Animation Magazine - Licensing Show Edition 2022

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May 2022

Volume 36, Issue 5, Number 320 Frame-By-Frame

Event Spotlight

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The May Animation Must-Have List

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May Animation Planner

26 Animation Spotlight in Cannes Newsmakers to look out for during the 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival and Market.

Licensing

Features 8 A Criminally Fun Caper How the creative team behind DreamWorks entertaining The Bad Guys created a zippy new visual style for the studio’s 42nd feature.

By Ramin Zahed 12 A Familiar Heroine Flies to the Big Screen In time for its Cannes Market debut, the producer of the new Mia and Me movie gives us a first-look at the much-anticipated project.

14 A Brief Life Steeped in Beauty Directors Eric Warin and Tahir Rana discuss the making of their deeply felt and artistic biography, Charlotte.

16 Animals in the Afterlife The husband-and-wife directors of Even Mice Belong in Heaven discuss the making of their charming stop-motion movie.

By Ramin Zahed

30 To Vegas and Beyond Cyber Group Studios outlines its key licensing and marketing activities connected to its big animation brands in 2022.

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VFX 32 Re-Imagining the Dark Knight VFX supervisor Dan Lemmon shares the secrets of the visual magic of Warner Bros.’ new blockbuster The Batman.

By Trevor Hogg 34 Tech Reviews All about Chaos Player and SideFX’s updates to Houdini 19.

By Todd Sheridan Perry

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Opportunities Television/Streaming 18 Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles Goes Back to the Future Stan Sakai’s beloved comic-book saga comes to animated life in a new show by Gaumont and Netflix.

By Jennifer Wolfe 20 Playtime with a Feisty Feline Matt and Paul Layzell give us a tour of their new interactive animated show Battle Kitty.

22 Look Back in Wonder Creator Jack Bennett talks about his new comingof-age animated series Dodo.

24 Return to a Mystical Realm The second season of Amazon’s Undone offers more mysterious encounters, stunning visuals and gripping storylines.

36 Autonomous Animator The joy of working for yourself!

By Martin Grebing

Home Entertainment 38

Sorcerers’ Apprentice Gege Akutami’s esoteric creation Jujutsu Kasien takes the world by storm.

By Charles Solomon

Day in the Life 40

A Day in the Life of...

This month, we spend a day in Brooklyn with Dicktown cocreator John Hodgman!

48 Cover: DreamWorks’ The Bad Guys takes over U.S. theaters on April 22.

Cannes Cover: Studio 100 Film

brings Mia and Me: The Hero of Centopia to the market.

Licensing Expo Cover: Cyber Group Studios introduces The McFire Family and other new properties in Vegas. may 22 1

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ANIMATION MAGAZINE

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s the signs of spring and the end of awards season are everywhere, we all seem to be looking forward to opening a new chapter and embracing new creative projects and exciting animated endeavors. Over the past few weeks, we have seen endless social media discussions about what makes a short, series or movie worthy of awards. There have been “experts” who have scorned the latest crop of award winners and pushed their own definitions of what animation is and should be.

Here at the magazine, we like to embrace all kinds of animation — all the fantastic work created for preschoolers, older kids, teens, families and older audiences all over the world. I wish we could put aside the notion that animation is an art/entertainment form only aimed at children once and for all. Those of you who have been reading our magazine for years know better than anyone else that animation is a medium used to tell stories and make artistic statements for all age groups. Let’s hope general audiences catch on to this inclusive, limitless definition of animation in the near future!

Speaking of limitless creativity, let’s hear it for our cover story this month: DreamWorks’ 42nd theatrical animated feature, The Bad Guys. We had the chance to speak with the film’s talented young director Pierre Perifel, writer/exec producer Etan Cohen and production designer Luc Desmarchelier, and they gave us a great recap of the creative journey of the movie. Watching the breezy graphic look and taking in the entertaining plotline and hilarious characters has been one of the great pleasures of these past few weeks.

We were also lucky enough to spotlight two new international animated features — Charlotte and Even Mice Belong in Heaven — both of which have already played in festivals and have received solid reviews. If you are looking for movies that expand the definition of what stories and themes animation can focus on, these two The Bad Guys certainly fit the bill.

Several hot new series arrive in the streaming world this month, as well. Our frequent contributor Jennifer Wolfe has the scoop on the amazing new Netflix show Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles. We also go behind the scenes of HBO Max/Cartoon Network’s clever new “boy-meetsworld” series Dodo, picked up after a successful U.K. premiere on Sky Kids, and find out more about the new interactive Netflix show Battle Kitty.

Fans of innovative animation made for grown-ups will also be happy to know that the acclaimed series Undone returns for another spectacular season on Prime Video this month. We had the great fortune of catching up with series talented creators Kate Purdy and Raphael BobWaksberg and brilliant director/production designer Hisko Hulsing, who tell us everything we need to know about the bold and imaginative sophomore season.

That’s it for now. Don’t forget that our big blockbuster 35th Anniversary/Annecy Festival double issue is coming up in June! We are planning lots and lots of stories and special features for this milestone issue and can’t wait to share them with you — all our wonderful, loyal readers!

Ramin Zahed Editor in Chief ramin@animationmagazine.net

Quote of the Month

“Super cool to position animation as something that kids watch and adults have to endure!”

— Producer Phil Lord’s (The Mitchells vs. the Machines) Twitter response to the ridiculous jokes made at the expense of animation at the 2022 Academy Awards.

May 2022

Vol. 36, Issue 5, No. 320 Info@animationmagazine.net

President and Publisher: Jean Thoren Accounting: Jan Bayouth EDITORIAL

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May Animation Must-Haves A Rockin’ Ride: Buckle up and get ready to blow your mind all over again as Sony unleashes Heavy Metal (1981) on 4K UHD for the first time! With visuals and new, immersive soundtrack OKed by the late producer Ivan Reitman, the epic adult sci-fi anthology comes with a new retrospective featurette, bundled in the limited edition SteelBook with a Blu-ray copy and Blu-ray debut of Heavy Metal 2000, both with legacy bonus features — a truly radical retro gem. [April 19 | $35]

Into the Deep: If you missed the cracking cartoon mini-series Aquaman: King of Atlantis on HBO Max, worry not: Warner Bros. has re-cut the action-packed tale into a feature-length film for Digital and DVD! The original story reimagines the DC Super Hero (voiced by Cooper Andrews) as a newbie ruler warming up to the throne. With the help of royal advisors Vulko (Thomas Lennon) and Mera (Gillian Jacobs), Aquaman must deal with unscrupulous surface dwellers, evils from beyond time and his own scheming half-brother. Y’know, typical new job stuff. [April 26 | $15]

Jaeger Masterpiece: Can’t get enough kaiju? Legendary Comics’

Anime Enlightenment: Speaking of the

new graphic novel collection Pacific Rim: Ultimate Omnibus expands the epic mythology of Guillermo del Toro’s blockbuster franchise, bringing together the NYT bestselling Tales from Year Zero (written by Travis Beacham), Tales from the Drift (Joshua Fialkov), Aftermath (Cavan Scott), Amara (Scott & Zhang Ran) and the brand-new Blackout (also by Scott) in a deluxe set. Featuring stellar art by the likes of Marcos Marz, Marcello Miaolo, BigN and Nelson Dániel, the whopping 568-page hardcover collection brings fans into the world of the movies and hit Netflix anime series in a whole new way. [$100 | Visit IndieBound.org or ComicShopLocator.com to find stores]

great Japanese art, this month welcomes two new titles that look like library staples for any otaku. Out April 26 from Crunchyroll, Essential Anime: Fan Favorites, Memorable Masterpieces and Cult Classics [$24] is an insightful guide to 50 influential works from across the 20th & 21st century. Authors Patrick Macias (editor of Otaku USA) and Samuel Sattin (Wolfwalkers graphic novelist) offer commentary on the history and legacy of anime, recommendation lists and hundreds of beautiful images on this tour from Astro Boy to Demon Slayer, Akira to Tekkonkinkreet, Sailor Moon to Princess Mononoke and so much more.

