Animation Magazine March #308 2021 Issue

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Cat and Mouse Games in the Big City: Unwrapping the New Tom and Jerry Movie

Goro Miyazaki’s Earwig and the Witch The Eccentric and Loveable The Great North The Island: Anca Damian’s Dreamlike Musical

$7.95 U.S.

The Return of Indie Genius Don Hertzfeldt

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Goro Miyazaki’s Earwig and the Witch Tom and Jerry in the Big City

The Island: Anca Damian’s Dreamlike Musical The Return of Indie Genius Don Hertzfeldt

Eccentric and Loveable:

$7.95 U.S.

Meet FOX-TV’s The Great North Family

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“A nonstop delight, full of bright, colorful visuals...the animation is top notch.”

Best AnimAted Film Produced By Mark Swift p.g.a.

Directed By Joel Crawford

Best VisuAl eFFects Betsy Nofsinger, Visual Effects Supervisor Jakob Hjort Jensen, Head Of Character Animation Li-Ming Lawrence Lee, Head Of Effects Jon Gutman, Head Of Layout

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© 2020 DREAMWORKS ANIMATION LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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FROM

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“ONE OF THE MOST GORGEOUS “UNLIKE ANYTHING AUDIENCES HAVE SEEN BEFORE.” “A VISUALLY STUNNING WONDER FROM ANIMATION LEGEND GLEN KEANE.” “★★★★

VIBRANT AND HEARTFELT.”

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BEST ANIMATED FEATURE GLEN KEANE, GENNIE RIM, p.g.a., PEILIN CHOU, p.g.a.

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AND ANIM ATOR GLEN KEANE

ANIMATED FILMS EVER MADE.” “GLEN KEANE’S CHARACTER DESIGN IS BEAUTIFULLY EXPRESSIVE, ADDING REAL EMOTIONAL FORCE.”

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BEST ORIGINAL SONG “ROCKET TO THE MOON”

Music and Lyrics by CHRISTOPHER CURTIS, MARJORIE DUFFIELD AND HELEN PARK Performed by CATHY ANG FILM.NETFLIXAWARDS.COM march 21 3 www.animationmagazine.net

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Volume 35, Issue 3, Number 308 Frame-By-Frame

Television/Streaming

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Stuff We Love

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March Planner

30 Frozen Treat Show creators Wendy and Lizzie Molyneux give the scoop on their charming new FOX comedy The Great North.

Features 12 Frenemies in the Big City Tom and Jerry director Tim Story and his creative team talk about the joys of making a hybrid pic starring the beloved HannaBarbera duo.

By Ramin Zahed 16 All Eyes on Ghibli’s First CG Heroine Director Gorō Miyazaki discusses his buzzy new movie Earwig and the Witch and the reasons he opted for a 3D CG look.

By Charles Solomon 18 Robinson Crusoe Goes Postmodern Helmer Anca Damian follows up Marona with The Island, a wild, surreal, musical take on the castaway saga.

By Ramin Zahed

34 Drawing on the Immigrant Experience Big Bad Boo’s multicultural show 16 Hudson tackles the experiences of a Kurdistani refugee family in its second season.

36 Git Along, Little Dinos!

Dino Ranch creator Matthew Fernandes tells us about the creation of his hot new Disney Junior show.

Shorts 38 The World According to Don Hertzfeldt The brilliant indie animator discusses the latest chapter of his mind-bending World of Tomorrow trilogy.

22 A Slavic Heroine Spreads Her Wings Animagrad Studio’s much-anticipated feature Mavka. The Forest Song is ready for the global market.

40 Animating an Ancient, Sacred Story How a beautiful story about healing Hawaiian spirits inspired the creative team behind the acclaimed new short Kapaemahu.

Opportunities

VFX

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42 Adventures in Zero Gravity VFX supervisors Matt Kasmir and Chris Lawrence detail their achievements in George Clooney’s well-received sci-fi drama The Midnight Sky.

Autonomous Animator

Events 25

15 Movies to Track at Cartoon Movie ‘21

Cover A: Warner Bros.’ Tom and Jerry arrives on HBO Max in February.

Cover B: The Great North introduces a new fun family to the FOX primetime lineup.

EFM Cover: Ukraine-based Animagrad (FILM.UA Group) brings Mavka. The Forest Song to the European Film Market.

Cartoon Movie Cover: Autour De Minuit’s Shadows is one of upcoming features showcased at Cartoon Movie this year.

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44 10 Visual Stunners An overview of the VFX Oscar race.

46 Tech Reviews Eddy for Nuke 2.7, Foundry’s Mari 4.7 and Modo 14.2.

By Todd Sheridan Perry

Day in the Life 48 Animalps co-founder Fabrice Beau gives us a glimpse at his routine while working on his new movie The Khmer Smile.

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37 You Are Free!

Children’s animation veteran Josh Selig writes about the importance of drowning out the market noise and listening to your inner muse.

By Josh Selig

20 Double Vision Acclaimed Paris-based company Autour de Minuit brings two innovative animated features to Cartoon Movie this year.

Helpful tips on landing your first job in the biz.

By Martin Grebing

March 2021

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E ditor ’ s N ote

Inching Towards Normalcy

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e are in the final days of January as we put the finishing touches to this issue and there are some positive signs that we may see a return to semi-normalcy in the third and fourth quarter of 2021. Of course, the COVID pandemic seems to have more surprise twists and turns than a good season of The Walking Dead. But a lot of people in the animation industry are still hoping that we can go back to seeing movies on the big screen again in the fall. I am sure many of you wished that you could have caught titles such as Wolfwalkers, Soul and Over the Moon in movie theaters with a huge audience of avid fans on opening night. These films’ beautiful animation, wide-screen backdrops and memorable music deserve to be enjoyed on the big screen.

Ironically, we have Warner Bros.’ new take on Hanna-Barbera’s beloved cat-and-mouse duo Tom and Jerry gracing our cover this month. I had a great time chatting with the film’s director Tim Story, VFX supervisor Frazer Churchill and animation director Michael Eames about how they brought these amazing characters (which were first introduced in 1940) to life in a hybrid adventure set against the hustle and bustle of New York City. Sure, we all wish we could see this on the big screen, but for now, we just have to make sure we pay our monthly HBO Max fees to enjoy this and many other Warner Bros. movies this year. (We’re talking Godzilla vs. Kong, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Dune and Matrix 4 here!)

FOX network’s new addition to its Animation Domination lineup The Far North is our second collector’s cover this month. The show’s talented Above: Tom and Jerry circa 1940 (Puss Gets the Boot) and showrunners Wendy and Lizzie Molyneux gave us a below 2021 (Tom and Jerry movie) wonderful behind-the-scenes look at their hot new comedy, which is going to give all the other FOX primetime toons about eccentric families a run for their money.

If you would like to catch a glimpse of the future of animated movies in Europe, all you need to do is glance at the colorful lineup of this year’s Cartoon Movie. Sadly, the event had to remain virtual and won’t bring the community together in Bordeaux in person, but that means you can tune in from anywhere around the world and learn about the 55 features that are presented at the pitching and financing forum. We’ve also spotlighted a collection of these movies in this issue for your perusal.

Brilliant Romanian director Anca Damian’s latest pièce de résistance The Island is among the many movies featured at Cartoon Movie. Just a couple of years ago, she made a big splash with her highly artistic and poignant movie Marona’s Fantastic Tale, and now she’s back with a wild, surreal take on the classic story of Robinson Crusoe. Her fantastic imagination and socially aware visions never fail to amaze.

As one of our animation industry friends recently pointed out in a Zoom call, “Things are slowly going to go back to normal. Maybe the silver lining is that this whole pandemic taught us to appreciate all the good people and things that we have in our lives a little more.” I couldn’t agree more!

Ramin Zahed Editor in Chief ramin@animationmagazine.net

Quote of the Month “Studio Ghibli is the anime studio Toshio Suzuki helped found to get Hayao Miyazaki’s work made. But, that doesn’t mean the two men will continue to carry Ghibli on forever, does it? When I thought about it, I knew that there was no future for this studio if I was just making copies, well-done copies, but copies.

That’s when I thought to do CG.” — Director Goro Miyazaki in an interview with Japanese website Comic Natalie.

ANIMATION MAGAZINE March 2021

Vol. 35, Issue 3, No. 308 Info@animationmagazine.net

President and Publisher: Jean Thoren Accounting: Jan Bayouth EDITORIAL

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The copyrights and trademarks of images featured herein are the property of their respective owners.

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Frame-By-Frame

Stuff We Love The Croods: A New Age DreamWorks Animation’s return to this fantastical prehistoric world — given an evolutionary twist by director Joel Crawford — is one of the bright sparks that kept international box offices going this winter. The Croods encounter their biggest challenge yet when they join forces with the Bettermans, a family of sophisticated homo sapiens, to escape extinction. [Universal, $30 4K/$25 BD/$20 DVD]

The Comic Book History of Animation The Comic Book History of Comics author-illustrator duo Fred Van Lente & Ryan Dunlavey return for a five-part recap of our favorite medium! The first three issues now available cover animation’s origins; icons like Betty, Mickey and Bugs; and the redefinition of cartoon cool with UPA and Chuck Jones.

(Complete the set in March with chapters on Saturday morning classics, the rise of Japanese anime and Pixar’s CG revolution.)

[Kindle/comiXology, $4 each] Frozen II: The Manga Relive Elsa’s thrilling quest to uncover the origin of her powers (with the help of Anna, Kristoff, Olaf and Sven, of course!) in this too-kawaii graphic novel adaptation. The Arendelle adventure is reinterpreted by established shoujo artist Arina Tanemure (Phantom Thief Jeanne, Full Moon) in classic black-and-white manga style. [VIZ Media, $15]

Jiang Ziya The visually stunning follow-up to Ne Zha follows the celestial army commander of legend. Banished 10 years to the mortal realm for disobeying the gods and sparing his demon quarry, Jiang Ziya is given another chance and must face his decision once more.

The Chinese box office hit comes home with a new English dub starring Christopher Sabat.

[Well Go USA, $30 BD/$25 DVD]

The Works of Hayao Miyazaki: The Master of Japanese Animation Japanese travel and culture writer Gael Berton explores the personality of one of animation’s greatest legends and his collaborators, deciphering the profound themes and poetic messages of Miyazaki’s work, movie by movie. [Third Editions, $30]

Disney nuiMOs The darling, dressable micro-plushes introduced in Disney Stores in Japan have arrived in NorAm and Europe, bringing collectible fashion fun at a manageable price. The cuddly Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Stitch and Angel were given looks by celeb stylist Maeve Reilly for their global debut. New characters, outfits and accessories (co-branded with Loungefly, Spirit Jersey, Ashley Eckstein and more) are on the way! [shopdisney. com; $18 per plush, outfits/accessories start at $13] ◆ www.animationmagazine.net 10

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Frame-By-Frame

March 1

There’s a full week left to catch the 25th Animac festival in Lleida, Spain and online.

This year’s special honorees are Joanna Quinn and Adam Elliott. [animac.cat]

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Kenji Iwaisawa’s one-man rock ‘n’ roll efort On Gaku: Our Sound comes home.

10 Lose yourself in the multiverse with Rick and Morty: The Complete Seasons 1-4 or fall into a perilous videogame fantasy with Monster Hunter on DVD/ Blu-ray.

The femme-tastic Austrian toon fest Tricky Women celebrates 10 years with its first online edition this week. [trickywomen.at]

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Ireland’s Animation Dingle packs two days full of screenings, workshops and conference programs.

[2021.animationdingle.com] Cheer on your favorite TV shows, movies and new media projects during the Producers Guild Awards. [producersguild.org]

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Two monster movie titans collide in Legendary/Warner Bros.’ Godzilla vs. Kong,

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A determined new heroine debuts in Raya and the Last Dragon on Disney+ today, directed by Don Hahn and Carlos López Estrada.

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As the only animated feature nominee, Turu, the Wacky Hen is a shoe-in for the Goya Awards, but the competition is still hot for best animated short and VFX. [premiosgoya.com]

The Lisbon-based Monstra animation fest kicks off its 20th edition today, running thru March 21. [monstrafestival.com]

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rampaging through select theaters and HBO Max today.

Meanwhile, season 2 of Solar Opposites lands on Hulu.

Don’t sleep on snagging one of the limited edition steelbook sets of The Legend of Korra - The Complete Series, out today!

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Grab your popcorn, Marvel fans: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier premieres on Disney+.

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The Netherlands’ Kaboom Animation Festival is finally ready to offer an explosion of films, workshops and weirdness thru April 4. [kaboomfestival.nl] ◆

To get your company’s events and products listed in this monthly calendar, please e-mail edit@animationmagazine.net. march 21 11

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Features

Frenemies in the Big City Tom and Jerry director Tim Story and his creative team talk about the joys of making a hybrid pic starring the beloved Hanna-Barbera duo.

By Ramin Zahed

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t’s hard to believe that Hanna-Barbera’s eternal cat-and-mouse frenemies will be turning 81 this year. With 164 shorts, nine TV series (original and packaged), three specials and 14 movies on their resume, Tom and Jerry are now wreaking havoc in their own Warner Bros. hybrid feature this month.

The high-energy romp is directed by Tim Story (Fantastic Four, Barbershop, Ride Along), produced by Chris DeFaria (The LEGO Movie 2, Gravity), with a script by Kevin Costello (Brigsby Bear) and stars the likes of Chloë Grace Moretz, Michael Peña, Rob Delaney, Colin Jost, Ken Jeong and Pallavi Sharda. The plot finds Tom being hired at a fancy New York City hotel to stop Jerry from wrecking a high-profile wedding. The two soon band together to stop a staffer who’s scheming against both of them.

“I was introduced to the project in the fall of 2018,” recalls Story during a recent phone interview. “I grew up on Tom and Jerry cartoons, and I could immediately rattle off my favorite episodes off the top of my head. I knew exactly which versions and which situations would work for a modern movie.”

Destructive Duo Story says the duo’s wild energy level and constant mayhem is hard to resist both for young kids and older audiences. “I remember watching

those cartoons and then taking the chairs in our house and making forts with blankets. I have a young son who used to do that all the time, too.

Tom and Jerry were destroying their house on a

‘I think we have delivered whatever audiences thought a new feature film with Tom and Jerry would be like and look like.’

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— Director Tim Story

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Features

A Nod to the Past: Spike the bulldog and some colorful elephants are some of Tom and Jerry’s famous animated friends that pop up in the new movie.

‘In animation, we looked for a balance where we could lean heavily into the original 2D style but still allow the 3D form of the characters to work seamlessly with real-world, often moving, cameras.’

