10 minute read
Swimming with Grace
Directors Max Lang and Daniel Snaddon discuss the details of making the acclaimed animated adaptation of The Snail and the Whale.
Max Lang and Daniel Snaddon are no strangers to bringing popular children’s books to animated life. Lang is the helmer of Oscar-nominated The Gruffalo and Room on the Broom and the Annie-nominated and
Int’l Emmy-winning 2019 special Zog, while Snaddon also directed Zog as well as Stick Man and worked on The Highway Rat and Revolting Rhymes. Their latest collaboration The Snail and the Whale is one of this year’s well-received shorts making the award season rounds. The project, which originally aired on BBC One in 2019, is based on a 2003 children’s book written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler and centers on a kindhearted snail who longs to see the world, so she hitches a lift on a whale’s tail. Nominated for a British Animation
Award, the 26-minute short features the late Diana Rigg as the narrator, Oscar-winner Sally Hawkins as the intrepid snail and Rob Brydon as the whale. Lang says he finds himself easily drawn to the worlds of
Donaldson and Sheffler, whose work also inspired Magic
Light Pictures’ series of award-winning specials (The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom, The Highway Rat, Stick Man, The Gruffalo’s Child). “Julia and Axel have a great sense for creating memorable stories and characters,” says the Germanborn director. “There’s a lot of heart and warmth, but also wit and humor in the rhyme and good illustrations. If you work from such a strong foundation it gives you a lot of freedom to focus on the creative aspects of filmmaking. We always try to stay very true to their original vision and add to it, as opposed to changing it.”
Shared Vision
According to the filmmakers, the team began storyboarding and pre-production on the project while they were making Zog in 2018 and wrapped the show in October of 2019. “Balancing both productions was a bit of a trick, so I was glad that there were two of us directing,” says Snaddon, who worked with the talented team at Cape Town-base Triggerfish studios to produce the special. “Our producers, Magic Light Pictures (headed by producers Michael Rose and Martin Pope), are based in London and I was in Cape Town with Triggerfish, so the film is a result of international collaboration. All the images were made at Triggerfish, and at the height of production the team climbed up to around 70ish. The voice recordings, music and post-production were all done in London with Magic Light.” Working with a ballpark budget of $2.8 million, the production team used Maya to create the CG animation with the exception of the water effects, which were produced using Houdini. Snaddon explains: “We created a Maya to Houdini, back to Maya then to Arnold workflow for the VFX shots. Arnold’s Scene Source (.ass) files really made this possible. All the comp was done in Nuke.” Snaddon says while the two main characters are quite different from each other physically, the creative team discovered that in both cases, less was more. “It drove the animators a little crazy in the beginning because they like to move stuff, but once we found the rhythms for our two leads, we found that there is a real connection between the two in their gentle and more subtle motions,” he recalls. Beyond the technical details, the production faced various challenges along the way. The team at Triggerfish (Adventures in Zambezia, Khumba)
— Writer-director Max Lang
didn’t originally plan to make The Snail and the Whale as they were gearing up for their next feature film, and didn’t think they could split their key supervisors across the two projects. “Luckily, we realized that there was a new generation of very talented and capable young artists who were ready to step into new roles,” says Max Lang Snaddon. “On Snail, most of our supervisors and leads were fresh in their roles, and did a smashing job! The other big challenge was doing a lot of CGI water on a budget. We had to assemble a whole new VFX team, many of whom were learning Houdini on the fly! We’re very happy with the results, but they were hard-won!” Lang mentions that on a story Daniel Snaddon level, the filmmakers had to find a way to have two characters relate that don’t have a lot of dialogue or anthropomorphic body language. “In addition, they can hardly share the same frame because of their drastic size difference, and yet so much love and understanding between the two has to come across,” he notes. “We made sure that they are very aware of each other and tuned in to each other’s emotions. We also used the world around them and the water to reflect their feelings and give them shared experiences.” Lang, who wrote the adaptation with his wife Suzanne, says The Snail and the Whale is one of his favorite picture books of all time. He has read it to his own kids count-
Whale of a Tale:
Based on the book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, The Snail and the Whale showcases the voices of the late Diana Rigg, Sally Hawkins and Rob Brydon.
less times and even loves reading it on his own. “The story and rhymes are so well crafted and fun to read and the illustrations are so beautiful,” he adds. “It’s so touching, and at its core it has a friendship between two characters that couldn’t be more different. It celebrates the beauty of our planet and its environmental message is very clear, but doesn’t hit you over the head.” He adds, “I’d been dreaming about making it into a film since we discovered it during the making of The Gruffalo in 2008. It’s a story that is perfect for and can only be told in animation. There is no way around it. And yet its protagonists are even unusual and special for animation, and came with many challenges that we had to find creative and technical solutions for. It also celebrates nature and the beauty of our planet. A lot of films these days try to wedge in too much plot and either become too long or frenetic. We wanted to take a step back from that, and give the story, characters and scope time to unfold. It’s a story that touches me every time I read or watch it. Its message is very universal and relatable.” ◆
For more info, visit magiclightpictures.com and triggerfish.com.