Meanwhile, arts journo Cristian Campos’ 1,000 Ideas by 100 Manga Artists [Chartwell | $20] goes beyond the glut of “how to draw” books to delve into the why and wherefore of manga.

Artists, cartoonists and illustrators from around the globe answer questions about their work, inspirations, relationship with manga and creative advice alongside a bounty of artwork, sketches and photos. Dig in!

Andean Adventure: Writing from Animag’s “Portland Office” (a.k.a. my apartment), this reviewer can always use more sunshine — even if it’s just on screen. The new indie action-platformer Imp of the Sun sends gamers on a fast-paced quest through punishing battles to defeat the Four Keepers and retrieve the stolen power of the Sun. Created by Peruvian studio Sunwolf, the gorgeous hand-drawn game environments are inspired by indigenous cultures of the region. Players have compared the title to Metroidvania Ori, but the challenging fights may be more reminiscent of Cuphead — a beautiful, if somewhat brutal, gaming experience! [Console & Steam Download | $20]

On a Roll: Spring also saw the eagerly awaited release of Fandom’s Tales of Xadia: The Dragon Prince Roleplaying Game, which brings the magic, lore and adventure of the Emmy-winning Netflix series to your party’s tabletop. Already an ENNIE winner, the RPG is built with the Cortex Prime system and features an official storyline that bridges the gap between S3 & S4 of Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond’s acclaimed animated series. The handbook is packed with 300 pages of stunning artwork, expansive lore and guidance from Narrative Lead Dan Telfer (longtime DM of the Nerd Poker D&D podcast). Go ahead, treat yo’ elf. [talesofxadia.com | Physical & Digital $50 | Digital Only $25] — Mercedes Milligan

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May Animation Planner

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Toons are in full bloom in Stuttgart this week during the ITFS animation fest, FMX conference and Animation Production Days! If you can’t make it to the middle of Swabia, you can enjoy many films and talks online. [itfs.de | fmx.de | animationproductiondays.de]

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Fathom Events & GKIDS present Ponyo in select theaters today, tomorrow and May 18 as part of Studio Ghibli Fest 2022. [ghiblifest.com] Ponyo

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Explore the universe with the pre-Kirk Enterprise crew in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, on Parmount+ today.

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Iconic cartoon chipmunks get a hybrid movie makeover (or, at least Dale does) in Disney+ original Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, starring John Mulaney and Andy Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers Samberg.

Home audiences can also tune into S2 of The Jim Henson Co.’s Harriet the Spy on Apple TV+.

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L&M movers will be on the hunt for the next toys ‘n togs sensation at Licensing Expo, taking place live at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas and online for three days. [licensingexpo.com]

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

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Strange new worlds of visual spectacle open up in the latest Marvel blockbuster Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

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Cookie Monster, Elmo and Abby Cadabby embark on STEAM-powered adventures Sesame Street as heroic robots Mecha Builders in Sesame Street Mecha Builders, the newest series on the Cartoonito preschool block.

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The prestigious Festival de Cannes begins today. See you on the red carpet! [festival-cannes.com]

The Big Cheese is forced to crawl back up the corporate ladder (with help from his savvy nieces) in the new DreamWorks/Netflix series The Boss Baby: Back in the Crib.

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Enjoy the best in IberoAmerican animation at the 5th Quirino Awards fest in Tenerife, including the Co-Production & Business Forum, capped by the awards ceremony on May 14. [premiosquirino.org]

The Boss Baby: Back in the Crib.

My Little Pony: Make Your Mark

Hasbro’s Mane 5 kick off their new adventures in My Little Pony: Make Your Mark with a 44-min. special on Netflix.

The CG-animated series premieres this Fall.

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The Bob’s Burgers Movie

Fans can finally feed their musical-comedy craving as 20th Century’s The Bob’s Burgers Movie gets sizzlin’ in cinemas!

On streaming, Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen return as Jedi master and padawan in the prequel series Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+, while Netflix unleashes S4 of Stranger Things.

To get your company’s events and products listed in this monthly calendar, please e-mail edit@animationmagazine.net. www.animationmagazine.net 6

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Features

Pierre Perifel

A Criminally Fun Caper How the creative team behind DreamWorks entertaining The Bad Guys created a zippy new visual style for the studio’s 42nd feature.

By Ramin Zahed f the new DreamWorks feature The Bad Guys awakens fond memories of the best heist movies in the history of cinema, the film’s director Pierre Perifel, screenwriter Etan Coen (Tropic Thunder, Idiocracy, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa) and producers Damon Ross and Rebecca Huntley will be very pleased. Not only does the charming new caper takes audiences on a wild ride full of unexpected twists and turns, it also works as a cool homage to some very grown-up movies — including Heat, Oceans 11, Snatch and Pulp Fiction.

DreamWorks’ 42nd movie follows the adventures of five infamous criminals — Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Mr. Snake (Marc Maro), Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos) and Ms. Tarantula (Awkwafina) — who set out to pretend that they have given up their bad, bad ways and become model citizens, with some assistance from Professor Marmalade, a clever guinea pig voiced by Richard Aoyade. News reporter Tiffany Fluffit (Lilly Singh), governor Diane Foxington (Zazie

I

Beetz) and put-upon police chief Misty Luggins (Alex Borstein) round out the film’s zany cast of players.

Planning a Perfect Heist

Perifel, the film’s French director who is best known for his acclaimed shorts Bilby and Le Building, says he was instantly drawn to the project when he came across the books by Aaron Blabey. “It was an immediate attraction for me,” he says. “The film has a great concept and it mixed two of my favorite things: heist movies and anthropomorphized animals. Damon and I talked about making an Oceans 11type movie for the whole family, so I helped create a trailer using storyboards. Our production designer Luc Desmachelier was also already attached. After we pitched it to Margie Cohn and Kristin Lowe [DreamWorks’ president and CCO] , they really liked it and greenlit it as the first original feature at the studio under their leadership.”

For the director and his team, which also

included art director Floriane Marchix, VFX supervisor Matt Baer, head of look Jeff Budsberg, head of story Nelson Yokota, editor John Venzon, sound supe Julian Slater and composer Daniel Pemberton, it was important to keep the tone of the movie light and breezy, while paying homage to the best of the heist genre.

“I was surrounded by a dream team of writers, artists, technicians and producers who I knew would turn it into so much more than what I could have ever imagined,” Perifel says. “The imagery of the film is mind-blowing, fresh and playful — and the credit goes to the entire crew of visionaries that challenged the CG pipeline to pull out unique visuals and made the look of this film the ultimate reward of two years of intense production.”