— Animation director Michael Eames

regular basis. We just love to watch them chase each other around and cause trouble.”

The director says it was very important for him and his team to be true to the original spirit of the characters. “I knew I could capture that spirit and bring it into the modern day because I know the cartoons so well,” he explains. “We have seen Tom and Jerry destroy a home, so you want to go beyond the square footage of a home. You have a big hotel, and you have the real estate to have these characters really engage the audience. By being in New York, we had this larger canvas to pain on. We have 90 minutes and we could have this metropolis as our playing field for their destruction!”

One of the filmmakers’ go-to references for making a successful live-action/cartoon hybrid was Robert Zemeckis’s 1988 classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit. “That movie was one of our main inspirations,” says Story. “We made it hard on ourselves because we wanted a lot of interaction between the animated characters and the live-action world. We wanted to en-

gage fully with the environment. What’s fun about doing hybrid movies is trying to connect the tones, since animated characters have a different set of rules to live by. For example, they can’t die and there are certain things they can do that can’t be carried out in the human world. We had to make sure those two sets of rules co-existed.”

Story and his team tried to avoid looking at examples that had 3D CG characters sharing the screen with live-action actors. “I didn’t want that, because we wanted to go for a 2D-plus look. We didn’t want to have a ‘real’ CG cat and mouse in the human world. All the animals in our movie are cartoony and animated,” he explains.

The film’s animation director Michael Eames, agrees. “Tim definitely favored Tom and Jerry as they appear in the first Hannah-Barbera shorts of the ’40s and ’50s, but he wanted to explore how we could bring that 2D spirit into a real-world modern environment. Accepting these would be computer generated three dimensional characters, he was keen to see what

would happen if we mixed it up a little.”

To that end, Eames and his team at Framestore in London and Montreal (Tom and Jerry had a crew of roughly 700, including about 100 animators) experimented with different levels of texture, shaders, lighting levels and interactivity. They even explored how they could incorporate automated/drawn lines as an integral ingredient of their original look and feel. “In animation, we looked for a balance where we could lean heavily into the original 2D style but still allow the 3D form of the characters to work seamlessly with real-world, often moving, cameras,” explains Eames, whose many animation supe credits include Christopher Robin, Where the Wild Things Are and Children of Men. “The resulting final treatment is different to anything I’ve come across before,” he adds.

“Hopefully, we’ve come up with a way of presenting appealing characters rooted in the original style but fully integrated with our live-action cast and real-world environment. I do believe the movie has successfully brought Tom and Jerry into the present whilst at the same time paying homage to the charm and appeal of the original Hannah-Barbara characters.”

Eames points out that the project’s demands for the animation style were incredibly high, favoring a much more traditional approach than many VFX animators are used to.

“The team worked really hard to evoke the spirit of the original shorts, researching and incorporating the particular Tom and Jerry style into their animation,” he notes. “We developed new rigs that enabled us to squash, stretch and at times totally deform the characters. We changed our workflow to include a 2D draw-over phase to enable us to refine and better sculpt shapes we were not able to fully achieve in the animation process. Our software team amazingly developed an automated line generation tool to provide a 2D drawn feel to every single character frame.”

Hitting the Right Notes Visual effects supervisor Frazer Churchill also joined the project back in October of 2018.

“I came up with an idea, a series of shots in which Tom is playing the keyboard and Jerry sneaks up on him and ruins his playing,” he recalls. “In subsequently working on it with Framestore, we learned a lot about our approach to the movie and the look and development of the characters were really determined during this testing period.”

Churchill, whose credits include Wonder Woman, Children of Men and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, says he found it quite interesting to bring such iconic characters back to life and find a

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Features

Comedy Classics

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irector Tim Story and his animation team pay homage to some of the cartoon duo’s greatest hits in the new movie: Among them: Mouse Trouble. Tom tries to follow a book’s advice on how to get rid of mice in this 1944 Oscar winner for Best Short Subject, Cartoons. Directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, it was produced by Fred Quimby and featured animation by Ray Patterson, Irven Spence, Ken Muse and Pete Burness, with music direction by Scott Bradley.

Cat Concerto. This 29th Tom and Jerry short was released in theaters in April 1947. Produced

by Quimby and directed

by Hanna and Barbera with music supervision

by Bradley, the short featured animation by Ed Barge, Muse and Spence. The short finds concert pianist Tom in a formal tuxedo playing “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2”, which wakes Jerry who is sleeping inside the piano. Mayhem ensues!

The short won the Oscar for Best Short Subject, Cartoons, giving Tom and Jerry their fourth consecutive win at the Academy Awards.

Mouse in Manhattan. This 1945 one-reeler finds Jerry leaving his small country home and heading for the lights of the big city.

Famous for a sequence with Jerry dancing.

Directed by Hanna and Barbera, it was produced by Quimby and featured animation

by Spence, Barge, Muse and Roy Patterson.

It is one of the few cartoons in which Tom is only featured in a cameo. ◆

modern context for them. “All the senior creatives on the film are old enough to remember watching Tom and Jerry on the TV as kids and we all love them and have an innate understanding of their world,” he points out. “We tried very hard to find places to use classic Tom and Jerry objects — ‘Can we use an anvil here?’ and ‘This would be a great place for a frying pan gag’ — as well as using objects from the modern world, like smartphones and drones. It was great doing a project that involved so much animation. Dreaming up gags and creative cartoon violence was a great source of fun!”

A key challenge was recreating the film’s New York City setting in Warner Bros.’ Leavesden Studios in the U.K., with a couple of days of photography in Battersea Park. “It was a challenge to have the movie believably set in New York, but I spent a week there working with a small unit to get background plates, Framestore and our in-house team did a great job of believably crafting New York exterior scenes from the New York plate photography and digital stills,” says Churchill.

“Finding the overall aesthetic was also a big challenge,” he adds. “We knew that we wanted Tom and Jerry to retain their classic look from their Golden Era of the 1950s and early `60s but fit into a contemporary movie environment. They and all the other animals in the movie would be cartoons whilst everything else in the movie, including all the objects they interact with, would be photoreal.”

Among the demanding aspects of the project was to have Tom and Jerry interact with photoreal objects. “There’s a scene in which Jerry drops into a cake and is covered in [photoreal] icing,” Churchill mentions. “The cartoon elephants at the wedding have intricately decorative blankets over them. Mixing cartoon characters with photoreal objects was a

big challenge we had to solve, and Framestore’s lighting & look-dev team did a great job of mixing these two looks.”

Fans can also look forward to a terrific chase sequence toward the end of the movie where Tom and Jerry race through the streets of New York on a motorized skateboard. “This involved multiple camera array photography on the streets of New York, some seat-of-the-pants flying from our N.Y. aerial unit, an action unit working on the Leavesden backlot and some incredible environment work from the Framestore team,” notes Churchill. “I’m very proud of the end result, our cartoon characters really live in this action sequence and people are convinced we shot the movie in New York.”

All the restrictions brought about last year by the COVID pandemic also added new complications to the film’s production plans. “I was in London from March until the end of June, and then I moved back to L.A and did everything remotely. I remember I was on my way to do a testing in Los Angeles when my flight got cancelled,” recalls Story. “We had to switch gears early on and become a remotely posted film. I have to applaud what the team at Framestore was able to pull off. We found our footing quickly.”

Now that the movie is in the can, Story says he has loved this opportunity to bring these beloved animated characters to life in a contemporary world. “I think we delivered whatever audiences thought a new feature film with Tom and Jerry would be like and look like,” he concludes. “I believe the spirit of the original cartoon lives and breathes in the film. I am excited that audiences will be able to see Tom and Jerry destroy stuff like they did in the old cartoons!” ◆ Warner Bros. premieres Tom and Jerry on HBO Max and in select theaters nationwide on February 26.

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Features

“The most distinctive visual concepts to come out of DreamWorks Animation since SHREK. Dominated by bright, shape-shifting imagery that mutates across multiple sceneries, TROLLS WORLD TOUR is

BEST ANIMATED FILM Produced By GINA SHAY p.g.a.

Directed By WALT DOHRN

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS MATT BAER Visual Effects Supervisor

CARLOS FERNANDEZ PUERTOLAS Head Of Character Animation STEPHEN WOOD Head Of Effects TODD JANSEN Head Of Layout

universalpicturesawards.com ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. march 21 15 © 2019 DREAMWORKS ANIMATION LLC.

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Features

All Eyes on Ghibli’s First CG Heroine Director Gorō Miyazaki discusses his buzzy new movie Earwig and the Witch and the reasons he opted for a 3D CG look.

By Charles Solomon

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ne of the most-anticipated animated films of 2021 is Gorō Miyazaki’s Earwig and the Witch, based on the juvenile novel by Diana Wynne Jones (the author of Howl’s Moving Castle), which debuts February 5 on HBO Max. It’s Studio Ghibli’s first 3D CG feature and Miyazaki’s first theatrical film since the hit From Up on Poppy Hill in 2011.

Miyazaki recently talked to Animation Magazine about the film in an interview via Zoom from Studio Ghibli(with Yuriko Banno translating). Early on in our conversation, he noted that Earwig had a very different genesis from Poppy Hill.

“Hayao Miyazaki and Keiko Niwa wrote the script for From Up Poppy Hill, handed it to me and said I should make a film of it,” he recalled. “Although I changed a few things along the way, the script was already there before I started the film.

This time, Hayao Miyazaki read the original novel and said, ‘This is a very interesting story, why don’t you make a film out of it?’ So I worked with Keiko Niwa and Emi Gunji to create the script.”

His decision to make the film in 3D CG instead

‘I hope that people won’t stay away from the film just because it’s the first 3D CG film from Studio Ghibli and doesn’t have our traditional cel look. I just want people to give it a chance.’

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— Director Gorō Miyazaki

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Features of Ghibli’s signature hand-drawn animation has already sparked widespread discussion online.

“Studio Ghibli will continue to create handdrawn 2D animation, but I felt we needed to take on new challenges as a studio,” Miyazaki said. “It’s important for us to be able to do both traditional hand-drawn animation and 3D CG. After doing the TV series Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter (2014), I really felt the potential of 3D CG animation, so I wanted to take on that challenge.”

“If I had made Earwig and the Witch in 2D, it would probably have been a completely different film,” he continued. “There are beautiful things about hand-drawn animation and great things about 3D CG: you have to make the most of the strengths of each method. It’s not a matter of good or bad; they each have their strengths. For example, in very short sequences, with CG, you have to create the whole set and the props, which is a lot of work. In 2D, you just draw that stuff.

Conversely, I found CG is able to capture the nuances of the facial expressions of the characters.”

Spellbound: Although some critics have noted that its CG animation might not be everyone’s cup of tea, Gorō Miyazaki’s Earwig and the Witch features charming characters, a cozy British world and a memorable talking cat.

Making a More Likeable Heroine In contrast to Umi, the modest, industrious protagonist of Poppy Hill, Earwig is a willful, self-possessed girl from a British orphanage who delights in getting other people to carry out her wishes.

Her resolve is challenged when she’s adopted into the home of the witch Bella Yaga and a mysterious, powerful figure known only as The Mandrake. One of the challenges Miyazaki faced was making Earwig a more sympathetic character than she was in the book.

“Umi perseveres and doesn’t show her true feelings: A lot of Japanese can see themselves in her,” he explains. “Earwig is very headstrong. She knows what she wants and works hard for it. I wanted her to be an inspiration for younger people to go about their lives in that way. But we wanted to avoid her coming across as manipulative. It was definitely a challenge.”

Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle is a long, complicated novel. However, Earwig and the Witch is brief — only 117 pages in large type with numerous illustrations — and more limited in scope. Miyazaki and the screenwriters added a backstory to explain why Earwig was left at St. Morwald’s Home for Children with a note that read, “Got the other 12 witches all chasing me. I’ll be back for her when I’ve shook them off. It may take years.”

“We wanted to tell the story of where Earwig came from, so we tried to come up with an interesting backstory,” Miyazaki said. “I ended up with rock music and that her mother had been in a band. The film is set some time in the ‘90s, so if you do the math, her mother was probably young in the ‘70s, when there was so much rock music I like. We’re using 3D CG animation for the first time in a Studio Ghibli film, so why not use rock

Gorō Miyazaki

music for the first time, too?”

The designs for the characters in Earwig and the Witch were partially influenced by Miho Satake’s illustrations for the Japanese edition of the novel, which in turn reveal the influence of Paul O. Zelinsky’s original drawings. Rather than rendering every hair on the characters’ heads and every stitch in their sweaters, as many American films do, the designs are more stylized. Earwig’s brown ponytails and Bella Yaga’s tangled blue curls look like they’ve been piped out of a pastry tube. Thomas, the black cat who shifts from serving as Bella Yaga’s familiar to Earwig’s ally, is as stylized as Jiji in Kiki’s Delivery Service, but in very different ways. This new look is partially the result of the ongoing cross-Pacific cross-pollination in animation.

“When we were starting Earwig and thinking about the look we wanted, some people from the Laika Studio came over to our studio and showed us puppets from Kubo and the Two Strings,” Mi-

yazaki recalled. “I wanted Earwig to have a more cartoonish look: not too photorealistic, but I didn’t want to go too stop-motion puppet-y. The puppets the Laika people brought were a big inspiration for character designs. Not just Kubo himself — even the monkey’s hair looked like scales, rather than individual strands, which was kind of interesting. Instead of rendering each strand of hair, we have masses of hair in bunches.”

Although Earwig was an official selection at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival and has received an Oscar-qualifying run through GKIDS, Miyazaki worries that American fans may not accept the idea of a Studio Ghibli CG film. He concluded, “I hope that people won’t stay away from the film just because it’s the first 3D CG film from Studio Ghibli and doesn’t have our traditional cel look. I just want people to give it a chance.” ◆ Studio Ghibli’s Earwig and the Witch premieres on HBO Max on February 5.

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Features

Robinson Crusoe Goes Postmodern Helmer Anca Damian follows up Marona with The Island, a wild, surreal, musical take on the castaway saga.

By Ramin Zahed

O

ver two years ago, Romanian director Anca Damian made a huge splash with her much-loved, award-winning feature Marona’s Fantastic Tale, which pushed the artistic envelope while telling a deeply moving story about a dog’s experiences. This year, the brilliant auteur is back with a new movie that is ready to shake up the status quo, deliver eye-popping visuals and offer some clever insights about the human condition in the modern world.

