10 minute read
A One-Stop Creative Destination
Iron Man and Captain America: Heroes United
Brain Zoo founder Mo Davoudian talks about his innovative Chatsworth-based studio which is celebrating its 25th anniversary.
One of the L.A. area’s most innovative indie animation studios recently celebrated 25 years in the business. Founded in 1995 by Mo Davoudian, Brain Zoo has worked on a very impressive list of projects, including the studio’s own real-time animated series Nora, Disney/Marvel’s Guardians of Galaxy series, Mortal Kombat 11, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, the Ultimate Spider-Man series, the award-winning short Pepe & Lucas and two Marvel animated features — Iron Man & Captain America: Heroes United and Iron Man & The Hulk: Heroes United. “The number one quality of Brain Zoo is our fexibility,” says Davoudian. “Creatively and technologically, keyframe or mocap animation, offine rendering or real-time. There are studios around the world in which you can look at their work, and they have a style of their own. Brain Zoo is style-agnostic or, as we like to say, ‘We are your style!’” He adds, “When you see our work, it goes across the spectrum. From realism to stylized to cartoony, it’s a wide range of capabilities. Second is our hunger for new technologies and techniques. Real-time is relatively new to most animation studios and clients outside of the gaming business. Brain Zoo has been at the forefront of real-time animated productions for the past 20 years. We were the frst to use the Unreal Engine 4 on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy series and Disney’s Doorables web series. Our proprietary tools and pipeline are built for production speed while maintaining high levels of quality. This workfow has given us the ability to produce two full-length animated feature flms for Marvel in a sevenmonth production schedule.” “Brain Zoo is a creative studio which is not solely focused on animation production,” notes Davoudian. “The company is actively involved in development, design, technology, look dev and production management in multiple industries. We are also in the business of creating original IPs such Pepe & Lucas, Nora and the upcoming D.Y.K. The company is also developing some popular comic-book titles into series and flms. We consider ourselves a one-stop creative partner that brings a lot of expertise to the table.”
The artists at the studio use a variety of CG tools and effects software to produce their work. Davoudian says Brain Zoo has been using Unreal Engine for about 20 years, as well as Maya, After Effects, Unity 3D and, most recently, Blender, which is showing a lot of promise overall. With the COVID pandemic restrictions, the studio has an infrastructure which is built for about 80 employees. Brain Zoo has partnerships with overseas shops that scale its capabilities to about 400.
Early Days
Davoudian began his CG career during an internship semester away from the ArtCenter College of Design, working on game titles such as Phantasmagoria, Wing Commander 3 and TV’s Spider-Man: The Animated Series. This experience gave him solid CG production experience and a great introduction to the business. When he returned to ArtCenter to fnish his studies, he decided to start Brain Zoo to create two of his animated projects for school. “With the help of a couple of partners, we launched the company during the frst E3 game conference,” he recalls. “The company started with two divisions; one was the 3D animation department, and the other was at the beginning of a little industry known as the world wide web, where we created websites for companies and entertainment clients. The animation division of the company was involved in music videos, game cinematics, trailers and flm VFX. Films like Mighty Joe Young, Armageddon and Meet the Deedles were some of the projects we worked on. Our long-term goal has always been original content and storytelling. Those early years, game cinematics gave us the best outlet to tell stories and establish an effective pipeline that garnered excellence in quality and the shortest time possible on narrative projects.” As a young boy, Davoudian was hugely infuenced by Ray Harryhausen movies such as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts at an early age. “They awakened my curiosity, and so began my interest in fantasy flms and stop-motion,” he recalls. “Later it was Land of the Lost and the Gumby series. Another big infuence, like most people of my generation in this industry, was The Empire Strikes Back. That opening scene with tauntaun running across the snow and leaving footprints and the following AT-AT snow battle scene inspired a lifelong obsession for me. And during my career, I’ve been fortunate to have worked with both Doug Beswick and Harry Walton,
— Exec Creative Director and CEO Mo Davoudian
LEGO Brawls Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
Borderlands 3
who were stop-motion and VFX masters that worked on those early infuences at Brain Zoo.” We ask the Emmy-winning executive creative director to tell us a little bit about what Brain Zoo is working on these days. “I can talk about a couple of projects,” he says. “Wasteland 3 for Microsoft, which is similar to most of the projects we work on from start to fnish through the studio. The only thing that we did not do is the audio. We usually design, storyboard, pre-viz, direct, produce assets, animate, light, render, composite and edit on all the projects we produce, with few exceptions. The other project is our next original series titled D.Y.K. (Dangerous Young Killers).”
Refections on Real Time
Davoudian admits that outsourcing of animation work is always a challenge, but he believes that it’s a good force for innovation when it comes to production. “The more signifcant challenge is educating clients on the viability of real-time production,” he notes. “It’s not entirely the same pipeline service providers and distribution clients are used to working with. Large studios have a pipeline that has worked for them for many years. Real-time changes that process quite a bit, and it’s not a proven pipeline or process for them.”