The film‘s snappy and visually stylized look owes a lot to some of Perifel’s beloved Franco-Belgian comics and artists that he grew up with. “You can see a lot of Hergé, Uderzo and Moebius - but there’s also Luc Besson, Guy Ritchie and Steven Soderbergh and Quentin

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Features

Bad to the Bone: Based on the acclaimed book series

by Australian author Aaron Blabey, The Bad Guys is a sweet homage to everyone’s favorite heist movies.

Tarantino,” he notes. “In terms of the overall look, we were longing for something different from what had become customary in CG animated films. When Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse came out, we all felt that someone was finally doing something to change the status quo, what we had seen coming out of the big U.S. studios for many years. I think that opened the door for us. That’s how we were able to pitch something that was more illustrative and stylized and not going back to the same old character designs that we have

seen before.”

Achieving that desired 2D look was not an easy task. “All the big studios are equipped with proprietary rendering tools and ray tracing,which forces the light to react in a way that mimics the physical world accurately,” he explains. “We are also used to these surfacing and texturing tools that give us very realistic images. We had to revert back to

Writer-Producer Etan Cohen on the Power of Toons: “I think our exec producer Aaron Blabey came to me because he liked my work on Tropic Thunder, which like The Bad Guys is also a meta movie about making movies. I liked that the books weren’t talking down to any part of the audience. I think kids are smart: They are savvy about movies and know about these tropes. They don’t want to be spoon-fed the same things over and over again. I also liked the film’s powerful themes — which include everyone’s assumptions about who you are. My own kids are in junior high and high school, and those preconceived perceptions are something that speak to all of us who work in animation.

“One of the things I love about animation is that story-wise, the gloves are totally off, and you can do anything and go anywhere. I mean, we have a laser beam that controls the minds of guinea pigs all over the planet. You’d have a very hard time doing that in live action! One of my first jobs was writing on Beavis and Butt-Head for Mike Judge, and that taught me how you can combine smart and stupid — which is what we did in Idiocracy as well. You can have slapstick jokes that are also hopefully commenting on important things. I think that’s what we were going for in this movie, too. It’s a real luxury to be able to appeal to all kinds of people and make everyone laugh.”

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Features To Live and Draw in L.A.: Production designer Luc Desmarchelier says the film’s cartoony style plays well against iconic images of Los Angeles familiar to fans of Heat, To Live and Die in L.A. and Tarantino movies.

Luc Desmarchelier

Fun Factoids

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The Bad Guys took six years to make (two to three years of development, three years of production) and required 268,987 individual storyboard panels and a crew of 423 people.

The film used 10 Los Angeles area neighborhoods and one landmark as visual references and inspirations, including the Sixth Street Viaduct Bridge that extends over the L.A. River, Downtown L.A., Mid-City, Miracle Mile, Echo Park/Silver Lake, Pasadena/Highland Park, Elysian Park, Malibu, Santa Monica, Chatsworth and Century City.

The film’s opening diner scene, inspired by Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, is the longest one-shot in DreamWorks Animation history. It lasts two minutes, 25 seconds and seven frames.

Mr. Wolf’s wardrobe went through 25 iterations before his white suit was finalized.

Director Pierre Perifel, producer Damon Ross and composer Daniel Pemberton recorded backup vocals on the film’s end-credit song, “Brand New Day.” The face on the $100 bank note in the film belongs to DreamWorks Animation president Margie Cohn.

The Bad Guys’ team members’ names are secretly hidden in graffiti in the background of many city shots, as well as on several props.

Perifel’s DreamWorks short Bilby pops up as a movie poster in the background of a pet store scene.

Source: DreamWorks Animation

more traditional ways of animating to stray away from these photorealistic visuals computers give us. I wanted everything in our movie to feel gritty and lived in, so we had to add a lot of brush strokes and line work on top of the images. Everything becomes more complicated when your camera’s moving through, so you have to ask, how do you map this? How do you make it more flexible?”

The film’s graphic style also impacted the character designs. “We needed to rework the design style to make it work in this world as well,” notes Perifel. “For example, I didn’t want those big, big pupils that we always see in the movies; I wanted the characters to have very simple, bean-shaped eyes. I wanted to keep a painterly feel for the characters’ fur while keeping the rest of the visuals very graphic. We also had to bring back 2D effects to blend with particle generators.”

L.A. Plays Itself

One of The Bad Guys’ secret weapons was production designer Luc Desmarchelier, who has worked on many top studio features of the past two decades, from The Prince of Egypt and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron to Corpse Bride and Hotel Transylvania.

“The movie is grounded in some of our perceptions of L.A. I loved movies like To Live and Die in L.A. and Reservoir Dogs, even TV shows like Starsky & Hutch,” says Desmarchelier. “So we wanted to have the same kind of L.A. with smog and white skies for our film. It was something that we had in mind when we were researching and coming up with the stylistic guidelines for the project.

The light is very specific to this city. This sky is always overblown, and you always have this very specific kind of warm sun flares. So we tried to boil it all down to its essential elements. You may not be able to recognize any specific neighborhoods or buildings, but the overall effect is close to what you feel is the essence of the city.”

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Features

He adds he is especially proud of the movie’s dynamic opening scene, which really grabs the audience and draws them into the world of these lovable criminals. “We see the two characters at the diner, and the bank heist and chase that follows turned out exactly as what

Concept art by (top) Rémi Salmon and (bottom) Pierre Perifel

[Perifel] had in mind,” says Desmarchelier. “Even though we took some great chances with some of the visuals because the look is really pushed, we were able to do this long single shot, which is quite unusual in the beginning of an animated movie. We were able to incorporate a lot of

things we love so much in grown-up movies, but we turned those things around and used them in a goofy, silly comedy. It was a beautiful way of bringing in all the influences and things that we love in cinema.”

Perifel agrees. “Yes, the opening is quite striking — you have to excuse my language — we make a ballsy statement,” he says laughing.

“It’s something that I had been longing to see.

It was almost single-handedly animated by Jorge Capote, who is an amazing artist. I am also a big fan of the cop chase at the end of the movie, which features a great Chemical Brothers song. Overall, you can say we mix a Japanese anime style of filmmaking with a very French taste and humor. Simply put, we just wanted to pay a tribute to all these movies that we grew up with and loved, and have fun with them. Sometimes, all of our influences just pop out without us even knowing it. It’s all part of the pop culture landscape.”

As the first-time feature director awaits the movie’s April opening date in the U.S., he says he hopes audiences around the world will also fall in love with the characters that he and his team spent many years fine tuning.

“They’re such a fun bunch,” he notes. “I think The Bad Guys is a nice homage to friendship, too. There’s that social message as well — that it’s never too late to change your point of view on yourself and your life. Of course, it’s always great to see the movie with a big crowd on a really big screen — like movies are supposed to be seen!” ◆ Universal/DreamWorks’ The Bad Guys opens in U.S. theaters on April 22.

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Features

Thorsten Wegener

A Familiar Heroine Flies to the Big Screen In time for its Cannes Market debut, the producer of the new Mia and Me movie gives us a first-look at the much-anticipated project.