The film, which is set to make its premiere at the Cartoon Movie event in Bordeaux, France in March, is a wild re-interpretation of the classic tale of Robinson Crusoe. However, it clearly has a lot on its mind, as Damian offers commentary on race relations, the plight of immigrants and our planet’s tragic environmental future. Did we mention it’s also a musical and features peculiar sea sirens as well?

We had to ask the bold animation director about what prompted her to follow up Marona with something so amazingly different? “The project was inspired by a concert performed by Romanian singer Ada Milea and Romanian/ British violinist Alexander Balanescu about 10 years ago, which was based on the Gellu

Naum’s play Insula (English: The Island), that was a reinterpretation of Daniel Defoe’s novel – Robinson Crusoe,” Damian explains. “This chain of reinterpretations would not have tempted me if I wouldn’t be interested in giving my vision on the present reality of ecological collapse and refugees issues.”

Witnessing Society’s Collapse Damian says the surreal premise of the movie is taken in a purely artistic direction which departs from conventional storytelling to speak of current affairs through visual poetry and symbolism. “I take a stand about the conflict of interest that is changing the policies in Europe, but I do it with a touch of a poetic imaginary that borders the mythological tale,” she explains. “The issues are presented through highly figurative symbolism that contrasts with the light tone of the music. While the literal setting is not realistic, the statements are subtly issued through the visuals. Plausibility is completely disregarded, yet the surreal narration echoes the grim reality of the refugees nowadays.”

The animation for The Island is split between studios in Romania, France and Belgium (Aparte

Film, Komadoli, Take Five) and some of the same team that worked on Marona also worked on this movie (Gina Thorstensen, Dan Panaitescu, Mathieu Labeye, Julien Dexant, Hefang Wei, Chloé Roux) as well as newcomers Gilles Cuvelier and Mathieu Perrier.

“The visual style of the animation is different from Marona,” Damian notes. “The look is immersive so we have a lot of 3D and a lot of liquid and fluid elements in Houdini. The characters are 2D but much more realistic, and have also real textures on the top, so that involved a lot of cut-out animation. The pipeline followed the same way I had done before, by giving feedback literally to everyone, on a full-time (24 hour/day) basis, and coordinating all the process. Being a much more complex animation and out of the box project, it was quite exhausting, I confess, but it was also very exciting.”

Looking back at the four-year journey of the movie, Damian says the biggest challenge was that the final film couldn’t have been imagined at the script level. Yet she still had to finance it at that stage. “As a postmodern conceptual work, the subject of the film could not be judged by dogmas of narrative structure and cinematic dis-

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Features U.S. As the space should be immersive, the sets are in 3D. The tone of the movie is constantly oneiric and poetic. The animation was carefully planned to create the dreamlike universe where every detail is planned to be narrative. There was a great investment in conceptual art, since it lies at the core of the story in this particular storytelling approach. The locations and the characters are charged with suggestive power.”

Music to Soothe the Savage Soul

Island of Lost Souls: Anca Damian follows Marona’s Fantastic Tale with The Island, a bold, surreal and very modern take on Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.

‘Everything happens while we live through the consequences of the ecological imbalance that we created on this planet, so in a way we contemplate the end of the world. It is a colorful, poetic and funny musical fable — a mix of The Little Prince, Robinson Crusoe and Monty Python’s Flying Circus!’

— Writer-director Anca Damian

course,” she explains. “The story is structured very unconventionally, with an emphasis on the association of symbolic images. The narrative pulse is linked to the animation and is meant to flow as a poem. Images and sound (music) are placed in the foreground, emphasizing the fact that the film creates patterns in space, images-representations and vivid paintings. So, the film seeks to rediscover its primary function of spectacle, analyzing the possibilities of moving the spectator through the image and the music, rather than through the story. In its allegorical form full of irony and lyricism, the film is found in this rare vein which combines entertainment, effective surrealism and obvious absurdity.”

In other words, she explains, “It is a very outof-the-box project, and even people who worked on the film realized what I had in my head only

when it was finished. But all of those elements are also what I like about it!”

How does it compare with Marona? Damian admits that the only elements that connect her films are the themes. “All my films speak about ‘life is a love lesson,’ but in totally different registers or stories,” she notes. “The visual design is following the concept of trying to reproduce a (sur)realistic environment, where the audience should feel immersed; the beauty of the colors is highly attractive but at the same time insinuating a feeling of sickness. The colors of the sea (turquoise), of the clouds (pink) look like paradise but the chemical feeling is haunting.”

The concept is a different story: “Everything mankind does should have a realistic texture, because it never integrates in nature. I got a lot of inspiration from the Burning Man event in the

As in Marona, music plays a very important role in The Island’s universe. “I usually work on the music with the composer before starting the animation,” Damian explains. “Here, I had the music before writing the script. Additionally, this process was difficult as the musicians played this concert almost a decade ago, and now, I had to convince them to change it. It was also a moment when we added two additional voices (altogether a quartet and four singers) when the reality of the new reinterpretation came to life.

What is also unique with this project is that I am working with a choreographer, Andrea Gavriliu, for the movements of the animated characters. It is a great joy and inspiration. In this project, all the arts have found their place!”

Now that she is inviting the world to take a peek at her latest opus, Damian hopes to open new eyes to our 21st century demons and poetic solutions. “The Island is an animated musical that offers the audience a poetic take on the solitude of the individual and the search for meaning on a planet that has collapsed,” Damian muses. “One of its strong assets is its reinterpretation of the story of Robinson Crusoe, updated to our times when we try to repair the colonist’s behavior but we are still limited by the rules and hypocrisy. Everything happens while we live through the consequences of the ecological imbalance that we created on this planet, so in a way we contemplate the end of the world. It is a colorful, poetic and funny musical fable — a mix of The Little Prince, Robinson Crusoe and Monty Python’s Flying Circus!”

Damian leaves us with her take on the state of animation in 2021. “I do think that every year, animation gains a wider audience as well as more respectability as an art form, and not only seen as children entertainment,” she concludes. “The richness of the language and the unlimited possibilities are getting their rightful place in both the history of cinema and in the eyes of audiences around the world.” ◆ The Island is one of the 55 new animated features presented at this year’s edition of Cartoon Movie, March 9-11. For more info, visit apartefilm.net/portfolio-items/the-island.

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Features

Double Vision Acclaimed Paris-based company Autour de Minuit brings two innovative animated features to Cartoon Movie this year.

Living Like a Refugee: Based on a popular graphic novel by Vincent Zabus and Hippolyte, Shadows centers on a brother and sister who are forced to leave their homeland after it’s ravaged by oppressive forces.

N

icolas Schmerkin, the founder of Paris-based company Autour de Minuit, is having a busy year. Not only is he getting ready for award season with two acclaimed shorts (Alberto Vázquez’s Homeless Home, which is nominated for a Goya prize, and Geoffroy de Crécy’s Annecy Cristal-nominated Empty Places), he is also presenting two movies in development at Bordeaux’s annual Cartoon Movie event.

Oh, and he’s producing Vázquez’s much-anticipated feature Unicorn Wars, which chronicles the age-old war between militarized bears and the dangerous unicorns that threaten them!

Schmerkin, who won the 2010 Oscar for Best Animated Short for Logorama and has produced numerous well-known shorts such as Decorado, Metamorphosis and I Want Pluto to Be a Planet Again, was kind enough to give us the scoop on Shadows and The Midnight King, two innovative and highly original features he’s pitching at Cartoon Movie in March.

Shadows is adapted from a brilliant comic book written by Belgian author Vincent Zabus and illustrated by French talent Hippolyte.

“The comic is itself an adaptation of a theater play created years previously by Vincent Zabus together with African migrants, based on their own stories of exile,” says Schmerkin. “It seems that every time this narrative is adapted into another medium (from true stories onto a theater stage, turned to a graphic novel, then to a film), it gains further depth and universality.”

The producer discovered the book in a comic-book store in Clermont-Ferrand during the

city’s short film festival three years ago. He recalls, “I was immediately in awe of both the storytelling and the colorful illustrations. I showed the book to Nadia Micault, a talented director and accomplished artist we’d been working with on several shorts and music videos. I was sure that she would love to join this kind of project, and she did. We started the development very recently, mid 2020, when our Belgium co-producers Vincent Tavier and Hugo Deghilage from Panique! started to raise funds and find subsidies for the writing phase.”

According to Schmerkin, everything moved quickly from that point on. “We started the pilot for the Cartoon Movie in October when we got some development money from Europe (Media) and France, and here we are now, with a pilot and a script, ready to start pre-production as soon as we get the financing,” he explains.

A Potent Mix of Magic and Realism The producer says he loved the original comic book’s colorful drawings and was struck by the power of the story and how it tackled social issues such as exile, migration and family uprooting and mixing in a dark fairy tale with humor, surrealism and songs. “Shadows is about a 14-year-old boy and his nine-year-old sister who have to leave their home village and embark on an adventure as they look for their father and better prospects,” notes Schmerkin.

“Based on true stories, and without sugarcoating or bowdlerizing heartbreaking realities, the immense power of this work is the way it tells

a universal story. Animation will bring a touch of softness and a more poetic dimension to the story. The visual universe brings enormous potential to the storytelling for different age groups: While children can connect to the siblings’ relationship and quest, adults will understand the social and political issues.”

Visually, the film will combine some CG elements with a 2D look. “The director works a lot with paper and watercolor and does wonderful backgrounds with a lot of detail and hatching, similar to an engraving style,” says Schmerkin. “Her input will definitely be determining the style of the film, close to her illustrations. Perhaps the closest references would be Miyazaki’s works. At the development stage we are mainly working with both our studio ADV in Paris and our studio Schmuby/Borderline in Angouleme, where we have gathered a great team of experienced talents in feature animations. Most of them have worked on acclaimed feature films such as The Red Turtle and The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily.”

The budget for Shadows is estimated to be around 6 million euros ($7.3 million). Autour de Minuit is co-developing the film with its Belgian partners and long-time friends Panique!, the studio behind movies such as A Town Called Panic and Ernest & Celestine. The producer believes that a third country will probably be necessary to finance the production. “We are already very lucky and honored to have great interest from sales agent Grégoire Melin and his team from Kinology.

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Features Escape from Reality: The Midnight King is a fantasy about a young boy who is haunted by dark forces.

The project definitely seems to be spiking interest and enthusiasm, the Cartoon Movie will be the first big meeting with the market and we look forward to presenting all our work and development up to now.”

A Boy’s Demons Autour de Minuit’s second feature at Cartoon Movie is The Midnight King, an intriguing feature about a young boy who leaves his troubled home for an enchanted forest, only to discover that the woods are cursed and his fears have followed him there. The timeless, fantastical tale is directed by Oscar nominee Chris Lavis (NFB’s Madame Tutli-Putli) and Maciek Szczerbowski.

“The Midnight King was born out of our long history of collaborating with the musician Patrick Watson, who created the soundtracks and landscapes for our film Nightmare and our VR experience Gymnasia,” says Lavis. “In the development of our films we are generally first inspired by fragments of scenes or images. We collect these fragments, hoping that they will challenge us to create a story around them.

For The Midnight King, we also had Patrick’s musical explorations to work with. To our delight, the story revealed itself out of that soup: a musical odyssey about a runaway boy and a girl with silver eyes and legs of glass.”

From there it was a question of finding collaborators and producers who were just as excited to be on the journey with Lavis and his team. “We had been searching for years for the right project to bring to Luc Déry and Kim McCraw at micro_scope in Montreal, and had long admired Nicolas Schmerkin’s eye for films and his studio’s talent roster from our years on the festival circuit,” says the helmer.

“They all came on board early and we’ve been developing the movie together ever since.”

‘Our main challenge is to tell a serious, sometimes dark, story about exile and migration to a young audience. We believe it’s an important topic to be taught and shown to children.’

— Producer Nicolas Schmerkin

Lavis says he has no preferred techniques or dogmas except perhaps one — that the story should always drive the method. “As the story is revealed, so is the method,” he explains. “Because we began the process by drawing — usually we build props and puppets — it became obvious to us that the most emotionally and visually satisfying way of telling the story we wanted to tell was in the medium of drawn, 2D animation.”

The director says this required a leap in thinking. “It was like starting all over again,” he points out. “At first, we thought all the tricks we had learned from stop-motion (from live video animatics to puppet and set building) would be worthless in 2D, but we’ve found just the opposite. Thanks to the affordability of 3D scanners and new production pipelines that integrate CG and 2D, we’ve discovered that many of our stop-motion techniques flow right into a modern 2D pipeline.”

Among the inspirations for the feature, Lavis cites Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke, Sylvain Chomet’s The Triplets of Belleville and Disney’s The Rescuers. “All three are features with bold, personal drawing styles,” says Lavis.

“However, once we started developing the pipeline with our collaborators, the more we were able to leave these initial references behind and find our own voice in the medium.”

The filmmaker estimates the feature’s budget to be around 10 million dollars. He adds, “It will be a co-production between Canada, France and probably a third country. We are now focused on finishing a two-minute pilot.”

Of course, the animated movie landscape keeps getting busier and more competitive.

We had to ask Lavis why he thinks The Midnight King stands out? “Many of this century’s most experimental, outrageous and courageous films have come from artists working in animation,” he responds. “However, there is also a side to our business that is extremely conservative and risk-averse. Feature animation, in particular, has suffered from the perception that animated films must target either an adult or child audience. This false divide limits funders and creators alike. The Midnight King doesn’t fit neatly into either box. We seek an intergenerational, ‘crossover’ audience, children and adults who hunger for an experience that reaches across mediums and categories and speaks to them personally.”

As in many of Autour de Minuit’s projects, music plays an important role in Lavis’ feature. “Animation’s dirty secret is just how important music and sound is to the success and emotional weight of a film,” he explains. “Luckily, we believe, the songs Patrick Watson has written for The Midnight King are some of the best work he’s done in his life. But the prospect of an animated musical is still daunting. For this film we’ve never been more reliant on sound, because Patrick is a co-writer who is building the movie with us from the ground up. That’s frightening and exciting, as all creation ought to be!” ◆ You can find out more about the French studio at autourdeminuit.com.

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Features

A Slavic Heroine Spreads Her Wings Animagrad Studio’s much-anticipated feature Mavka. The Forest Song is ready for the global market.

A

beautiful Ukrainian wood nymph’s fantastic adventures are at the heart of the upcoming CG-animated feature Mavka. The Forest Song. The lovingly crafted movie, which is produced by Ukrainian media group Film.UA and its subsidiary Animagrad Animation Studio, promises to be quite a cultural event when it is released in theaters in 2022. The film’s producers Iryna Kostyuk and Egor Olesov were kind enough to give us a sneak peek at their exciting new project.

