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Northern Star
Technical Difficulties:
The “Automated Customer Service” episode of Love, Death + Robots was directed by Meat Dept. and produced by Atoll Studio.
Sophisticated Snapshots
The second season of Netflix’s adult animation anthology Love Death + Robots delivers eight futuristic, animated gems. By Trevor Hogg
Last month, adult animation fans celebrated the arrival of Season 2 of Netflix’s muchheralded anthology series Love Death + Robots. Created by Tim Miller (Deadpool) and exec producer David Fincher (The Social Network, Mank), the sophomore season of the five-time Emmy-winning series also features the talents of supervising director Jennifer Yuh Nelson (Kung Fu Panda 2). This year’s eight shorts range from a comical depiction of robot assistants in an assisted living community in Automated Customer Service to a look at the ethical consequences of population control through systematic extermination in Pop Squad.
“Love Death + Robots is an anthology of animated short stories done by studios around the world,” notes Jerome Denjean (League of Gods), who returns as the production’s visual effects supervisor. “I have been working at Blur Studio for 19 years and have done a lot of game cinematics, commercials and visual effects; however, Love Death + Robots is unique in that it showcases the work of not only Blur Studio but also a lot of companies that used to be our competitors.”
He believes the anthology offers the perfect opportunity for younger studios to showcase something audiences would normally not see from bigger animation houses working on family features. “We had around 13 studios from nine countries work on Season 1,” he notes. “This time we have returning companies, like Passion Pictures, Unit Image or Axis Studios; but we’ve made new friends by working with Atoll Studio in France. We also have our first stop-motion animation short, All Through the House, which was made by Blink Industries in London.”
Talented Trio
In regards to the approaches and attitudes of Fincher, Miller and Yuh Nelson, Denjean praises the trio for their relentless passion for the art form and the stories they’ve selected to tell. “All three are extremely curious people who are also passionate about all forms of animation,” he offers. “The mandate for this show has always been to show people the different ways animation can be used to tell great stories for adults. I hate the term adult animation because people tend to think there’s going to be mostly nudity, crass humor or graphic violence. We want to tell stories that appeal to adults in the same way Tim’s or David’s films resonate more with adults. Animation truly gives you endless possibilities in that regard, and the goal has always been to show as many facets to it as we can.”
The new season showcases contributions from Miller, Yuh Nelson, Alex Beaty, Robert Valley, Simon Otto, Meat Dept, Elliot Dear and Leon Berelle, Dominique Boidin, Remi Kozyra and Maxime Luere. “I was involved early on during pre-production, before most companies or directors were chosen,” reveals Denjean. “Tim Miller chooses all of the stories, supervises the writing of every script, and there is a lot of them by now. Each season starts as this enormous puzzle where we stand in front of a wall of possible stories, and have to match them with directors, companies and animation styles. It’s a lot more difficult than you would think!”
According to the VFX supe, every animation studio was free to use their own pipeline. “Each one of them is working on a full episode and nobody needs to share assets, so as long as they deliver beautiful frames in the end, I certainly don’t want to get in the way of how they rendered them. We take care of the final sound and final coloring, but otherwise I only want to discuss visuals, regardless of how all these companies got there.”
Long-Distance Collaborations
Along with having to come up with stories and animation styles that were going to sur-
Future Shock:
Directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson, “Pop Squad” is set in a dystopian world where breeding has become forbidden.
— Production VFX supervisor Jerome Denjean
prise viewers, an unexpected complication arose when the COVID-19 pandemic occurred in the middle of the production. “In hindsight, COVID made it more difficult but also brought all the companies together,” observes Denjean. “We shared ways to collaborate and work from home with each other, and Love Death + Robots quickly became this amazing project that we all had to learn how to work differently for. We are all proud of the way we were able to get through this together and have something beautiful to show to the world right as it’s starting to open back up.”
Extensive concept art, storyboards and story reels were created for all of the episodes. “Some are done in house by team Love Death + Robots before they get passed on to the company working on the short,” explains Denjean. “Some are done directly by the companies, depending on their bandwidth and resources. It is a big collaboration project and one that we spend as much as possible making sure the running times of all the pieces align with what the season needs, and there is enough variety in terms of world building. There is a lot of sets and a lot of characters in a single season of Love Death + Robots, so we want to make sure that nothing starts to look the same, even if it’s by accident.” Each story had specific creative and technical challenges that needed to be addressed. “Automated Customer Service was done by Atoll Studio in Paris, and they were a young studio that started specifically for Love Death + Robots,” remarks Denjean. “Atoll Studio probably had the toughest time of all; the lockdown happened right as they were starting a new studio and developing a brand-new pipeline using Blender. But overall, Atoll Studio did a fantastic job and the final quality is as high as that of any of the bigger studios. For Life Hutch, the main difficulty by far was matching Michael B. Jordan’s likeness and keeping a high level of photorealism throughout the entire short. Ice was considerably more difficult than Zima Blue in Season 1. There is a lot more characters and way more action. Passion Pictures always makes it look so effortless.”
Motion-capture sessions were conducted for the photorealistic animated characters in Snow in the Desert, Pop Squad and The Drowned Giant. “COVID was by far the biggest challenge we all had to face, and had the lockdown happened a couple weeks earlier we would have missed the opportunity to do the motioncapture shoots for a couple episodes, which would have delayed some teams by months,” states Denjean. “Tim Miller originally wanted The Drowned Giant to be a live-action short story with a CG giant, but by the time we were ready the entire planet was on lockdown. We couldn’t shoot it anywhere in the world, so we switched gears completely and decided to do it all CG instead. It still turned out beautifully.”
Denjean says choosing a favorite scene or shot from the season is not an easy matter. “People always ask me which episode is my favorite and it’s like choosing one of your kids,” reflects Denjean. “I truly love them all. On a more personal level, I’m looking forward to people seeing Jennifer Yuh Nelson’s short called Pop Squad. It’s a science fiction story that deals with a difficult subject, and I originally thought people might be turned off by it. But she created such a beautiful world and directed Pop Squad with such grace, that it really turned into something you’ve never seen done before in animation. I tear up every time I watch it.” ◆