He says many of the animation vendors don’t have a real-time pipeline or the experience to work with it. “Real-time has its workfow, and it’s not just ‘push the button and it renders,’” Davoudian explains. “The entire pipeline from assets to animation to lighting and rendering is affected. This scares producers and executives. But what they don’t understand is that the benefts are astronomically greater if you have the right partner.”
Like most of the professionals working in the animation biz today, Brain Zoo has pivoted towards a fexible, virtual studio model. “A company can now get all its productions and clients serviced without having a location,” Davoudian says. “All the tools are there to make this happen. This is huge! Animation is also moving away from just being stylized cartoons for kids. What I see in the animation marketplace, which includes gaming, is a growth in demographics. The 50-year-old generation and younger have all grown up on video games and animation. From Atari to Xbox and PlayStation. We are now globally and generationally gamers and animation consumers. That is a bigger market space!”
He also believes that the industry is ready for major creative changes. “There is so much we can do with new look development and visual styles with today’s technologies,” he offers. “But what I see is the same shapes, styles, lighting and rendering on TV and animated flms. The visual effects industry suffers from this as well. You used to be able to tell which studio did the VFX for a movie. As an industry, VFX hit true photorealism in the mid-2000s. Nowadays, everyone uses the same tools, software, techniques and renderers, so the work looks even across the board. You can’t tell which studio did what. So, if the little studio is doing the same quality-level work as a big studio, why do you need the big studio? And with AI and machine learning coming on board, you can be sure any gaps between animation/VFX/gaming studios will eventually evaporate!” ◆
For more info about the studio, visit brainzoostudios.com.
Guardians of the Galaxy (series) Skylanders
Latin American Animation Shines in the Spotlight
Sublime Jalisco offers an impressive selection of panels and animation talks during its virtual event in December.
Since 2017, Jalisco-based Sublime event has emerged as a growing meeting point for the leading innovators in animation, flm and videogames. The well-attended event continues to attract the region’s movers and shakers and a nice selection of the world’s most respected animation professionals this year with a solid virtual edition (at www.sublime2020. mx) from Dec. 8 to 10.
“This year, even when the unusual circumstances have led other projects to be canceled or postponed, we have decided to take advantage of the digital resources. that have surfaced along the crisis to reach more people than ever,” says Carlos Gaxiola, Jalisco Creative Industries Association Secretary. “We are offering a program that may not allow direct interaction, but is built to orient and build a wider awareness about the movie, animation, vfx and video games industry, right from the core of its business in Jalisco, Latin America’s animation capital. Our program will feature various conferences, talks and masterclasses with topics that range from creative/production themes to the outlook and future of the animation industry. This will allow the creation of an integral vision that allows artists and producers to generate new ideas and realize them.”
Among the world-famous animation stars and execs scheduled for the event are Jorge Gutiérrez (Book of Life, Maya and the Three), Jérémy Clapin (I Lost My Body), Rodrigo Blass (Tales of Arcadia trilogy, Alma), Adam Elliot (Harvie Krumpet, Mary and Max), Lizzie Easterday (manager of development at DreamWorks Animation TV) and Alison Mann (VP of creative and strategy, Sony Pictures Animation). Also on tap are topnotch panels designed to generate discussion and create a better understanding about the present and future of the region’s animation business.
As Gaxiola points out, “Sublime celebrates talent and creative industries in the best way possible by making it stronger. Our program seeks to explore flm, animation, videogames and vfx from an artistic and aesthetic point of view while bringing attention to its growth as a business and as an industry that is already transforming the national panorama. Our program has a place for everyone in the scene, and it ensures the acquisition of new tools that will allow our audience to grow and position itself in this thriving and expanding business.
With a big infusion of fnancial support form the government, Jalisco is considered to be the animation capital in Latin America. “Throughout the years, and thanks to our artists, creators, executives’ visionary strength and talent, our city has become an example of how the animation, flm, video game and vfx industries in Mexico are already consolidated and growing,” says Gaxiola. “This can be seen in the partnerships that many top studios such as Warner Bros.
Main Attraction: Previous editions of Sublime drew many animation and vfx professionals to the region.
Animation, Disney, Mattel, Apple, Bardel and Bento Box have formed in Jalisco.”
He adds, “The next step for us to keep growing is the consolidation of a market that generates more and stronger alliances, but also the creative process that will allow us to produce our own original projects and be the driving force behind f new stories that can refect all of Mexico’s voices. We are pleased to say that that this is already happening. In short, we would like Sublime 2020 to be remembered as a space that transcends not only as a content oriented event, but as a starting point that widens the perspective of the animation, flm, vfx and video game industries, offering the tools that will consolidate new projects and fnding a place for them in the market.”
Sublime 2020 is organized by Ciudad Creative Digital, Jalisco’s Creative Industries Association (AJIC, Jalisco State). You can register and learn more about this event at sublime2020.mx