Kostyuk and Olesov point out that the film’s key sources of inspiration are Ukrainian and Slavic mythology as well as some of the literary classics of the region, including The Forest Song, a famous poem by Lesya Ukrainka. “Our main character is a unique, complex and powerful female icon that has never been brought out to the world before, especially in animation form, which is universal language,” says Kostyuk. “Mavka is a creature of ancient legends transformed into a symbol of undying love by the genius of poetess Lesya Ukrainka. While the animated movie is rich in Slavic authenticity and charm, we believe that its central plot and themes have universal appeal for audiences of all ages.”

Adds Olesov, “Mavka is quite a well-known character in Ukraine. That’s why the power of the brand is huge locally, which allowed us to ink and get out into a nationwide retail numerous licensing deals well in advance of the premier of the actual movie, which is truly a unique

case. Ukraine celebrates Lesya Ukrainka’s 150th birthday nationally in 2021 and this significant cultural event holds a lot of meaning for our team and this project. Thus, a number of events will be held by our team with the support from state institutions such as the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine and State Film Agency.”

The Spirit of Preservation The producers also point out that the film carries out two important missions that are close to their hearts. “One is spotlighting environmental issues in Ukraine, raising aware-

ness of the extinction of endangered species of flora and fauna of the region, some of which are featured in the movie,” says Kostyuk. “The other is exporting the diversity of Ukrainian and Slavic heritage worldwide. This is why our project is supported by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, the State Film Agency, as well as World Wildlife Fund, Ukraine.”

Directed by Oleksandra Ruban and Oleg Malamuzh, the project’s animation is produced mostly at the Animagrad studio in Kyiv. According to the producers, more than 200 people are involved in the production process. The film will Wild Creatures: Inspired by beloved Ukrainian legends and folklore, Mavka.

The Forest Song also features lively sidekicks and magical creatures.

‘Our hope is that the audiences worldwide will be inspired to “be like Mavka,” that is, to share her values and ​​ adopt her style, which is visually expressed in the combination of themes of nature and authenticity in a modern interpretation.’

— Producers Iryna Kostyuk and Egor Olesov

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certainly have a strong presence at the upcoming European Film Market in Berlin in March as well as other movie events throughout the year such as Cannes and American Film Market. Of course, producing the movie as the world was dealing with the COVID pandemic had its share of challenges. “We don’t have a full-fledged market in Ukraine of modern high-quality 3D animation, so Animagrad studio faces the challenge (as well as the national responsibility) of creating it,” says Olesov. “Producing European and even better quality of animation at a sane cost — is our competitive advantage. The Animagrad strategy is to release our movies both locally and internationally and introduce our series of movies with unique, powerful female characters which are either based on real characters or popular iconic myths. Our first movie The Stolen Princess centered on Mila, the Princess of Kyiv, which we’ll follow up with Mavka, and then we have Roxelana, who saves the world from a global war. Our first movie, The Stolen Princess, has already blazed the trail by being released in more than 50 countries.”

The producers also point out that although animation in Ukraine is relatively young, the industry is growing at a rapid pace and shows lots of potential. “Ukrainian studios are successfully working on commercial and festival animation films,” notes Olesov. “Several Ukrainian animation projects, feature films and series have shown quite a lot of promise in recent years both locally and internationally. There are many talented artists in Ukraine and animated content can travel around the world and open up many interesting business and cultural opportunities for Ukraine. We are absolutely open to effective international partnerships and hope that in the near future, we’ll be able to share with the world many

new interesting stories through animation.”

Both producers are quite passionate about their film’s environmental message. “One of our goals was to spotlight the issues of deforestation in Ukraine and the extinction of rare animal and plant species,” explains Kostyuk.

“To raise awareness, Mavka’s forest will be populated with some animals from endangered list, such as a lynx, bison, a black stork and a brown bear, and some of them play quite a role in the plot. We used real Ukrainian forests as location references for the film.

During the script stage, our Mavka team used consultants from WWF Ukraine, who held lectures, workshops and an expedition to forests for our animators, so that the magical forest and its inhabitants in the animated feature felt as authentic and alive as possible.”

Saving the Missing Lynx “We also initiated a long-term charity project titled ‘Save the Lynx!’ in support of the Eurasian lynx and its extinction,” she adds. “The money raised by this campaign, including part of the proceeds from the sale of licensed goods under the Mavka brand, is used to study the population of this rare species. This campaign won a United Nations Global Compact in Ukraine Partnership for Sustainability Award.”

Also high on the list of the production’s initiatives is using the movie to spread awareness of Ukrainian culture and literary classics. “We have all the support of the state, which recognizes the importance of the project to the nation as well as its international potential,” notes Kostyuk. “The project has twice received funding from the State Film Agency of Ukraine first in September 2016 and then in October 2020. The state has been helpful throughout this project and a lot of plans are set for 2021 to coincide with the 150th anni-

versary of The Forest Song’s author.”

Special attention has also been paid to the film’s visual language, which celebrates Slavic ornaments, symbols, ancient runes and patterns from Ukrainian embroidery. Experts from the leading ethnographic research institutions of Ukraine (the Department of Folklore Studies of the National University, the Ivan Honchar Museum and the Museum of the History of Ukrainian Fashion) worked with the team to interpret them for the film’s state-ofthe-art 3D CG animation.

When all is said and done, the producers would love audiences to feel inspired by their film’s fascinating heroine. “Mavka brings another strong female character into Ukrainian and European animation,” they point out. “Our hope is that the audiences worldwide will be inspired to ‘be like Mavka,’ that is, to share her values ​​and adopt her style, which is visually expressed in the combination of themes of nature and authenticity in a modern interpretation.

The animated film’s ability to appeal to a wide family audience was appreciated by international buyers and distributors long before its release. The distribution rights have been acquired by 10 companies covering more than 20 countries in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. In short, the most exciting thing about our project is that Mavka will give the audience something new — a world that has ever been seen in the world of animation before.” ◆ Animagrad/Film.UA Group’s Mavka. The Forest Song will have a strong presence at the European Film Market in Berlin in March. For more info about the movie, visit mavka.ua.

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Opportunities Illustration from the popular book Dr. Seuss’s Oh the Places You’ll Go, which tells readers, “You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’d decide where to go. You’ll look up and down streets. Look ‘em over with care!” © Random House, 1990.

Autonomous Animator

By Martin Grebing

Helpful Tips on Landing Your First Job in the Biz

S

o, you’ve recently graduated or are going to be graduating soon and you’re not sure how to go about finding a good animation or visual effects job, or at least the right one for you. If it offers any comfort, you’re not alone.

But truth be told, the single most important ingredient needed to brew the magical formula of being happy in your career while simultaneously increasing your chances of finding just the right position at just the right company lies within the answer to the following question: What is your passion purpose?

In other words, what is it that you really want to do? Forget settling. Settling is what happens when you don’t have anything better to do. And as someone pursuing a career in the animation and/or visual effects field, you clearly have lots of better things to do.

Listing Is a Virtue

Do some serious soul-searching and create a list, circling the top one or two things that you would be completely smitten doing which could potentially occupy 50-80 hours per week for the next 10 years of your life. If nothing on your list truly inspires you to commit to this level, keep searching until you find something that does.

Next, create as long of a list as possible of companies (at least 25) that may have this position available. Create a spreadsheet of resume submission guidelines, contact informa-

tion, deadlines and other pertinent information so that you have all the required content organized by company and ready to go.

Start with a Pole, Finish with a Net

When seeking employment opportunities, you should always pursue the ideal scenario first. Start with the top three most dreamed about companies on your list. Do all the research on these companies and the position as you possibly can, talk to as many people at these companies as you possibly can, and find out as much as you possibly can about their interviewing, review and hiring processes so you can be as prepared as possible with your application and subsequent call back or interview.

Now, chances are, your top three dream companies are probably on many people’s top three dream companies list. Most people shoot right for the top because those are the most visible if not the most obvious targets.

But keep in mind that Pixar, Disney, DreamWorks and the like only have so many positions available in their company, not to mention a never-ending torrent of applications that could seemingly keep them busy sifting for the next several millennia.

In other words, competition for jobs at blockbuster animation studios is fierce. So, if after putting your best foot forward you do not receive a call back and/or are not invited to schedule an interview, keep your chin up

and be open to exploring the other options on your list. After all, isn’t pursuing your passion purpose and being happy and fruitful in your career far more important than the status of the company for which you work? Obviously, there can be overlap between the two, but maybe ask yourself this question: would you rather sweep floors at a top-three dream company or would you rather be the animation director of really cool projects at a smaller company?

The reality is that people rarely land their ultimate dream job right out of college. This is often something that takes time, practice, experience, credentials, referrals and good fortune. So don’t let initial rejection dissuade you from pursuing your dream career even if you don’t land a dream job at your dream company right out of the gate.

Instead, expand your reach. Broaden your target base. Instead of using a fishing pole with a single line, focusing only on one small area, expand your reach with a net. Look for companies that may be a little more off the mainstream radar but have really great things happening nonetheless. As long as you can land as close as possible to your passion purpose, you’re off to a golden start. ◆ Martin Grebing is the president of Funnybone Animation Studios. He can be reached at www.funnyboneanimation.com.

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Spotlight

15 Movies to Track at Cartoon Movie ‘21

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ne of the most exciting aspects of France’s Cartoon Movie pitching and co-pro event, which takes place March 9-11 this year, is that we are treated to a great snapshot of what European animation filmmakers are working on in the years ahead. Here is a sampler of 15 titles that piqued our interest. We’ll be watching their progress closely and hopefully we can all get to see them in a theater or on a streaming service in the near future. (Please check our website for full coverage of the event in March.)

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

The official synopsis for this adaptation of short stories by Haruki Murakami is as intriguing as you can imagine from the brilliant Japanese writer of award-winning books such as Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and 1Q84. “A lost cat, a giant talkative frog and a tsunami help a banker, his frustrated wife and a schizophrenic accountant save Tokyo from an earthquake.” First-time writer-director Pierre Földes, who has many credits as a composer (L.I.E., Babylon Fields) is the talented man in charge of this 2D-animated French-Belgian-Canadian co-production. (Cinema Defacto, Miyu Productions, Doghouse Films, Micro_scope, Unite Centrale and Cinema De Facto).

Caramel’s Words

European Film Award winner Salvador Simó (Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles) is back with another fascinating adaptation of a book

by Gonzalo Moure. The plot centers on a deaf child who lives in a refugee camp in the Sahara and forms a friendship with a camel by reading the animal’s lips. Spanish company Koniec Films is producing this poignant tale about a young poet’s coming of age.

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The Character of Rain

In this charming, eccentric movie directed by Liane-Cho Han (storyboard artist and animation director on films such as Calamity, The Illusionist, Zarafa, Ethel & Ernest, Leap!, Long Way North and The Little Prince) and written by Han and Aude Py, a two-and-a-half-year-old Belgian girl born in Japan thinks she is God, that she can make plants grow in the garden, or cross the sea by foot. But her world soon falls apart when she learns that she will have to leave Japan eventually.

Based on Belgian author Amélie Nothomb’s bestselling book. Produced by Maybe Movies and Ikki Films (France).

Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness

This eighth movie by Belgian studio nWave is directed by Ben Stassen (Fly Me to the Moon, A Turtle’s Tale, Son of Bigfoot, The Queen’s Corgi) and Benjamin Mousquet, with a script by Dave Collard (staff writer on Family Guy). The hero of the tale is Chickenhare, half-chicken and half-hare, who has to disguise himself as a hare to avoid being bullied by his peers. Accompanied by his faithful servant Abe (a sarcastic turtle) and Meg (a martial arts expert skunk), he sets out to find the powerful scepter of the Hamster of Darkness before his evil Uncle Lapin gets his paws on it.

A co-pro between nWave and Octopolis in France.

Eyeballed

Animation veteran Paul Bolger (director of Happily N’Ever After, storyboard artist on features such as The Pirates!

Band of Misfits, lead animator on The Thief and The Cobbler) is attached to this feature about a big bad monster known as Balor of the Evil Eye, whose gentle side is awakened when he meets six-year-old twin girls named Ifa and Shifra. Script is penned by Irish scribe Barry Devlin (A Man of No Importance, My Mother and Other Strangers) and produced by Irish toon veteran, Monster Entertainment chair Andrew Fitzpatrick. www.animationmagazine.net 26

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Spotlight Flee

Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s powerful animated documentary, which premiered at Sundance in January, centers on an Afghan man who arrives in Denmark as an unaccompanied minor. Years later, he is a successful academic and is getting married to his long-time boyfriend, but a secret from his past threatens to ruin his life forever. Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau will voice the leads in an English-language version, and serve as exec producers. The project is produced by Final Cut for Real (Denmark) and co-produced by Mer Film (Norway), Most Alice (Sweden), Sun Creature (Denmark) and Vivement Lundi! (France).

Golem

The latest work from Czech stop-motion master Jiří Barta’s (Pied Piper, Toys in the Attic) is set against the backdrop of communist Prague in the 1950s and follows the adventures of a math student who sets out on a quest to find the famous Golem and bring it back to life. Produced by Vladimir Lhoták at Czech studio Hausboot.

Granny Samurai - The Monkey King and I

A young schoolboy finds his life completely turned around when his neighbor Granny Samurai defends him against the school bully and then takes him on an adventure to stop a scheming Monkey King. The high-energy movie is based on the popular book by John Chambers and directed by Jesper Møller, a European animation veteran who directed Asterix and the Vikings and Sandman and the Lost Sand of Dreams and also worked on Eight Crazy Nights, All Dogs Go to Heaven, Quest for Camelot and FernGully: The Last Rainforest. Germany’s Dreamin Dolphin Film and Denmark’s Parka Pictures are producing.

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Spotlight Maryam and Varto

Written and directed by Gorune Aprikian (Passade) and Alexandre Heboyan (director of Mune: Guardian of the Moon and animator on Kung Fu Panda, Monsters vs. Aliens and Azur & Asmar), this emotionally charged drama centers on two Armenian children caught up in the 1915 turmoil who are saved by a young teenage Turk and embark on an enchanted journey through Anatolia. The film has a modern-day coda as well. Produced by French outfits Tchack (Matthieu Liégeois) and Araprod (Marie-Claude Arbaudie).

Ninn

Based on a series of original graphic novels by Jean-Michel Darlot and Johan Pilet, this ambitious feature adaptation follows the adventures of a mysterious 11-year-old girl who has a magical connection to the Paris Metro and explores the dark tunnels and abandoned stations with an origami tiger who is her protector and guide. The project is exec produced by TeamTO co-founder Corinne Kouper (Yellowbird, PJ Masks, Angelo Rules) with creative development by industry veteran Mary Bredin (Justin Time, True and the Rainbow Kingdom, Pikwik Pack).

