard ultimately settled on