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FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM
93RD ACADEMY AWARDS™ TAMSIN GREIG
‘An instant Christmas classic’ FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Pure unmitigated joy’ THE INDEPENDENT
‘A glowing tribute’ RADIO TIMES
A Shelter from the Storm
Stratostorm Studio’s award-winning new short Umbrella promotes a message of hope and empathy.
An animated short about kindness and helping those in need in times of adversity seems to be the perfect antidote to our troubled times. Brazilian studio Stratostorm’s new project Umbrella has arrived at the right moment. Directed and written by co-founder and exec producer Helena Hilario, along with Mario Pece, the short tells the story of a young orphan who dreams of owning a yellow umbrella, and the chance encounter with a kind girl who makes a big difference in his life.
“Filled with messages of hope and empathy, this short was inspired by a situation experienced by my sister,” says Hilario in a recent interview. “It makes us reflect on the importance of observing, listening, and understanding that we cannot judge people without knowing what is behind their experience. Everyone goes through situations that we can’t even imagine, so we must be kind to each other. That’s why we thought about bringing empathy and hope to this narrative. Something we need more and more.”
It took the Hilario and her team at Stratostorm about eight years to realize this dream. “We had to gather experience in animation, plan financially to produce it independently, and put together the right talent artists to bring the project to life. Once we were ready, it took us 20 months of full-time production,” says the director. “Umbrella is the first-ever full character-and-story-driven animated short that was rendered using Corona Render, and it was created and produced in Brazil with a small team of talented artists at our studio, who put all their love and dedication into the execution of all stages of production and brought to life exactly what Mario and I envisioned.” All About Teamwork
Hilario says she is very pleased with the result of an incredible collaborative process between everyone on her team. “We had three full-time CGI artists, and we reached up to a total of nine CGI artists during a few months into the production and a total of five animators. The main characters were beautifully crafted and designed by Victor Hugo, a talented Brazilian 3D artist who worked previously on Moana and Marvel projects.”
Of course, producing this ambitious short had its share of challenges. “Back in 2016, our resources back in were limited, and we had to figure out solutions for the problems we were encountering on the way, from concept to storyboard, to animation and rendering,” recalls the director. “Still, successfully we figured everything out and had fun during the making of Umbrella while keeping the production on schedule and within our budget. The challenge in terms of storytelling was to fit an entire emotional story in eight minutes without dialogue and using the animation and music as the keys to evoke complex emotions.” After the short was completed, the team had to prepare Umbrella for its global festival debut. “It was our first time at film festivals, so it required much planning and research around the submissions and deadlines,” explains Hilario. “Gladly, our short had a wonderful reception with festival programmers, juries, and audiences, and we are thankful for every op-
portunity given to our beloved short film during Stratostorm founders and Umbrella directors Helena Hilario and Mario Pece this year.” She adds, “I think the reception has been positive because Umbrella has a timeless message of empathy and everyone can relate to it. The story offers a message of hope and kindness that makes us think that we shouldn’t judge other people’s actions without knowing what they are personally going through.” This year, Hilario and her talented team at the studio (which has offices in São Paulo and Los Angeles) will be working on their second animated short. Founded in 2016, Stratostorm specializes in CGI, 3D animation, and content creation based on storytelling for entertainment and advertising projects. “We are currently developing Stratostorm´s new animated projects and producing content for several clients that add up to thousands of hours of original content for online platforms and advertising projects,” says the studio co-founder. “During these difficult times, we were fortunate to keep working from home by having a strong pipeline that allows all the artists to connect to our remote workflow while keeping everyone safe until we return to work at the studio.” As a wider audience discovers Umbrella this year, Hilario says she hopes people will take its message to heart. “As storytellers, we want to say work hard, and be disciplined towards achieving your dreams,” she says. “Find a unique story within your own experiences, be truthful, and turn it into art! A story that you really believe and it is made with all your heart will find its way to come to life. Be passionate and patient because an independent animated project might take a long time to come to life: Enjoy the journey and people you will meet along the way, and in the end, it will be worth it!” ◆
For more information visit stratostorm.com