F

or the past three decades, Thorsten Wegener has been producing high-profile international animated features and TV shows which have been entertaining family audiences around the world. After producing three successful Maya the Bee movies in 2014, 2018 and 2021 (Maya the Bee 3: The Golden Orb) as well as the 2019 Princess Emmy feature and the 2019 Vic the Viking and the Magic Sword, he is back with a big-screen adaptation of the popular TV series Mia and Me. In the feature Mia and Me: The Hero of Centropia, directed by Adam Gunn and Matthias Temmermans, an ancient prophecy surrounding the magical gem in Mia’s bracelet takes her to some enchanted remote islands where she faces a powerful enemy. We caught up with Wegener to find out more about the new Studio 100 Film, which will be showcased at the Cannes Film Market in May: Animation Magazine: First of all, congrats on your latest movie. Can you tell us a bit about how you got involved with this project?

Thorsten Wegener: Mia and Me was already internationally successful and extremely popular when Studio 100 Media acquired m4e, the company that created, produced and distributed the TV show, back in 2017. Because of its production value, the colorful characters, fancy unicorns and artistic themes, we always considered this to be a top-notch brand which deserved a movie adaptation. In fact, it was so strong that we decided to produce a fourth Mia and Me season. This led to the next logical step of making a film, which made the whole project come full circle.

When did you start the project and when will the movie be ready for delivery?

The basic idea of producing a movie for Mia and Me had been in our minds for quite a long time. But the real concept for it only ignited and came to fruition when Studio 100 teamed up with the show’s creator, Gerhard Hahn, to write the story for the movie. The project started in June 2019, was challenged by the global pandemic and today we are happy that

the movie was completed in April and is now ready for delivery.

Where was the animation produced and how many people worked on it?

The animation was created at multiple studios as part of the co-production work split.

The four key studios were based in Germany (Studio 100 Media / Studio Isar Animation), India (Broadvision Services) and Australia (Studio B Animation Pty. Ltd./Flying Bark Productions), but we also had contributions from New Zealand and Spain.

As with any animated film, the size of the crew is enormous; from the writers and designers, the technical crew, every department of the pipeline process as well as all voice talents, sound FX and the orchestra recording the score. There were over 600 people involved in the production of the film. Plus, we had all the crew involved in the live-action elements, too. We had a lot of people working through the COVID restrictions. In fact, we were very lucky to get the live-action shoot

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Features done before the massive lockdowns in 2020.

The crew had to be very vigilant throughout as they didn’t have any rapid antigen tests then, so it wasn’t easy to monitor and test everyone on set.

Which animation tools were used to produce it?

It was a pretty much standard animation pipeline. The modeling was done with Maya and for texturing we used Substance. We animated in Maya, used ShotGrid for asset and shot management, the lighting was done in Katana and rendering in RenderMan. We also used Nuke for compositing and the FX was created in Houdini.

What would you say makes this feature different from other similar fare targeted at family audiences?

I really love the message this movie brings to the audience. Mia teaches you to feel empowered and not to be afraid to follow your heart.

She shows the true values of friendship and how to overcome any challenges in life, especially with the help of friends. And finally, by showing her courage, determination and a vast inner strength, Mia brings a lot of girl power to the movie!

What makes this movie outstanding is the unusual combination of live action and CGI animation. The original TV series has already set new standards in terms of production values and the quality of the animation. With this movie, we want to raise the bar once again, within the scope of our capabilities and possibilities.

So, the characters will have a much more detailed look. For example, you will see real fur on Pan Phuddle and on the unicorns. The overall look stays uniquely true to the work of famous Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, which already inspired the TV series creators in terms of patterns and shape in the world of Centopia.

What would you say were your biggest challenges in the process?

Needless to say, our biggest challenge was the COVID pandemic arriving shortly after the start of production. Suddenly, remote working was the norm and we had to get used to it very quickly. While we managed to work from home, we did face some delays because of the effects the pandemic had in the countries where our co-producers are based. Our Australian partners had to send their entire teams home to work remotely without losing any time in the schedule. The same thing happened in Germany and India, where many people became ill with COVID. But the worst situation was in India, with so many people sick or even in a critical condition — and, sadly, so many crew members even losing family members. It truly was a difficult time for everyone.

Like the series, the movie is a mix of live action and CGI animation, which is a special challenge to the production team since you have to plan a real movie shoot with real actors whilst at the same time handling a complete CGI production. Here, too, the pandemic posed major challenges in terms of timings, permissions, testing, etc.

What do you hope audiences will take home from the movie?

While the core target group of the series are girls, we are aiming to expand the franchise and brand with the movie to include boys as well. The new adventures and storyline really promote a wider audience and for Mia to conquer even more hearts worldwide. Overall, the audience can expect an exciting ride from the real world into the fantastic realm of Centopia, with all its mysterious and fabulous creatures, thus continuing the ongoing saga of Mia and Me. This is not only a movie for the fans of

the series — it will attract the whole family and beyond!

Can you tell us why you think the Mia and Me brand has been so popular over the years?

First of all, elves and mainly unicorns have always been top favorites over the decades — and the series adventures revolve exclusively around these characters. The show offers tremendous identification potential, since friendship, team spirit, trust, courage and adventure are always at the center of its stories. There are also still far too few strong female leading roles encouraging fans not to be afraid, to take their lives into their own hands and to go their own way. Mia and Me concentrates a lot on true friendship and trust, so any challenge can be faced with friends standing right by your side. And last but not least, the series’ extraordinary look, inspired by the works of Gustav Klimt, attracts viewers too.

You’re quite the veteran of the animation business. What is your take on the state of European animated movies in 2022?

The animation movie market is continuing to grow and evolve. Many projects are focusing on streaming content given the quota, which offers new possibilities for European content.

The classic independent companies are still around, continuing to produce wonderful and outstanding high-quality animation films for the world market. We know there are a few animation projects on hold or that have suffered delays due COVID, but hopefully they will have a chance to be seen on the big screen in the near future. ◆ Studio 100 Film’s Mia and Me: The Hero of Centropia will premiere at the Cannes Film Market this year. For more information, visit studio100film.com/en.

A Toxic Toad: The new Mia and Me movie finds the popular character and her friends facing an evil toad named Toxor.

Studio 100 Film will bring the new title to the Cannes market.

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Features

A Brief Life Steeped in Beauty Directors Eric Warin and Tahir Rana discuss the making of their deeply felt and artistic biography, Charlotte.

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he life and art of German-Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) who was killed in Auschwitz, is the subject of Charlotte, a beautifully animated feature directed by Eric Warin and Tahir Rana. The 2D-animated movie, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, is getting a limited release in U.S. theaters this month thanks to Good Deed Entertainment.

Warin, who also directed the 2016 feature Leap! and was a character designer/assistant animator on The Triplets of Belleville, says he was immediately moved by the story and the central character as soon as he read the script.

“The producer Julia Rosenberg came to meet me in Montreal and we talked extensively about the film and cinema in general,” he recalls. “I then went to Toronto with a list of things I would consider important to change; the storyboard was already started, so that was sensitive. Ten days later I moved to Toronto and plunged body and soul into this adventure!”