Sorya

Funan writer and director Denis Do is back with this lovely slice-of-life effort about a 17-year-old Cambodian girl who experiences the ups and downs of life in Phnom Penh as she works in a textile factory and sings karaoke at a local bar in hopes of finding stardom. The script is penned

by Do, Louise Dubois and Tevy Dubray. Produced by France's Special Touch Studios (Sébastien Onomo).

Tales of the Hedgehog

The dynamic duo of Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli return in top form with this beautiful pic about a 10-year-old girl named Nina who has to deal with her factory worker father’s recent job loss. The plot thickens when Nina decides to look for a hidden nest-egg which is rumored to be stashed away somewhere in an abandoned factory. The 90-minute 2D-animated movie promises to be another subtle gem, just like the duo’s previous movies A Cat in Paris and Phantom Boy. Produced by Parmi les Lucioles Films (France) and Doghouse Films (Luxembourg).

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Spotlight

Uncanny Stories

This smorgasbord of terror is based on popular tales written by Laura Kasischke, H.P. Lovecraft, Jean Ray, The Brothers Grimm, William Tenn and Edgar Allan Poe. Among the stories: A young girl wishes her stepmother would die; two young hikers meet a strange old woman; an endless nightmare; an explorer trapped by terrifying forces from a distant past, etc. Directed by Benoit Razy, Fabrice Luang-Vija, Jean-Loup Felicioli, Hefang Wei, Alain Gagnol, Izù Troin and Morten Riisber Hansen. Produced by French animation powerhouse Folimage and Les Films du Tambour de Soie.

Winnipeg, Seeds of Hope

This powerful animated pic tells the story of how famed Chilean poet Pablo Noruda saved 2,200 refugees after the Spanish Civil War and brought them to Chile aboard the SS Winnipeg. The project is directed by Elio Quiroga and Beñat Beitia with a script by Laura Martel based on her own graphic novel. Produced by Dibulitoon Studio (Spain) and co-produced by El Otro Film (Chile), La Ballesta (Spain) and Midralgar (France).

Your Spotted Skin

The forbidden love between Antonia the Cow and Kurt the Lion takes a terrible turn when a sheep goes missing and suspicion falls on the carnivore lion in this 2D-animated feature directed

by Deniel Nocke, Stefan Krohmer and Thomas Meyer-Hermann.

Nocke is the German writer-director behind acclaimed shorts No Room for Gerold and The Modern Cyclops. Produced by Germany’s Studio Film Bilder and Raumkapsel, Schmidt & Stein-Schomburg. ◆

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Lizzie and Wendy Molyneux

Frozen Treat Show creators Wendy and Lizzie Molyneux give the scoop on their charming new FOX comedy The Great North.

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he Loren Bouchard TV animation empire continues to expand this month with the arrival of The Great North, a FOX primetime show exec produced by Bouchard (Bob’s Burgers, Central Park) and cocreated, written and exec produced by Wendy and Lizzie Molyneux and Minty Lewis.

The hugely likable series, which carries the familiar visual stamp of Bouchard's other favorites, centers on the eccentric and lovable Tobin family who have recently moved to a small town in Alaska. The clan is led by single dad Beef Tobin (voiced by the inimitable Nick Offerman), older son Wolf (Will Forte) and his girlfriend Honeybee (Dulcé Sloan), middle brother Ham (Paul Rust), youngest brother Moon (Aparna Nancherla) and only daughter Judy (Jenny Slate). The cast also includes Judy's new boss at the mall, Alyson (Megan Mullally) and her imaginary friend Alanis Morisette, who is voiced by the famous Canadian singer herself. We recently had a chance to chat with the in-demand Emmy-winning Molyneux sisters about their fun new toon.

Wendy and Lizzie Molyneux, who have

been writers on Bob’s Burgers since its debut in 2011, began talking about doing a new show with Bouchard about three years ago.

“It all grew out of talking with Loren about ideas for a new series, and we kind of started thinking about actors that we would love to build a show around,” recalls Wendy. “We knew Nick [Offerman] for over a decade. We had worked with him and Megan [Mullally], and I was a writer on The Megan Mullally Show.

They’re kind of personal muses of mine. And Jenny Slate was someone that Lizzie and I had always admired from afar. The next question was, how do we make another show that feels and looks different from Bob’s Burgers, but has the same kind of heart, warmth and funniness — which is a very high bar. We wanted to feel like we were going somewhere completely

different, so slowly, this idea of a single dad and his family living in Alaska came together.”

Lizzie says although she and her sister are still working on Bob’s Burgers and helping in the writers’ room, their dream was to build a little branch out of the Bob tree. “Before the stay-at-home months, we all worked in the same building, and many of the same team at Bento Box work on the two shows. We have the same directors and artists, and it has been a real dream come true for us.”

Sharing Life at Home Counting the sisters themselves, The Great North has an overall writing staff of 14. Altogether, about 90 people work on the show at Bento Box. “We found a wonderful group for the show,” says Wendy. “We’ve been working

‘The question was how do we make another show that feels and looks different from Bob’s Burgers, but has the same kind of heart, warmth and funniness — which is a very high bar.’

— Exec producer, writer & co-creator Wendy Molyneux

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TV/Streaming She Sounds Familiar: Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette is a regular character on The Great North. The terrific voice cast also includes Nick Offerman, Jenny Slate, Will Forte, Dulcé Sloan, Paul Rust, Aparna Nancherla and Megan Mullally.

from home for the past 11 months, and it’s kind of weird to start a totally new job during the year of the pandemic alone in your apartment. But everyone is a trooper, and it’s kind of funny when everyone can see your bedroom as you pitch the show. It’s all about how much of yourself you can reveal at work!”

A lot of the show’s backdrops were based on the reality of what Alaska looks like. “It was exciting for us because it’s so beautiful, vast and different than the environments most people are used to living in, and it lends itself very well to animation,” says Lizzie. “There are so many stories that we can explore in animation that we really can’t do in live action. There are glaciers, and animals that we don’t encounter in our day to day lives. Of course, our family has a fairly normal life, they are not surviving

in the wilderness. I have been to Alaska, and it does feel like a completely unique place. You walk into your driveway and you are so close to these mountains covered with snow and glaciers. We did a lot of research, and some of our artists actually traveled there to get a first-hand look.”

Shared History and Humor

The two sisters, who grew up in Indiana, recall spending much of their childhoods playing and exploring nature, and they wanted to recreate those same experiences for their characters. “My siblings and I (we have two brothers and one other sister) used to go to the woods and imagine all these fun adventures,” says Wendy, who is the older sister.

“We share the same sense of humor and think

‘There used to be this assumption that women are not as interested in watching animation. As someone who has grown up watching animation and loved it, I know that’s not true. Things have improved over the past few years.’

— Exec producer, writer & co-creator Lizzie Molyneux

the same things are funny, so that helps with how we work together. Our sister Jenny is our parent’s favorites, though. If Jenny gets a show, then all bets are off!”

Lizzie adds, “We have a lot of shared memories and inspirations for our stories, so that gives us a shorthand when we work. It comes from being part of a big family and those shared experiences help us with coming up with ideas for the show’s plotlines and situations.”

The Molyneuxs both grew up watching animated shows such as The Simpsons, and continued as they grew older with adult fare such as South Park. Wendy recalls, “My brother and I are closer in age, and I remember how we loved watching shows like Space Ghost and Dr. Katz, and it’s funny, because I was watching the shows of my future boss and had no idea that one day our lives would intersect. I remember we were just desperate to get a writing job before we got the chance to write for Bob’s Burgers. I mean we even interviewed for a Pauly Shore reality show. It was like, ‘Please give us a job. We need to buy food!’ So when we got the chance to make a presentation

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for Bob’s Burgers, we felt like the Hugh Grant character in Notting Hill. We thought, there’s no way she’s going to fall in love with us. And we ended up getting Julia!”

“We thought Bob’s Burgers was the funniest thing we had seen,” says Lizzie. “There’s no way they are going to hire us. But here we are, and we’ve been doing it for 10 years now. I think animation is such a fun medium to work in. It gives you so much freedom and you meet a lot of different, talented people. It’s amazing to see your idea for a work come to life visually two or three years later. You can go anywhere and do anything — if the artists don’t kill you for giving them so many backgrounds to work on!”

Wendy explains that because both she and her sister come from the writing side, they are constantly impressed by what the artists and animators are able to do. “I cannot draw at all, for me it feels like I’m working with wizards.

I tell them, ‘Oh my God. You are a witch. How can you draw that? It’s magic!’ I mean, you can dream up this elaborate fantasy sequence and then you see it rendered and it’s a thousand times better than you imagined with colors that you can’t even think of. Our artists really blow our minds every day!”

The sisters also praise Bento Box and Bouchard for having the vision and insight to promote diversity at the studio. “There is diversity across the board,” says Wendy. “The studio recruiters have done a great job in terms of opening the doors and bringing in people and growing them. The demographics have changed drastically. People are hungry to see different points of view. There were always lots of women working in Loren’s camp.

Animation used to have a reputation for being a forbidding place for women, but the more women are hired, the friendlier it gets for everyone.”

Lizzie adds, “There used to be this assumption that women are not as interested in watching animation. As someone who has grown up watching animation and loved it, I know that’s not true. We know that a lot of women are watching it. Younger women are identifying more with characters like Tina on Bob’s Burgers. There are lots of female fans of animation who want to see characters like

themselves on shows and to work on them.

Things have improved over the past few years, and it’s true that animation is a world for anyone.”

The siblings, who were also tapped to write the third Deadpool movie (with Ryan Reynolds acting and producing) hope they can bring some laughs and humor into people’s lives with their new animated family. “We are in the middle of a pandemic and everyone’s stuck at home,” says Wendy. “Our number one

goal is to make people laugh and make them feel more relaxed.” Lizzie chimes in, “We hope people can turn to this family and find a show that has a lot of heart. That’s what we loved about our time on Bob’s Burgers. So we took what we know and hope that we were able to create this world that feels similar in tone and sweetness.” ◆ The Great North debuts on FOX on Sunday Feb. 14 at 8:30 p.m., 7:30 p.m central.

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Drawing on the Immigrant Experience Big Bad Boo’s multicultural show 16 Hudson tackles the experiences of a Kurdistani refugee family in its second season.

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ancouver-based Big Bad Boo Studios founder Shabnam Rezaei remembers the first time she decided to get into the animation business. “It was shortly after 9/11, and at the time, I worked on Wall Street as a computer software engineer developing software for banks,” she recalls. “I used to live across the street from the Twin Towers. Not only did the event leave me in complete shock, but the subsequent rhetoric that demonized all Iranians as terrorists made me reevaluate my mission in life. I decided to do something that has a positive effect on future generations, to educate them in a meaningful way, to create world citizens who are cosmopolitan and compassionate.”

Soon after, Rezaei and her husband Aly Jetha founded the studio and went on to produce their first children’s animated show, Mixed Nutz, which aired on PBS stations in the U.S. Over the past decade, Big Bad Boo also launched successful toons such as 1001 Nights, 16 Hudson and The Bravest Knight, all of which were lauded for their multicultural themes and inclusive cast of characters. This month, the second season of 16 Hudson continues Rezaei and her team’s bold mission of delivering socially relevant content that represents a diverse society for its family audiences.

“The second season of the show brings lots of new adventures and comedy with our main cast Lili, Sam, Amala, Luc and Eddie, and three new holiday specials highlighting Christmas, the celebration of an Eagle feather and the

Moon Festival,” says Rezaei. “In addition, we introduce a new family, the Garmianys, with a six-episode arc. The Garmianys are a refugee family who arrive to 16 Hudson from Kurdistan. The 16 Hudson gang welcome Ray and Rona, get to know them and see the world through their eyes and understand what it’s like to be in a new place. There are of course good and bad things about a move, including all the challenges they face and in turn all the value they add to the 16 Hudson building with their skills.”

A Tale of Three Cities The 39 x 7’ show is a huge collaborative effort between the teams in Toronto, Vancouver and New York City. “Our writing rooms start in Toronto, led by John May and Suzanne Bolch, and we hire anywhere between eight to 10 writers, who will reflect the backgrounds of

our series mains such as Iran, China, India and the Philippines,” notes Rezaei. “This writing approval process takes in notes from broadcasters TVO Kids and SRC Radio-Canada and approvals from cultural and educational advisors, led by Sarah Fewson.”

Once the scripts are completed, the Vancouver-based production team, led by VP of Production Paddy Gillen, takes over. That’s where the designs, model builds, auditions, casting, voice records as well as storyboarding, animation and post production take place. “The entire process is overseen by senior creatives in New York,” says Rezaei. “As with any animated series, it is a very involved process: Over 100 people work behind the scenes to bring 16 Hudson to life.”

The animation team uses a variety of software products to make the series. According to the producers, this includes Microsoft Of-

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TV/Streaming fice, Final Draft, a suite of Adobe products for sketching, designs and boards; Toon Boom occasionally for boards or effects; and mainly Adobe Animate for animation.

Of course, like all global animation projects, the production was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic last year. Rezaei says she was most concerned with the team’s health from the earliest days of the pandemic so she sent employees home even earlier than the lockdown.

“It took us some time to get used to the workfrom-home model and there are certainly inefficiencies in the model, but luckily animation is one of the few industries in media where we were able to continue work,” she explains.

“We are mindful of people who have to handle multiple situations at home or who have had to deal with sickness or death in their families and for those reasons, we have slowed down.

We have a fantastic team and great partners and we are very grateful for that.”

When it comes to providing inclusive content, Rezaei says from the beginning, her goal was to create shows that better represent real life. “We started with our story (being Iranian) and that was labeled as ‘diverse,’ but for us, we were being authentic and telling our story,” she explains. “In producing these types of stories, our hope was and remains that these shows would not be labeled as ‘niche’ just because they didn’t feature a majority white cast or a white lead. We set out to make content without labels that could just be the norm — content that is telling so many stories that have not yet been told and content that is aware that the world is made up of more than just straight white males.”

Over the past decade, the studio has made a

lot of strides in redefining what diversity really means in children’s entertainment and has also made a remarkable effort in giving back to the community and the world at large. First, creating inclusive content is done by forming gender-balanced writing teams and production crews and making sure that the stories we tell are being crafted by those who have firsthand knowledge of the experiences we depict onscreen,” notes Rezaei. “You can’t have a truly inclusive show if you are not willing to put in the work behind the scenes. Second, we have started workshops for young BIPOC talent to change the color of the industry from the inside out so we can amplify more voices and achieve better balance.”