Co-director Tahir Rana, whose many TV credits include Looney Tunes Cartoons, Middlemost Post and Arthur, says he also fell in love with the story and insisted that he’d get a chance to work on the film. “The opportunity to work on drama is just so unique in the North American

‘In this tragic story, animation allows us to touch the soul of the spectator in a unique way and different from live cinema.

Above all, it sublimates reality and it adds poetry to the harshest images.’

— Director Eric Warin

market that I jumped at it,” says Rana. “Coupled with the fact that Charlotte Salomon’s story in itself is so beautiful and inspiring, I knew that I’d probably never get the chance to work on something so important and rare again.”

Artistic Shots Warin mentions that he could smell the paint from the very first lines of the script. “My father is a painter and I spent my childhood in his studio watching him work for hours on end on his canvas. I also saw myself in the corridors of the Academy of Fine Arts where I studied. That’s why many elements of the film echoed in me. My grandmother had also left her country during World War II.” He adds, “Beyond animation, I am also a great lover of cinema of all kinds. So I drew on references other than animation and I worked a lot on framing, composition and rhythm (editing). I really wanted to give this film a cinematic

treatment that uses animation as a medium to express itself — a bit like Steven Spielberg used black and white in Schindler’s List.”

The directors both feel that animation was the ideal medium to tell the painter’s story.

As Rana points out, “Not only were we able to draw inspiration from Charlotte’s own style with regards to our overall art direction, we were able to weave her very own paintings into the film’s transition moments in a way that would just not have worked had we used any other medium.” “In this tragic story, animation allows us to touch the soul of the spectator in a unique way and different from live cinema with actors,” adds Warin. “And above all, it sublimates reality and it adds poetry to the harshest images.”

About 100 people worked on the project, with storyboarding done in Toronto and the animation split between Toronto, Brussels and several indie animators working remotely. The

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‘More than anything, I wish to bring awareness to Charlotte Salomon’s artwork, which is so vibrant and beautiful, and for audiences to understand just how much she suffered and lost in order to bring her work out into the world.’

— Director Tahir Rana Portrait of an Artist: Charlotte features the voices of Keira Knightley (who also exec produced the movie), Brenda Blethyn, Jim Broadbent, Helen McCrory and Sam Claflin.

production used Toon Boom Harmony to deliver the fluid 2D animation. Warin says the film’s central visual style was directly influenced by Salomon’s paintings. “We tested several styles close to her paintings, but we had to simplify it to be able to animate it,” he notes. “The other important element was to always make sure to place Charlotte’s paintings in the foreground, and an overall style that was too much like her style would drown out the paintings. A more neutral style was needed to make the paintings stand out. To give life to the animation, we also subtly added animation in the tools around the characters. We also created a dark blue tint to the character’s outlines, because Charlotte never used black.”

Rana points out that the initial concept involved the artist’s own expressionistic style to create the character designs. “However, as the film evolved we realized we needed to infuse

more realism into the designs so there was some departure. Salomon’s paintings were still a huge inspiration with regard to the color palette and mood boards, and we even used her finished paintings as transition devices during certain points in the film.”

When asked about their cinematic influences, both directors offer a wide range of artists and movies. Rana says he is a huge Hayao Miyazaki fan and has a great love for all Studio Ghibli movies. “For this film specifically, we drew inspiration from independent 2D-animated films like Long Way North and The Red Turtle,” he adds.

Warin says he can spend hours talking about his inspirations. “My incomplete answer is that I have a very wide range of influences,” he says. “From Spielberg to Tarantino, Sergio Leone and Hitchcock. What they all have in common, and which is of paramount impor-

tance to me in my work, is their mastery of manipulating the viewer. How they use the ingredients of cinema to communicate to the spectator the emotions they want him to experience.”

Both directors also point out that making the movie taught them several important lessons about the craft. “Probably more than anything, I understood the importance of having a really strong animatic that is well thoughtout and executed,” says Rana. “We had multiple test screenings of our animatic before animation ever began, and that made all the difference in the success of the final product, in my opinion.”

“I have learned that no matter what the medium is, a story or a film is all about emotions and that as a director, you have to do everything you can to take the viewer on a journey that you hope they will grow from,” offers Warin.

As Charlotte joins the growing ranks of evocative and inspiring movies about artists (such as Loving Vincent), the helmers hope their movie will help preserve and promote the legacy of Salomon. “More than anything, I wish to bring awareness to Charlotte Salomon’s artwork, which is so vibrant and beautiful, and for audiences to understand just how much she suffered and lost in order to bring her work out into the world,” says Rana.

“I hope they’ll discover Charlotte as I discovered her — that is to say, as a very talented artist, but also a young woman who could be their neighbor or a member of their family,” concludes Warin. “Charlotte’s story is current and modern. It is a coming-of-age story and an invitation to live life without waiting. It is also a film about choices and decisions.”

He adds, “Unfortunately, current events seem to be repeating themselves, and the current war in Ukraine plunges us again into the darkest life has to offer. In this regard, I was very affected to discover a picture in a newspaper last week. It was of a little girl on a train, her hands on the windows, leaving her parents on the platform. The fear and uncertainty of what will happen to everyone is palpable. This image immediately reminded me of the shot of Charlotte leaving Berlin in the movie.” ◆ Good Deed Entertainment will release Charlotte in U.S. theaters on April 22. The movie features the voices of Keira Knightley, Jim Broadbent, Brenda Blethyn, Sam Claflin, Eddie Marsan, Sophie Okonedo, Mark Strong and the late Helen McRory in one of her final performances. Marion Cotillard stars in the French-language version.

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Features

Animals in the Afterlife The husband-and-wife directors of Even Mice Belong in Heaven discuss the making of their charming stop-motion movie.

By Ramin Zahed

I

t’s not every day when we get the chance to experience an animated movie in which the main characters die and go to heaven in the beginning of the story. That’s exactly what happens in Czech directors Denisa Grimmová and Jan Bubeníček’s recent stop-motion feature Even Mice Belong in Heaven, in which an initially combative mouse and a gentle fox form a challenging friendship in the afterlife. Based on a picture book by Iva Procházková, the film was released in France and the U.K. last year and was nominated for the César for Best Animated Feature and a European Film Award.

It was Grimmová who first came across the book and thought it would be a great project to adapt into an animated movie. “She was firmly convinced that we had to do it,” recalls Bubeníček, who is also her husband. “She was captivated primarily by the themes that the story encompassed, but also by the very natural way in which they are introduced for children. Denisa’s perseverance and the determination of producer Vladimír Lhoták gradually

set in motion a whirlwind that drew in more and more people.”

“After many years of literary and artistic prep work, we started shooting in the autumn of 2018,” recalls Grimmová. “With eight animators and another 20 crewmembers on 14 sets, we took 1,400 shots on one by one. Post-production began on more than 900 shots while we were still shooting and continued for nearly half a year afterwards!”

A Tale of Friendship The 90-minute feature, which is a co-pro between the Czech Republic, France, Poland and Slovakia, is the result of several years of hard work from the directors and their teams. But it was the book’s original story that kept the filmmakers on the right path throughout the process.

“The story of Mice looks like an uncomplicated story for children,” says Grimmová. “What we personally enjoy about it is how charged it is with seemingly insurmountable conflict and difficult and truly fundamental themes, like

death, the loss of loved ones, the loss of everything you’ve come to be. It is a film about looking for love and truth, which are often closer than we think. It’s also a story about sacrificing yourself for someone else, about cooperation — which ultimately always leads to victory … It offers strength and determination; it tears down stereotypes.”

Altogether, the artists created about 105 puppets for the movie — the lead characters required 10 and eight copies, and there were 87 additional characters to design and create.

All of them were designed by Grimmová and then built in two different studios: About one third of the puppets were built by the team at Momakin studio in Łódź, Poland, where all the mice and other rodents were created. All the foxes and the heavenly guardians were made in the studio in Prague. The animation team used Dragonframe software for the stop-motion shoot. As the film also incorporates CG animation, digital set extensions and VFX, InTheBox (Annecy), Amopix (Strasbourg), Le Stu-

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Features Honoring the Past: While continuing the classic traditions of Czech stop-motion animation, Even Mice Belong in Heaven also incorporates some modern CG sequences.

dio (Marseille), Letko (Warsaw) and Buvol (Prague) also lent their support.

Throughout the project, the two directors shared many responsibilities on and off the set.

“Denisa was the main artist on the project and every character went through her hands, as did every set and the vast majority of the props,” notes Bubeníček. “In addition to directing, I also helped with the production system (the pipeline) and the technical aspects of the film, the animatics and the digital effects, particularly when it came to 3D modeling and animating. We did the actual directing together. Over the course of production, certain lines got blurred and we learned all kinds of things from each other. In some ways, we could fill in for one another more than we could at the start!”

Both Grimmová and Bubeníček studied animation at the renowned Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague. When asked about their big animation heroes and influences, they respond: “We prefer the world of stop-motion the most. We cannot forget the legends of Czech golden animation era — Jiří Trnka, Karel Zeman and Břetislav Pojar.

We were also inspired by Jiří Barta, Pavel Koutský and Jan Švankmajer. Yuri Norstein, Priit Pärn, Tim Burton, Wes Anderson and Nick Park are among the many acclaimed international directors we love. And Hayao Miyazaki, of course!”

The husband and wife admit that they have always been drawn to the world of stop-motion filmmaking. “Stop-motion has a certain undoubtful charm,” says Bubeníček. “In the be-

‘We hope that especially children will take away several messages: That the entire universe is immense, harmonic and beautiful in its complexity, and that there’s always room for the hope that all will turn out well in the end.’

— Directors Denisa Grimmová and Jan Bubeníček

ginning, it was mainly Denisa who was sure about doing the film this way. Apart from being a director, a painter and an illustrator, she is also a puppet maker. She likes the real material and its textures, which allow you to capture everything on camera without losing any natural details or beauty.”

Grimmová adds, “The other reason to choose this technique was the legacy and tradition of the Czech stop-motion animation. To be able to appeal to the international audience. We couldn’t imagine achieving the level of the biggest international productions within our budget. The stop-motion technique is still quite rare in the context of international distribution, and it’s quickly identified among the other films. However, our project is not a pure stop-motion movie. To be able to fulfill the demanding script in terms of number of characters and diversity and scale of the environments, the stop-motion animation is mixed with an important dose of CG.”

Thriving Czech Artistry The duo also mentions that they are quite pleased with the state of European animation in 2022 and beyond. “There have been a number of beautiful European films released recently and we are delighted that European animation and cinematography as a whole has quite recognizable features and style. Regarding Czech animation, after two decades of feature film decline we are witnessing a rise again. This is great news. For a long time, only short films had achieved international acclaim, but in recent years, we have witnessed an increase in feature projects as well.”

As the movie is set to be released in more countries in upcoming months, the filmmakers hope audiences will embrace the deeper messages of their movie. “Our film is about humility, love and hope,” they note. “We are trying to say that all pain passes and behind every corner there is something new, a new friend, a new adventure. We want to show that there is no point in giving up. But that we should direct the strength and the ‘fight’ we have inside towards things that have meaning. Time is like a river moving ever forward towards eternity, turning the present into yesterday, and it cannot be turned back. On the other hand, though, there are lots of things that we can change — and that are worth fighting for.

Even Mice Belong in Heaven is currently available on VOD in the U.S. on Tubi, Apple TV, Prime Video, Google Play and YouTube. For more info, visit micebelonginheaven.com.

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TV/Streaming

Samurai Rabbit Goes Back to the Future Stan Sakai’s beloved comic-book saga comes to animated life in a new show by Gaumont and Netflix.

By Jennifer Wolfe

A

pril is going to be a big month for fans of Usagi Yojimbo, the acclaimed 35-yearold comic-book series from award-winning creator Stan Sakai. That’s when Netflix and Gaumont’s new action-comedy, CG-animated adaptation Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles premieres worldwide.

Taking place far in the future, the 10-episode series is set in a world that mixes sci-fi tech with magic and classic Japanese Edo-period culture.

Samurai Rabbit follows the teenage Yuichi, descendent of the great early 17th century warrior Miyamoto Usagi, on his epic quest to become a true samurai. Along with his faithful pet lizard, Spot, the brash Yuichi (voiced by Darren Barnet) assembles a ragtag team of misfit heroes — including a roguish rhino bounty hunter named Gen (Aleks Le), a cunning ninja cat named Chizu (Mallory Low) and the acrobatic fox pickpocket Kitsune (Shelby Rabara) — as he battles depthcharging moles, metal-tipped winged bats and

monsters from another dimension, all in the pursuit to become the best samurai usagi.

Samurai Rabbit is produced in partnership with Sakai, who also serves as executive producer, along with Gaumont, Dark Horse Entertainment and Atomic Monster. The series is written by executive producers Candie and Doug Langdale (Maya and the Three, The Book of Life, The Adventures of Puss in Boots, Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness), with the visuals overseen by art director Khang Le (Big Hero 6: The Series, Little Big Awesome) and supervising producer Ben Jones (Batman vs Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Teen Titans, The Iron Giant). The animation is provided by Mumbai-based 88 Pictures (Trollhunters, 3Below: Tales of Arcadia, Fast & Furious: Spy Racers).

Living Legend Sakai, who worked with Stan Lee for 25 years lettering the Spider-Man Sunday newspaper strips, is most famous for his original creation

Usagi Yojimbo, an epic graphic novel saga that began in 1984 and now spans more than 34 volumes. The legendary creator, writer and illustrator has been honored with a number of awards for Usagi, among them six Eisner Awards, two Harvey Awards (including one for Best Cartoonist), the Japanese American National Museum’s Cultural Ambassador Award, a Parent’s Choice Award and an American Library Association Award.

“I have been doing Usagi since 1984, so it’s been more than 37 years,” says Sakai, explaining how protective he is about the property, which he fully owns. “I’d be very selective in bringing it to animation, other forms of media — but the experience has been great, and the show looks fantastic. The samurai culture in a future setting works just wonderfully. It’s just beautiful. The city looks like huge castles, and you have vehicles, but it has a lot of the feudal Japan feel to it.”

Initially skeptical about bringing Usagi into the future, Sakai was struck by Gaumont’s pitch and the

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TV/Streaming Hare Apparent: A teenage rabbit descended from the great warrior Miyamoto Usagi embarks on an epic quest to become the best samurai ever in the new Netflix/ Gaumont series.

they encounter various yōkai, the monsters of Japanese mythology … Later, they act as a group, and it’s wonderful the way the characters develop, the way the entire group dynamic develops.”