Giving Back, Reaching Out In addition, Big Bad Boo has an international development branch that works with UNICEF, Save the Children, USAID and other organizations to provide education through entertainment to children in conflict settings around the world. This effort is championed

by Jetha, Rezaei’s husband and studio cofounder who received the U.N. WISE Award for his efforts in 2018. “We have developed educational curricula that accompany our existing shows and are implemented in both formal and informal educational settings,” adds Rezaei. “These programs provide psycho-social support and teach important values like inclusion, empathy, gender equity and more.

We view this work as yet another way we can entertain children while also educating them and giving them the tools they need in their own social-emotional development.”

Rezaei says it has been gratifying to see

‘In producing these types of stories, our hope was and remains that these shows would not be labeled as “niche” just because they didn’t feature a majority white cast or a white lead.’

— Big Bad Boo founder and show creator Shabnam Rezaei

a significant increase in interest in diverse storytelling on behalf of western countries’ broadcasters. “That is exciting because the West will eventually influence the creative of the East,” says the producer. “Overall though, the animated TV landscape is much more colorful and inclusive than when we first started out. Now you see a greater push to highlight underrepresented cultures as well as an embrace of the LGBTQ+ community, but there’s still a long way to go. We need to keep being deliberate about the types of stories we tell and who we spotlight. We also need to put a greater emphasis on creating parity in the highest levels of the industry to ensure that this is not just a fad but a sustained movement to create richer television.”

Rezaei says some of the best reactions she has received have been from LGBTQ+ parents watching shows like 16 Hudson or The Bravest Knight. “They thank us for creating shows with families that look like theirs,” she says. “It’s something a lot of people take for granted, but means the world to those who have been ignored by the media for years.”

And what kind of advice does she offer content creators who want to take a step in the right direction? “Work with people who are dedicated to cultivating talent from diverse backgrounds,” Rezaei notes. “Participate in BIPOC industry workshops to form connections with people from different backgrounds and at different stages in their careers. You might find the right mentor or collaborator there. If you are in a position of power advocate for diverse and gender-balanced hires and keep this as a plus for the business. It takes time, effort and resources but it also leads to richer stories. More importantly, be authentic to who you are and what your mind and heart drives you to and don’t give up.” ◆ The second season of 16 Hudson airs on TVO Kids and Knowledge Network. For more info, visit bigbadboo.com.

An Inclusive World: Big Bad Boo’s impressive animated catalog includes (left) The Bravest Knight and (right) 1001 Nights.

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Git Along, Little Dinos!

Dino Ranch creator Matthew Fernandes tells us about the creation of his hot new Disney Junior show.

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ast month, a thrilling world of wide-open spaces and incredible prehistoric creatures was unveiled on the new preschool animated series Dino Ranch. The show, which is produced by Industrial Brothers and Boat Rocker Studios, follows the Cassidy family as they tackle life on their ranch/dinosaur sanctuary in a fantastical “pre-westoric” world. The show’s creator Mathew Fernandes, who is also Industrial Brothers’ creative director and co-founder, tells us that the series was inspired by his own childhood, growing up in farm country.

“The one thing I learned about observing farm life was that the adults depended heavily on their family to make the farm successful,” says Fernandes, whose other big credits include Remy & Boo, Top Wing, Dex Hamilton: Alien Entomologist and Kingdom Force. “What was interesting to me was that just as much as the adults counted on each other to handle important jobs, they also counted on the children to help. So, I had always been interested in doing a story about kids on a family ranch. Of course, I have always had a love of dinosaurs, so the idea of mixing the two felt really fresh and unique for this age group.”

According to Fernandes, Dino Ranch had a very speedy transition from idea to production.

“At every stage people just immediately understood the concept and could see the potential,” he notes. “I only created the concept a few years ago, so the process was very quick. Thankfully we have a wonderful team of artists and storytellers that eagerly jumped on board.

The production work is split between our studios in Toronto with animation being done at Jam Filled out in Ottawa. We have about 75 people working on the show, and our pipeline is primarily a mixture of Maya and Arnold.”

So Many Dinosaurs!

One of the big challenges for Fernandes was

matching his creative vision with the actual budget and schedule. “What made this production a challenge was the number of dinosaurs in our world interacting with our characters.

Our dinosaurs carry so much personality, so there were a lot of very unique performances to manage in order to pull the scenes off.

Thankfully, our team was up for the challenge and went above and beyond our creative vision for the show.”

When asked about the state of animation in 2021, Fernandes responds, “We live in confusing times and it has been challenging for many families at home and many businesses that have felt the effects of COVID. The animation industry has been one of the few lucky industries that has managed to continue on with production and adapt to a remote lifestyle. First and foremost, I think we have a responsibility to not only entertain families at home but also to create content that can help children understand these new, complex feelings and interpret the world that is currently around them. I hope that Dino Ranch will offer parents and their preschoolers irresistible escapism to the wild frontier.”

Looking back at his early days in the business, Fernandes muses, “Dex Hamilton was the first

show I ever created and so much has evolved since that time, both personally and in the animation scene. Directly after Dex, I founded Industrial Brothers with my business partner, Arthur Spanos, with a goal of making cool stuff for kids. Ten years and nine shows later, we are still trying to push the envelope, both creatively and technically, to produce premium content. But it feels like, in the last few years, 3D animation has only continued to become faster, more innovative and more accessible.”

The talented animation creator hopes that his new show is something in which young audiences enjoy immersing. “With wide-open natural green spaces and big blue skies, viewers will be transported to a place where they can discover the exhilarating blend of dinosaurs, outdoor adventures and ranch life for themselves,” he promises. “But also, for me, Dino Ranch is about family. While we have a lot of fun with the ranchers and their dinosaurs, it all comes back to the importance of family, strength and unity in our lives.” ◆ Dino Ranch airs on Disney Junior and DisneyNOW in the U.S. You can learn more about Industrial Brothers at www.industrialbrothers.com.

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You Are Free!

Children’s animation veteran Josh Selig writes about the importance of drowning out the market noise and listening to your inner muse.

By Josh Selig

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s soon as you ask yourself, “What do the buyers want to buy?” you’ve lost your soul.

This seemingly benign question puts the cart (our industry) before the horse (you and your original ideas) and the end result is a cart full of okay shows and a depressed horse.

As most of us learn in junior high, all groups are flawed. They are Petri dishes of politics, compromise, and envy. So, one should be particularly careful about inviting them into your creative life.

This would be like asking the Kardashians what you should name your baby.

Individuals, of course, are also flawed, but less so. Due to some quirk of evolution, individuals remain predisposed to reach sublime creative heights, the results of which can be seen in everything from the arts to Bluey to macaroons.

This is not to say that groups don’t have value. Of course, they do. After all, it takes an army of talented artists to produce an animated show. But to create an animated show, a show that is truly unique and meaningful, well, for that you just need one good sniper.

The Right Questions “So, if we shouldn’t ask, ‘What do the buyers want to buy?’ then what should we ask?”

Good question. You could start with, “Who am I?” If the answer is, “I am a show creator,” then you should create shows. Your shows. Shows that are as much a part of yourself as your hands, your kids or your eyes. You should create these shows regardless of what is trending, and you should create these shows with the courage, urgency and dignity of a first responder.

“But what if the buyers are all looking for gluten-free shows and mine has gluten?”

Then be proud of your gluten. Wear your gluten as a badge of honor. Gluten is who you are. And if you pitch your gluten show

—and you pitch it well — they will come. Why? Because it’s original.

And, fortunately, there are still a handful of folks out there who value originality.

Please don’t forget that the networks and streamers are just stages in need of good acts. Believing that the person who stands at the stage door is more creative than you, or knows more about what kids like than you do, would be a very big — although not uncommon — mistake. One should never confuse the intrinsic value of an original creation with the editorial role of an executive.

They appear similar, but they are as different as a flower and a flowerpot.

“So, what you’re saying is that I should ignore what I read in the trades about what kinds of shows people are buying these days and just make something personal that I love?”

Yes. Yes. Yes!

Trust Your Instincts “So, I’m free?”

You are free. You are free to follow your ideas wherever they may take you. If you want your characters to speak in jazz, let them speak in jazz. If you’d like to set your show inside a circle because you’re sick of looking at shows inside rectangles, well, great, let the circles have a turn! There are an infinite number of ways to create a show (or bake a cookie or write a song) and the sooner we accept this, the sooner we (and our kids) can finally enjoy some real variety.

“I see. But I feel afraid.”

That’s okay. We’re all afraid. Life is frightening. Just be who God (or whoever) made you to be and make your own unique shows in your own unique way.

The kids will thank you. Your team will thank you. And even the buyers will thank you.

But, most importantly, your soul will thank you. ◆

Josh Selig is the Founder and President of China Bridge Content, a company committed to building strong creative and business ties between China and the world in the media sector. He is the former CEO of Little Airplane Productions, a New York-based company that he founded in 1999 which was acquired by Studio 100 in 2017. He is the Emmy-winning creator of many popular children’s shows including Wonder Pets!, Small Potatoes and P. King Duckling. march 21 37

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Don Hertzfeldt

The World According to Don Hertzfeldt The brilliant indie animator discusses the latest chapter of his mind-bending World of Tomorrow trilogy.

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he name Don Hertzfeldt brings to mind some of the most clever and original indie shorts of the past two decades. Ever since the California native burst on the scene with his student shorts Lily and Jim (1997) and Billy’s Balloon (1998), he has continued to move forward with each hilarious, brilliant and profoundly moving work. The Oscar-nominated 2000 short Rejected (2000), the Sundance fave The Meaning of Life (2005), his acclaimed Bill trilogy (Everything Will Be OK, I’m So Proud of You and It’s Such a Beautiful Day) and the Oscar-nominated and Annie-winning World of Tomorrow (2015) often pop up on ‘Best of’ lists. Last year, Hertzfeldt introduced the third part of his sci-fi epic, The Absent Destinations of David Prime, on Vimeo. Hertzfeldt was kind enough to answer a few of our questions recently:

Congrats on the recent success of the third part of World of Tomorrow. Can you tell us a little bit about your process on this latest chapter?

Don Hertzfeldt: “Episode Three” took about two years to make. It was produced at home in Austin like the other ones, so dates and budgets get sort of loose and untracked over here. Other than my cast, Julia and Jack, the only other person involved with the production this time was my girlfriend Taylor, who lent a hand in lighting and compositing the more complicated visual effects shots. Everything else, from writing to editing to sound to design to animation to direction, it’s all just me. And let’s be honest, maybe that’s getting a little ridiculous.

I find I’m starting to get really jealous of people who work in live action and are able to churn out multiple projects in a year and still

have time to sit on a beach. I’ve been having conversations with a bunch of streaming places in the hope of finding a more permanent home, with actual budgets for getting more help in the room here. I’m perfectly capable of continuing to work this way if I have to, the money is fine, it’s just the time, the time, the time. I’m still hand-coloring every frame by hand with the paint bucket tool and thinking, “Maybe I’m a little overqualified for this!”

What were some of the more difficult aspects of diving back into this complicated futuristic universe?

The movie takes place before, during, and after the events of the first two episodes — spanning hundreds of years — so the script was super tricky to get right. It’s a weird animal, operating as both a prequel and a sequel, which was a fun thing to try and figure out, but

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daunting. My notes were full of mad diagrams and exclamation points and arrows. And I was very conscious of the fact that when you go back and start messing with past storylines, especially with something as beloved as the first World of Tomorrow, if you screw it all up, not only do you make a bad movie but you wreck those previous episodes for everyone, too. So, I was constantly refining the details of these timelines in order to not leave open any big dumb plot holes, or make anything feel like an emotional cheat.

The intertwining plots of Episode Three turn into this big farce, which is part of the fun, and I certainly didn’t expect everyone to understand every nuance of all the time travel by the end of it. It’s OK to be confused, these movies go way over the top — my job was making sure people don’t give up or check out along the way. The hope is that even if you’re a bit lost, you’re still right there with me emo-

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tionally at the end. But, as a fan of science fiction, if anyone does care to work out the logic puzzles on a napkin, it all still needs to add up.

Which aspects of the new work were you most happy about?

After the setup of the first two episodes, it felt great to finally break this universe open and get out there and explore. The first two episodes were very introspective and conversation-based and I love them, but I wanted to go in the complete opposite direction this time and shut down any idea that might start to feel like a formula. So the characters in Episode Three actively drive their own narrative across space and time, and nobody speaks at all in like the final third of the movie. If the series was going to carry on and stay interesting, it really needed to stretch. Episode Three felt like the first really big stretch.

Many people in the animation community idolize you for how you held on to your original visions and didn’t go the commercial studio route like many of your contemporaries did. Was this all part of the plan?

It’s funny, the only thing I’ve done my best to avoid all these years is advertising work. I think the big animation studios make wonderful things: They’ve just never wanted to work with me​. I guess after so many years, people just figured that it was a stubborn decision of mine to avoid the studios, too, and stay independent. But since the beginning, none of my movies would have ever been made if they needed to be pitched. It was always easier to just roll up my sleeves and do it myself than wait around for permission, a bigger budget or a bigger crew. That’s probably true of most independent film in general.

I always think of music metaphors when it

Space Oddity: Don Hertzfeldt’s latest work The Absent Destinations of David Prime adds more layers to the director’s Oscarnominated sci-fi epic.

comes to this sort of thing: The big animation studios are like symphony orchestras, full of these incredibly talented individual musicians who are contributing to a big beautiful thing. And the independent animators are like rock bands, who maybe only know a handful of chords — but at least we’re writing our own songs. I have a lot of respect for those symphony orchestras and I can also understand why I’ve never been asked to play Carnegie Hall.

It’s so wild to think that the director who gave us classic comedy stick-figure shorts like Rejected and L’Amour is now taking us along on this brilliant, poignant sci-fi epic. What is your take on that?

It’s a little crazy that people are still watching the older cartoons. I was just a teenager and you never expect your terrible student films to still be floating around over 20 years later. luckily, some of the old stuff like Rejected was supposed to look bad, it was part of the story, which back then allowed me to get away with some animation murder. But it’s also safe to say that I still frequently don’t know what I’m doing. You never stop learning, and that’s what makes each new project so interesting to jump into: to go

make a new mess and try and work your way out of it. I’ve never been real sure about that phrase, “Fake it ‘til you make it.” Most people who make it never stop faking it. That’s not a criticism. I just don’t think anyone ever really knows what they’re doing. that’s how you grow, you stumble around and make mistakes. Over the years, you learn new tricks and just get a little more confident. But to “make it” sounds like a nightmare to me. I can’t imagine anything more boring and creatively dead than to think you have it all figured out.

What can you tell us about World of Tomorrow Episode 4?

I’ve written a few chunks of it, but I’m not sure if it’s what I’ll do next. COVID really blew up the distribution plans for Episode 3 — it was going to open in theaters nationwide — and I’m still trying to figure out where World of Tomorrow will land in the long run. For now, the episodes are only streaming on-demand on Vimeo. The whole industry is still reeling hard from 2020, we’ll get an offer one week and then the next week, it’s, “Sorry, never mind, we all just got laid off.” So, it might be a good time to just take a really long break and see how everything settles. My niece was four when I recorded her for the first movie and she’s 11 now. If i have to continue to animate the rest of these totally alone, Julia Pott might be the next one to age out of her role!

What kind of advice do you offer young folks who are just making their own versions of Billy’s Balloon and hope to be the next Don Hertzfeldt?

Please don’t try to be me. You have your own voice. Go be better than me! ◆ World of Tomorrow: The Absent Destinations of David Prime is currently streaming on Vimeo. Find more of Hertzfeldt’s work at bitterfilms.com.

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Animating an Ancient, Sacred Story How a beautiful story about healing Hawaiian spirits inspired the creative team behind the acclaimed new short Kapaemahu.

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bout 10 years ago, the producer/directors of the prize-winning animated short Kapaemahu Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer were working with Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu on a documentary about her work as a teacher in Waikiki. That’s when she started chanting in the direction of some large stones on the beach, and told them about the origins of the sacred site. The filmmakers knew right then that they needed to go back to this intriguing subject again.

As Wilson explains, “As we continued to work with Hina on projects across the Pacific, we realized that she was not only a great film subject but a skilled storyteller in her own right. So when she decided to come over to our side of the lens as the lead director and producer on Kapaemahu, we were thrilled.”

Wong-Kalu has known about the stones of Kapaemahu since she was a young boy named Colin playing on the beach in Waikiki. She tells us, “It was only when I transitioned to become Hinaleimoana, and began to immerse myself in Hawaiian culture and language, that I re-

might have used to pass it on.”

Mystical Dual Spirits The result of their collaboration is a beautifully animated short which explains the origins of the four mysterious stones on Waikiki Beach and the legendary dual male and female spirits within them. The project, which premiered at Annecy last year and has gone on to win numerous festival awards worldwide, is one of the contenders of this year’s Academy ‘One thing we didn’t expect is the way that the Award and Annies races. film has been embraced by youth. People usually Hamer recalls, “We were inthink of healing and gender diversity as adult spired by the beauty and grace of Hawaiian culture, which in many topics, but as it turns out, kids love the idea of ways is more sophisticated than magic stones.’ anything westerners have come — Director-producer Joe Wilson up with. As America went through its ‘transgender tipping point,’ fialized how they relate to me personally, and nally recognizing that not everyone fits neatly at the same time embody a beautiful part of into the gender binary, it was amazing to be our Hawaiian culture that most people know working on a narrative about a society that nothing about. I wanted to tell the story from recognized, respected and admired gender my perspective as a native mahu wahine and fluidity over a thousand years ago.” to tell it in the language that my ancestors The short’s Oscar-nominated animation di-

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Director/producer Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu

Director/producers Dean Hamer (left) and Joe Wilson

Animation director Daniel Sousa

rector Daniel Sousa (Feral) seized the opportunity to create a very lush and beautiful world based on traditional Hawaiian and Polynesian art patterns. He says, “I found inspiration for the animation’s rough textures in Hawaiian tapa cloth and even the stones themselves.

Dean, Joe, and Hina provided a wealth of photographic references, and we tried to infuse every part of the film’s landscape with that stone texture and richness as well.”

Altogether, it took the team six years of research, two years of concept and script development, one year of fundraising and one year of production. “We are a compact team,” says Wilson. “Hina, Dean and Joe direct and produce in Hawaii; Daniel animates in Rhode Island; his long-term colleague Dan Golden worked on the sound and music in Massachusetts; and Kaumakaiwa Kanaka’ole wrote and recorded the ceremonial chant in Sean [Na’auao]’s studio in Honolulu. Daniel animated full time for eight months, and drew every single frame by himself.”

Sousa explains that for character development, the main concern was to present the mahu as the dignified, statuesque healers they are, for which Wong-Kalu graciously offered to model. “Their large size is meant not so much as a physical representation, but as a symbol of their large spirits,” he adds.

To produce the animation, Sousa and his team used Adobe Animate, Photoshop, After Effects and Blender to generate the 2D animation. “In terms of process, we started with Hina’s script, and from there I created a storyboard and an animatic, while simultaneously generating character and background designs,

as well as style frames for each critical moment in the story,” says the animation director. “This combination of animatic and style frames became our template for shaping the film. The directors were involved from start to finish and offered notes and references along the way by regular video conferences.”

For Sousa, the biggest challenge was the joint effort of trying to create a story that connects with the audience on a human level.

“The original manuscript is very straight forward, and as Dean mentioned we wanted to stick by it rather than embellish or revise,” he recalls. “Our innovation was to tell the story through the eyes of a curious child, a witness to history across the ages who gives viewers someone to relate to as the journey unfolds.”

The filmmakers have been thrilled with the reception the short has received worldwide.

Says Wilson, “One thing we didn’t expect is the way that the film has been embraced by youth. People usually think of healing and gender diversity as adult topics, but as it turns out, kids love the idea of ‘magic stones,’ and think it’s totally natural for someone to be in the middle between male and female. We’re grateful to have been included in many children’s film festivals, and even to have won a few awards from youth juries. But maybe the greatest reaction was the message we recently received on Facebook from a local viewer: ‘I keep wondering who I’d have been if I’d seen it as a soft little boy at Kailua Elementary. I’m so excited for the kids who get to see it now.’” ◆ For more info, visit kapaemahu.com.

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Adventures in Zero Gravity VFX supervisors Matt Kasmir and Chris Lawrence detail their achievements in George Clooney’s well-received sci-fi drama The Midnight Sky.

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ovies about space travel have always provided visual effects artists with opportunities to push the medium in exciting new directions. The new Netflix feature The Midnight Sky, which is directed by and stars George Clooney, continues this time-honored tradition.

The sci-fi drama is based on the book Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton, which centers on a scientist and a young girl who embark on a journey across the Arctic to communicate to a returning space expedition that Earth has been destroyed by an ecological disaster.

Emmy Award-nominated visual effects supervisor Matt Kasmir (Catch-22) and Oscar winner Chris Lawrence (Christopher Robin) helped bring Clooney’s project to realistic life.

The emotional void felt by the terminally ill protagonist Augustine (Clooney) echoes the fate of the planet. As Kasmir points out, “We only ended up doing approximately 700 shots for the movie. It’s quite an intelligent drama that is emotionally captivating: It’s the opposite of our usual visual effects spectrum, which is a lot of things crashing around the place and aliens trying to eat everyone!”

The team at VFX house Framestore looked

after the film’s signature spacewalk, the bloodletting, face replacements, and collaborated with production designer Jim Bissell (The Rocketeer) on conceptualizing and executing the spacecraft Aether.

“I’d previously worked with Framestore and Chris Lawrence, who has done such great

work on Gravity and The Martian,” Kasmir points out. “It was a natural fit. Framestore London did the spacewalk, which was the single biggest effects sequence, and Framestore Montreal did the Arctic environment and a few additional space shots including the ‘Sick Earth.’” ILM was responsible for Augustine and

‘Shooting in zero-G is always difficult because it’s impossible to achieve it here on Earth without going into orbit … There are various well-known tricks that we use, like wirework and digital doubles.’

— VFX supervisor Chris Lawrence

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End of the World as We Know It: Framestore was behind The Midnight Sky’s extensive recreations of zero-gravity visuals, signature spacewalk, face replacements and conceptualizing and executing the dazzling spaceship Aether with production designer Jim Bissell.

Iris (Caoilinn Springall) attempting to escape from a sinking pod, and One of Us handled the various holograms and the proposed new planetary home for humanity, K23.

A Weightless World One of key challenges for the team was how to realistically depict the weightless moments in outer space, especially since actress Felicity Jones’ pregnancy during the shoot limited her usage of wirework.

“Shooting in zero-G is always difficult because it’s impossible to achieve it here on Earth without going into orbit,” says Lawrence.

“There are various well-known tricks that we use, like wirework and digital doubles. You have to plan for digital doubles early because they take a long time to do.”

Critical to the process was the Anyma facial capture system which allowed the actors to perform in and out of costume: These sessions were directed by Clooney with cast members reading their lines with one another. “Our initial data, which did arrive before we started shooting, was encouraging,” says Lawrence.

“We went in with a previz and a plan to include long swinging wires and rails. As we got closer to it, we realized how many challenges march 21

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that we were presenting to physical production. We were able to say, ‘We’re comfortable about the faces in this shot. We can probably get away with a digital double.’”

“Felicity is incredible on wires; to be fairly heavily pregnant and to be able to do that is one of nature’s miracles as far as I’m concerned,” remarks Lawrence. “But we did have this contingency that we could do a digital face replacement.”

To that end, complimentary data was provided by Clear Angle Studios utilizing the company’s latest scan technology while the team at Framestore hand tracked the eyes. Everything had to be precise down to the millimeter to ensure that proper emotion was translated and believably conveyed.

“Hopefully, Netflix will let us put out the CG render versus the captured plate,” says Lawrence. “You will have to stare at them to figure out which one is which. It’s like an inverted way of filmmaking to an editor where you’re looking at something out of the context of the lighting. You’re previously looking at your select in flat lighting as a square picture in picture, and you’re now seeing it from a different angle with the dramatic shot lighting. It takes on a different cinematic meaning. To his cred-

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it, Stephen Mirrione [The Revenant] tried to tune into what he originally liked about the shot. That was a great collaboration. It was him pushing us to not let any of the visual effects get in the way of the storytelling, which was a big part of the overall brief.”

Another important collaborator in the visual arena was cinematographer Martin Ruhe (Control), who allowed the visual effects team to adjust the StageCraft lighting to better integrate the live-action footage with the plate photography being projected on the LED walls.

“I collaborated with Martin and Julian White, our chief lighting technician, on this Rosco system which is a gel that diffuses light,” explains Kasmir. “Behind it we had hundreds of SkyPanels that could be controlled as a low pixel ratio monitor. We could control intensity and it got us out of so many holes. One of them was creating the heat and light of re-entry.”

The team worked closely to emulate the visual language devised by Ruhe in the CG shots.

“Normally, we are used to the hyper contrast blown-out super dark of space whereas this is quite muted,” he adds. “It was a beautiful and simple aesthetic. Martin used a lot of detuned lenses which meant that the edges were often soft. Even on fully digital shots in space we would just doff our hats toward these lenses and rendered in a lot of grammatic aberrations to try to keep the language of our film going.”

After the spacewalk, an injured Maya (Tiffany Boone) returns to the Aether only to find herself and crewmates surrounded by floating blood.

“Even though one of our characters is dying she is actually hypnotized by the beauty of her blood in zero-G around her,” remarks Kasmir. “Everyone stops for a beat. It’s very graceful.”

Each blob of blood was art directed as if they were characters in their own right.

“George talked about it being a ballet moment,” states Lawrence. “It’s quite apt. We’ve seen those references of water and other substances floating on the space station but we’ve never seen blood in that way.”

The International Space Station served as the design foundation for the Aether. “When Jim started coming forward for the design of this ship, it was reassuring because he was on the same page as the people at SpaceX, NASA and JPL [Jet Propulsion Lab] who are doing this for real. What Jim was talking about was using present-day technology for the core of the ship and a more futuristic 3D printed design language for the habitation quarters. It is the best kind of science fiction where the truth is extrapolated to tell us where we might be going.” ◆ The Midnight Sky is currently streaming on Netflix worldwide. www.animationmagazine.net

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The Midnight Sky

Birds of Prey

Sonic the Hedgehog

The Invisible Man Greyhound Mulan

Tenet Mank Wonder Woman 1984

The One and Only Ivan

10 Visual Stunners An Overview of the VFX Oscar Race

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f you thought handicapping the visual effects race was a tough task in previous years, wait until you try to narrow down the 2021 award season contenders. To be considered, the features need to have been released between Jan. 1, 2020 and Feb. 28, 2020 — and of course, because of the pandemic, films that were originally scheduled for a theatrical run and instead launched on streaming or video on demand are also eligible. That said, here are 10 of the features that are most likely to nab a nomination in March, in alphabetical order:

Birds of Prey (Warner Bros) VFX Supervisors: Thrain Shadbolt, Kevin Souls Vendors: Weta Digital, Method Studios, Crafty Apes, Luma Pictures Director: Cathy Yan Notes: Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Huntress, Black Canary and Renee Montoya team up to take down Gotham’s narcissistic villain Roman Sionis and his right hand Victor Zsasz in this bright-colored, surreal vision of Gotham. VFX highlights include Harley’s CG hyena, Gotham sets and lots of beautifully choreographed fight scenes.

Greyhound (Apple TV+) VFX Supervisors: Nathan McGuinness, Pete Bebb (DNEG) Vendor: DNEG Number of Shots: About 1,500 Director: Aaron Schneider Notes: This tale of a WWII navy captain who guards a merchant ship convoy across the Atlantic involved numerous ship and submarine shots, creating challenging ocean sims and recreating scenes aboard the U.S.S. Kidd and building the ocean around it after the principal photography had wrapped.

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The Invisible Man (Universal) VFX Supervisor: Jonathan Dearing Vendor: Cutting Edge Number of Shots: 350 Director: Leigh Whannell Notes: Among the feature’s challenging visual effects were a well-choreographed fight scene with an invisible assailant, an invisibility suit, lots of green-suit action, use of a digital double and clean-up work to help the audience feel an invisible threat to the film’s lead character, portrayed by Elizabeth Moss.

Mank (Netflix) VFX Supervisors: David Fincher, Peter Mavromates Vendors: Artemple, Territory Studio, Savage, ILM Director: David Fincher Notes: Lots of invisible effects and recreation was required for this meticulously crafted period pic which imagines events in the life of Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz. The well-reviewed pic showcases stunning black-and-white deep-focus photography which pays homage to the films of the era, big sky recreation, CG monkey, elephants, giraffes and shrubbery of San Simeon and stunning matte paintings by Artemple for Louis B. Mayer’s birthday party scene.