Yuichi’s character arc is pronounced, as Sakai notes. “At first, he wants to fight,” he says. “That’s what he thinks a samurai should do. As the series progresses, he learns about himself. He learns about what it is to become a samurai, that it’s not just fighting. It’s about control. It’s about fighting, but what’s more important is not fighting. He has to learn when it’s appropriate and when it’s not. The fighting is never gratuitous. It’s a lot of fun. It’s never malicious. And I think Netflix and Gaumont handled it really well.”

On Wisdom and Honor

“This series is about honor. It’s about loyalty. It’s about friendship. And I think that’s a great message to leave with people.”

— Usagi Yojimbo creator Stan Sakai

early background and character designs. “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this will work.’ And it works. And it’s beautiful. The writers, Candie and Doug Langdale, did an amazing job with the storyline,” he says.

“My Usagi lives in feudal Japan, but we brought him into the storyline,” Sakai continues.

“And there’s an incredible twist to my character that I just loved. So, they took my stories, but they also expanded on it and just went on much farther than I could have imagined.”

The Langdales, for their part, watched Akira Kurosawa films for inspiration, along with Japanese yōkai movies from the 1950s. “We were creating a world based on the world that Stan created for the Usagi Yojimbo books, but it’s a thousand years in the future from that time,” Doug Langdale says.

One major hurdle, the Langdales said, was creating a Japan-centric futuristic world. “The idea is that there hasn’t really been any influence in the future Japan in the series from other parts of the world,” Doug Langdale explained.

“So trying to keep, as much as possible, western influences out of the look and feel of the world was a big challenge.”

To that end, there are no electronics — including smartphones and computers — in the world of Samurai Rabbit. “That came from high up,” Candie Langdale stated. “We were told not to do that. And we were like, ‘great.’ It makes the story more interesting with the challenges that that presents.”

Sakai was “very involved in every step of the process,” he says. “I approved everything. Everything came my way, from the initial plot outlines

to character designs. I even approved things like the broccoli, and stones that were used for the background. And it was great, working with Netflix and Gaumont. It was a wonderful experience.”

Set in a sci-fi CGI universe, Samurai Rabbit also includes dynamic 2D sequences rendered in a gorgeous, hand-drawn style featuring Yuichi’s ancestor, Usagi.

“Gaumont and I set about trying to make a different look between Yuichi’s futuristic world and my classic Usagi world,” Sakai says.

“Whenever my Usagi appears, it’s a very different type of animation. You can immediately see that it’s either a flashback, a fantasy sequence or something very different. It’s a nice contrast, and it works great. I love the look of it.”

Over the course of his quest, Yuichi learns not only what it takes to become a great samurai, but also more about his ancestor Usagi. “Yuichi idolizes his ancestor, and he himself wants to become a samurai, a great warrior,” Sakai recounts. “So he goes to the city, but things don’t go quite as smoothly as he had anticipated. He winds up with his band of misfits and together

In early episodes, Yuichi “pretty much personifies the arrogance of youth,” Sakai says. “He thinks he knows it all. He thinks he’s so wonderful. He’s been given the sword, but he learns that there’s so much more that he needs to learn, that he has to develop. He has to grow as a person. Throughout the series, he not only matures, but he learns things about himself and what he’s capable of doing. He learns that too much arrogance is not good, that if he wants to be a leader, he has to control that — so that, rather than direct people, he inspires them.”

Asked what he hopes viewers will take away from Samurai Rabbit, Sakai recalls a conversation he once had with a mother of one of his read-

ers. “Her son was reading a Usagi book, and she asked, ‘What’s it about?’ He thought for a second, and said, ‘It’s about honor.’ And I thought that was such a great answer. And that’s something that I would like people to take away with, is that this series is about honor. It’s about loyalty.

It’s about friendship. And I think that’s a great message to leave with people.” ◆ Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles premieres on Netflix on April 28.

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TV/Streaming

Playtime with a Feisty Feline Matt and Paul Layzell give us a tour of their new interactive animated show Battle Kitty.

A

s recent offerings such as Black Mirror and last month’s Cat Burglar have proven, we are just beginning to scratch the surface of what we can expect in the brave, new world of interactive athome entertainment. This month, the new children’s series Battle Kitty, which is based on animation veteran Matt Layzell’s popular Instagram toon The Adventures of Kitty & Orc, ups the ante even more. In the show, our main characters Kitty and Orc have to battle monsters and beat their rivals to move around the wild world of Battle Island. Of course, the kids at home can help them unlock new paths and layers in this futuristic/medieval universe.

“The show is based on a series of animated shorts I did for my Instagram during my spare time, just for fun,” says Matt Layzell, who has worked on shows such as Pinky Malinky, Sanjay and Craig and Apple & Onion. “The more of them I made, the more I fell in love with the characters, Kitty and Orc, and it seemed like they could make for a cool show. “ His brother, Paul Layzell (I Love You, America; Apple & Onion) is the show’s supervising

producer. As he tells us, “Matt and I worked on developing a wider world for Kitty and Orc to inhabit and pitched that, along with Matt’s shorts to a number of studios, and Netflix picked it up for development.”

Supportive Vibes The creative siblings began work on the project about four years ago. “We were very lucky to be part of Netflix Animation just as it was starting up, so there weren’t many people there, which meant things were moving really quickly,” recalls Matt. “Everyone was super supportive and eager to get our shows up and running, so there was a lot of trust and a really cool ‘yes and’ kind of vibe at the studio.

It was like working at a small independent start-up, but with the backing of a massive, successful company!”

The Layzells love the world of video games and they tell us that they were quite excited about using Unreal Engine to make their show.

“It’s an amazing tool for producing animation and helped give the show that authentic video game feeling that we wanted,” says Paul. “Unre-

al Engine has some really interesting features that can be leveraged to make the whole TV animation pipeline more efficient and conducive to directors, real-time rendering being a big plus,” adds Matt. “I don’t think it’s the norm yet, but I’m excited to see how other productions will use it in the future.

Battle Kitty relied on the talents of about 250 people in total — that’s including preand post-production team. The animation was produced by Sydney-based studio Plastic Wax, led by Nathan Maddams. “It was an absolute joy to work with them,” says Matt. “It was a great creative fit and they really poured their all into the show. They’ve got tons of experience using Unreal and totally understood the language of the video game aesthetic we were after, and had the most amazing character animators who totally got the sense of humor and comedy.”

Paul mentions that Plastic Wax had made a lot of super realistic, and often gritty, cinematics, so it was fun for the brothers to provide them with cute, colorful and (comparatively) simple models to play with. “Their

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TV/Streaming Interactive Mayhem: Based on Matt Layzell’s Instagram series The Adventures of Kitty & Orc, the nine-episode first season of Battle Kitty is inspired by video games across multiple genres.

artists added so many details that just made the show shine and showed just how much pride they take in their work,” he notes.

Matt says he loves the show’s two main characters Kitty and Orc. “I think they really represent both sides of my personality, and hopefully everyone else can relate, too,” he explains. “I feel like everyone has a feisty, energetic Kitty in them somewhere, but also a shy and sensitive Orc somewhere in there, too. I just love acting those two out, I love their dynamic, and just watching them go.”