The Midnight Sky (Netflix) VFX Supervisors: Matt Kasmir, Shawn Hillier, Mark Bakowski Vendors: Framestore, Industrial Light & Magic, Instinctual VFX, Nviz, One of Us Number of Shots: 650 Director: George Clooney Notes: This well-mounted futuristic sci-fi was lauded for its detailed attention to how characters move in zero gravity, as well as a stunning depiction of blood spillage in space, digital glass work and spacesuits, LED walls, spaceships and CG face replacements.

Mulan (Disney+) VFX Supervisors: Sean Andrew Faden Vendors: ILM, Crafty Apes, Framestore, Image Engine, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Weta Digital Number of Shots: About 2,000 Director: Niki Caro Notes: Stunning battle sequences featuring thousands of digital soldiers and horses (only 67 real-life horses and 80 dressed soldiers were actually on set), set expansions, recreation of Imperial City, a visually stunning avalanche sequence, some CG help for the airborne martial arts scenes, witch transformations and a digital phoenix sidekick are only some of the VFX highlights of this live-action take on the Disney 2D classic.

The One and Only Ivan (Disney+) VFX Supervisors: Nick Davis, Ben Jones Vendors: MPC, Technicolor Number of Shots: Around 1,100 Director: Thea Sharrok Notes: At the heart of this movie are its cast of beautifully rendered, CG-animated characters. Its lead, a 400-pound gorilla, a scruffy terrier, an elephant, a poodle, a chicken and a parrot are depicted naturalistically while having highly expressive faces. The virtual production process started with Black Box rehearsals with puppeteers and a motion-capture performance artist for Ivan. A majority of the backdrops for the animals and the human actors were CG environments. march 21

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Sonic the Hedgehog (Paramount) VFX Supervisor: Ged Wright Vendors: MPC, Blur Studio, Trixter, Digital Domain, Marza Animation Planet, Shade VFX, EFilm Number of Shots: 1,300 Director: Jeff Fowler Notes: Sega’s popular blue hedgehog appears in 800 of the total VFX shots, created by MPC and Marza Animation Planet. The filmmakers brought in illustrator Tyson Hesse to help with the redesign of the title character, which has beautiful blue fur and expressive eyes. Among the VFX highlights is a high-speed chase between the villainous Dr. Robotnik and Sonic. Critics admired the way the CG character blends in and interacts with the live-action components of the movie.

Tenet (Warner Bros.)

VFX Supervisor: Andrew Jackson Vendor: DNEG Number of Shots: Under 300 Director: Christopher Nolan Notes: This futuristic mind-bender from Nolan has much fewer digital VFX shots than some of the director’s previous work, since he preferred to use in-camera practical effects. The production even purchased a real Boeing 747 so that Nolan could blow it up on camera. Nearly all of the film’s sequences were shot using IMAX cameras. Among the biggest scenes: a car crash, reversing bullets, a collapsing building, helicopters and some forwards and backwards time moments.

Wonder Woman 1984 (Warner Bros) VFX Supervisor: John Moffatt Vendors: DNEG, Framestore, Method Studios, The Third Floor, Gentle Giant Director: Patty Jenkins Notes: Although the sequel got mixed reviews and divided audiences, it’s hard not to commend the filmmaker’s love for retro effects. Lots of weightless wirework (reminiscent of the Richard Donner Superman movies), digital doubles, Wonder Woman’s killer Icarus flying suit, the golden Lasso of Truth at work on a flying plane, and a climactic fight scene with the villain Jaguar were among the film’s rewarding VFX moments. ◆

Other Possible Contenders

Bill & Ted Face the Music (United Artists) Bad Hair (Hulu) The Call of the Wild (20th Century) The Croods: A New Age (Universal/DreamWorks) Dolittle (Universal) Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (Netflix) Monster Hunter (Screen Gems/Constantin) The New Mutants (20th Century) News of the World (Universal) Onward (Disney/Pixar) Over the Moon (Netflix) Palm Springs (Hulu/Neon) Shadow in the Cloud (Vertical) Soul (Disney/Pixar) The Witches (HBO Max/Warner Bros.) ◆

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Tech Reviews F

Eddy for Nuke 2.7

luid simulations are a big deal in visual effects.

They are used extensively for smoke, fire, explosions, water, etc. There isn’t a summer tentpole film that doesn’t have these. They are complex and take a lot of time to calculate. They take a lot of time to write to disk and take up a lot of disk space. Plus, the way VFX workflows are setup always requires a lot of time and feedback from supervisors or clients … there are always notes.

So in 2015, four smart guys (Andreas Söderström, Christoph Sprenger, Niall Ryan and Ronnie Menahem) founded the company VortechSFX in Wellington, New Zealand in order to tighten the iteration cycle by moving fluid simulations into the compositing stage within Nuke — and to increase calculation speeds by throwing everything to the GPU. And Eddy is the result.

In a nutshell, Eddy works inside of Nuke’s 3D world — very much like you would in a more traditional package like Houdini or Maya. And it works in a similar way to other fluid packages, using a volume of voxels to calculate movement of the fluids with forces, temperature, buoyancy, etc. Although, you can also generate lighter volumes using math and noise nodes to create things like clouds or fog, to atmosphere that don’t require complex simulations.

The second part of Eddy deals with lighting and rendering these volumes. The renderer is also on the GPU, and can render in both scanline or progressive modes. So, iterating on the lighting and shading can be quick in progressive mode so you can see how it is fitting into the comp and dynamically tweak for better integration — because you are already in your comp.

The render does support AOV output including

Deeps — the benefit being that you don’t necessarily have to write out the deep data to disk, but instead calculate at render time. These benefits may vary depending on your GPU capacity versus your network speed and size.

Incorporating into a traditional pipeline is crucial for the usefulness of a tool and Eddy has plenty of hooks to work within various workflows. It is able to bring in Alembic and OBJ files for interaction of volumes with animation. Importing and exporting VDB files are supported, so traditional volume solves from, say, Houdini, can be imported to be rendered or drive other features in Eddy. Python and API hooks are available for larger facilities to work with Eddy— or expand on it.

The latest release (2.7.0) includes nodes that expand on integrating particle systems to better control Eddy-generated particles within the Eddy ecosystem including how particles are emitted, affected by forces and even particle channel manipulation.

Overall, Eddy is an incredibly powerful and fast tool, and while it won’t supplant full hero FX (and it’s not designed to), it moves a lot of the lighter lifting downstream. Arguably, dust hits, chimney smoke, cold breath, fog and such make up the majority of FX work — quantitatively speaking — and Eddy can take care most of that work in Nuke, allowing the FX department to destroy cities. It has a bit of a learning curve, but for those already familiar with putting together fluid systems, it’s not much of a leap, and because it lives in Nuke, it’s possible to have Eddy artists putting together subscripts that compositors can bring into their comps. If Nuke is already part of your ecosystem, and you are doing a lot

by Todd Sheridan Perry

of smokey, steamy, fiery stuff, you may want to look into this.

Website: vortechsfx.com/eddy Price: Complete Eddy, $2,495; Annual Upgrade, $295

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Foundry’s Mari 4.7

ari, along with its competitor in crime Substance Painter/Designer, have really changed the landscape of texture painting and look development. And now with Mari up to 4.7 in its development cycle, the workflows have been established and tools are now being incorporated that refine those processes and make the experience even more effective and efficient for the artists. Not to mention how artists work together in a team.

The primary addition in Mari 4.7 is called Custom Procedurals. It’s sort of like sharing materials, but much more elegant. In the past, when you developed a look for something you like — say, a dirt that looks pretty cool — you would tell people, “I have this pretty cool dirt!” and they’d say, “Send it on over!” But when you sent it over, the node network would be messy, not named effectively, and some textures and resources would be missing. With Custom Procedurals, you are bundling up your network and expose the key parameters people need to use it. It’s like a Gizmo in Nuke (or Mari for that matter), and people coming from Houdini would recognize the approach like making Houdini HDAs. But unlike Gizmos, Custom Procedural can be added to a shelf and used as a node or in a layer, if that’s your preferred workflow. Just make sure that your Geo-Channels are set if the Custom Procedural is dependent on them. The procedurals can be set to be used as a color, scalar to drive math in channels or masks. Thanks to Mari, artists can access your dirt from the shelf, and they don’t have to deconstruct your messy node network (no judgments!).

Material Isolation is another new feature, one that I find incredibly useful for look dev. It’s one of those things that makes you ask, “How did we do this before?” This is mainly a display thing, but the information it provides the artists is incredible. Material Isolation gives you a way to view components of your material with a Current Material shader in the context of the lighting.

Meaning: instead of looking at the end result of the shader on a model— which, let’s face it, can get quite slow quite quickly — you can look at the underlying base shader, then the shader that

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makes up the flecks of paint and then the decals, and so on — to see how they look not as a flat shaded object, but with the renderer. This is all done without the burden of turning on and off different layers. Plus, with material in isolation, you can refine it and see what the changes are doing, without the “pollution” of the other layers.

The new release’s other important additions include: a revamped shelf UI for viewing, organizing, and searching for materials, textures and masks. Saving out bake points has also been made more efficient by providing a spreadsheet-type system for selecting and editing parameters for baking out multiple streams— and tools have been put in to bake files to TX files for specific renderers.

Mari is incredibly robust, and more so the beefier the CPU and GPU hardware you throw at it. In the past, Mari was significantly more expensive than Substance, but with subscription-based pricing systems, the two are starting to have parity.

Website: foundry.com/products/mari Price: $2,280 (Rent, $749/quarter)

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Foundry’s Modo 14.2

justments (also available as a procedural node).

You can chamfer problematic sharp corners to clean up ugly corners. And for making control loops on close edges as you prep for Sub-Ds, the Mitering Offset gives you control to add in those extra edges quickly and easily.

In procedural modelling, MeshFusion is really the touchstone for how clean and quick Boolean operations can be. In 14.0 Foundry an embossing toolset was added for complex Booleans — but once you completed the operation, additional operations were difficult. But a Bezier (parametric) sharp corners function in 14.2 provides more control and functionality to continue to modify the results after the initial Boolean.

A number of weight map tools were added to control the distribution of maps. Weight maps provide control when you apply operations to the model to act as a mask for how much of the operation will affect the vertices. Grow weight expands the map. Border allows you to use the weight map as an edge for other maps. Flood will give you a kind of height selection assessing vertices by height, and then assigning verts to the map. Jitter makes a map of random values based on parameters you provide through a curve interface.

Modo 14.2’s UV mapping now includes Real World Size as an option. I am normally focused on VFX use — in which the real-world scale does get used — but Modo is big in the world of product development, where digital prototypes of things will eventually become real things, and so seeing what objects will really look like is crucial. AxF (Appearance Exchange Format) materials come from X-Rite scanners for reproducing real world materials, and Foundry has made sure that Modo supports the materials and the corresponding real-world scales.

As mentioned before, beyond modelling, Modo has other features like rigging and animation. A 14.2 rigging feature that I found to be some outside-of-the-box thinking is the Rig Clay.

In most rigging workflows, control splines are provided for animators to easily grab — which is much more convenient than grabbing the internal bones and such. But it can make for cluttered viewports. Modo embeds the controls into the mesh, so that when animators hover over areas, they highlight. And when the animator moves the highlighted area, the character deforms in the way the rigger had intended.

I’m really just skimming the highlights of 14.2, and you should really check out the advances for the entire Modo 14 series. There is really a bit for everyone. And personally, while in my day job, I’m frequently in other 3D software packages, I really do prefer the modelling workflow of Modo. It just feels nice and intuitive.

Website: foundry.com/products/modo Price: $1,909 (perpetual), $440 (single user upgrade) Todd Sheridan Perry is an award-winning VFX supervisor and digital artist whose credits include Black Panther, Avengers: Age of Ultron and The Christmas Chronicles. You can reach him at todd@teaspoonvfx.com.

odo is Foundry’s modeling tool which was first introduced in 2006. It is an incredibly powerful tool, but doesn’t get as much play as it should — at least in the visual effects and animation world. It was already a powerful direct modelling tool, and by Modo 10 it had incorporated procedural modelling as well. And now, for 14.2 — the third release in 2020, there are noticeable advances in nearly all of the areas— modelling, texturing, rigging and rendering.

For direct modeling, we have a bunch of tools to assist in beveling (change a square edge to a sloping one) and chamfering (cutting away to make a symmetrical sloping edge), which are definitely tricky when trying to maintain proper topology. In 14.2, there is a Chamfer Edit allowing you to go back into a chamfer to make admarch 21

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VFX VFX

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A D ay I n T he L ife This month, Turin-based French animation director Fabrice Beau (co-founder of Annecy-based Animalps Productions) offers us a glimpse at his world as he works on his eagerly anticipated new feature The Khmer Smile. The autobiographical pic centers on a young Frenchman of Cambodian background who embarks on a journey to discover his Khmer roots. thekhmersmile-themovie.com.

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7:45 a.m. I enjoy listening to my moka pot (Italian coffee maker) as it makes its familiar gurgling noises in the morning.

9 a.m. After escorting my children to preschool, I drink my second cup of coffee as I watch people outside my window walk, talk, laugh and drink their morning coffee.

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10 a.m. I drink my third cup of coffee with famous Italian animation veteran Laura Fiori as we discuss life and work. Together, we develop some exciting projects!

11 a.m. It’s time to check some scenes from my movie, which is in production in France and Cambodia, while answering my phone at the same time.

1 p.m. After lunch, my cat Robinson enjoys his cup of coffee, as he watches his friends chase mice and tease dogs on the streets.

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3 p.m. I have a video chat with Jeanne Basset, the line producer and co-producer of the movie. Cheers!

5 p.m. My two sons rush back to me. It’s time to bring them home from school.

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7 p.m. I have to leave the old man in the movie. It’s time for dinner and my stomach is grumbling!

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10 p.m. The kids are in bed and the parents can relax. We enjoy some great jazz music, “Take Five” by the Dave Brubeck Quartet!

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A D ay I n T he L ife

ne

Onli

© picture: christophe blain

9 > 11 march 2021 Bordeaux Nouvelle-Aquitaine

CO-PRO & PITCHING EVENT FOR ANIMATED FEATURES march 21 3

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A D ay I n T he L ife

Cartoon Forum

20-23 September 2021 Occitanie / Pyrénées-Méditerranée

The European co-production forum for animated TV series > Over 950 animation professionals from 40 countries > Incl. 260 broadcasters and investors > Find co-producers, distributors and financing > Project submission: 10 May

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