Paul gives props to the show’s “amazing soundtrack” by Max ‘Maxo’ Coburn. “Matt and I are huge fans of his, and he really brought a special energy to the show,” he notes. “I also love the core themes of Battle Kitty — love, friendship, two friends traveling to a distant land to discover their potential. It really resonates with me. I see parallels with our own experience, leaving the U.K. to pursue our dreams in Los Angeles, subconsciously embedded in that story.”

Leveling Up The overall look of Battle Kitty was inspired by some of the Nintendo games that the brothers played when they were younger (and continued to be obsessed with as adults).

Mike says, “A mantra we would often repeat to ourselves was ‘this show should feel like playing Nintendo games on summer break!’”

Of course, what makes the show quite different from game-influenced children’s content is its special interactive qualities. As Paul explains, “When you click on Battle Kitty you’ll enter the interactive world map of ‘Battle Island’, where Kitty and Orc’s adventures take place. Instead of choosing episodes from a list, as you normally do on Netflix, you will be able to select adventures from the map. It’s a lot like a video game ‘overworld map’ that you see in games like Super Mario World, for example, with little characters running around and different areas to explore.”

Instead of selecting a ‘level’ to play, the viewer will have to pick an episode. Watching some episodes will unlock different sections of the map and progress the viewer towards the final ‘boss’,

The Layzells on the Interactive Frontier: Matt: “Coline Gattolin, an amazing member of the Netflix Interactive team, put it in a way I always think of; that interactivity is a sliding scale — with totally passive content on one end (a normal TV show you sit and watch) and completely interactive on the other end (something like Minecraft). And a piece of art can sit anywhere on that scale. There are some video games that have a lot of cutscenes and guided sections (passive elements) and now we’re seeing passive forms of entertainment (TV and movies) include more interactive elements.

I think we’re still in a time of experimenta-

tion, and Battle Kitty is a really exciting experiment that we hope pays off!”

Paul: “We’re in a time where it feels like game designers want to be storytellers, and filmmakers want to make games (see Hideo Kojima’s sweeping cinematic epics, or J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Games). Perhaps it’s always been that way, but I feel like we now have the tools to see what that looks like in real terms. It’s a time of experimentation for us creatives to see where the perfect spot on that sliding scale may be, but I also think there’s still plenty of room for purely compelling storytelling and purely satisfying games.”

Matt & Paul Layzell

while others will unlock short ‘bonus episodes’ that are hidden on the map. “It was amazing working with the Interactive team at Netflix, we pretty much got to design a video game at the same time as making a show, which was exhausting at times but also a total dream come true,” says Paul.

“We had to face the challenge of maintaining that environment during a period of time with much upheaval,” adds Paul. “During production, we moved our studio across town, we saw a much needed movement for social and racial justice, the air was filled with smoke from wildfires (both in California and Australia), not to mention the little old pandemic which meant many of us were working isolated at home. I think it’s testament to our amazing crew and leadership that we managed to make Battle Kitty at all!”

The brothers mention Hayao Miyzaki, Shinchiro Watanabe, Kasuhiro Otomo, Sally Cruikshank, Isao Takahata and Genndy Tartakovsky as some of their animation idols and influences. Matt adds, “And Craig McCracken, who we actually got to work alongside whilst he was making Kid Cosmic. It was so wild to have him watch early pitches of Battle Kitty and give feedback, as so much of his work has influenced us.”

At the end of the day, the Layzells hope their show will inspire kids to get through the challenges in their lives with an open heart. “We love underdog stories and love that Kitty is always punching above their weight,” says Matt.

“We want to show kids that even if you feel like the odd one out, or like the smallest person in the room, that you can be proud, be yourself and get through adversity. I think Kitty and Orc’s love for each other shows you that love and friendship can get you through anything.

Hopefully kids will be able to see themselves in both Kitty and Orc, and know that if Kitty and Orc can make it through all the challenges of Battle Island, they can make it through whatever challenges might face them!” ◆ Battle Kitty premieres on Netflix on April 19.

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TV/Streaming

Look Back in Wonder Creator Jack Bennett talks about his new coming-of-age animated series Dodo.

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he charming new animated series Dodo centers on the everyday school life of an 11-year-old boy named Joe Connolly as he tries to navigate the crazy pitfalls of the first year of high school. Luckily, he has his friends Frisbo, Pete and Lily by his side to offer him support and keep him centered, entertained and sometimes even more confused than before!

The 2D-animated show is created by Jack Bennett, based on a short he made when he was a student at the University of the West of England. “The short was called Not the End of the World, and it had loads of inspirations — from classic films like ‘Stand by Me, Scott Pilgrim, the books of Simon Rich and a lovely short film I love called In the Air Is Christopher Gray. All these helped shape the feel of the show, how I explored comedy and tried to create real, touching moments.”

Bennett completed the short in 2017, and around the same time, the team at Bristolbased Wildseed Studios (founded by Miles Bullough and Jesse Cleverly), saw the short

‘I hope kids watching Dodo can see a bit of themselves in it, and adults will remember their younger years.’

— Series creator Jack Bennett

and decided to develop the show based on it. The writing for the show started in 2019.

Wildseed handles all the pre-production, while Toonz in Kerala produces the animation and Telegael does the post-production.

Overall, about 150 people work on the series, which is animated in Adobe Animate.

Building a Familiar World “The original look of the show was my crude drawings from Not the End of the World,” says Bennett. “Along with our art director Louis Neubert, we created the look of the series, aiming to develop it further but to uphold the original look’s charm.”

Like many shows created during the COVID years, most of Dodo was produced remotely.

“With so many people on the team work-

ing incredibly hard to make sure we tackled any obstacles this created,” says Bennett. “On a personal note, it was a big challenge for me to go from a one-man team to being part of this big team, where I wasn’t doing everything.

We had to develop trust and creative relationships, which was challenging but so fulfilling.

It took a little bit of time for me to figure out how the show would work, but with the guidance of my producers I think we really sorted out how Dodo works as episodes and as a show in total.”

For Bennett, the show was a chance to look back at the world he grew up in and capture all the hilarious and crazy details about his adolescent years. “I like that we can deal with quieter, more introverted characters and delve into their innermost thoughts and fears and still go to cra-

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TV/Streaming Middle School Madness: Created by Jack Bennett, Dodo is produced by Wildseed Studios in the U.K., with CAKE handling worldwide sales.

zy worlds,” he admits. “The juxtaposition of being able to show the fear of a kid being exposed as a scaredy cat and in that same episode have a jetpack fight with a Godzilla-style kaiju. And then alongside all of this, we can show these tender, small moments which I think we all remember from our childhood that felt like the most important things in the world!”

The talented show creator says Chris Miller and Phil Lord are two of his biggest animation heroes.

“They cram so much loveliness into their films — from Mitchells vs. the Machines to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” he notes. “They create such outof-this-world adventures, but it all begins from relatable and truthful stories and character relationships. Alongside this, shows like Hilda and Kid Cosmic are doing fantastic things for animation and pushing the medium forwards.”

He adds, “I think animation is in a fantastic place in 2022. All over the world, really great animation is being produced and in a huge variety. Shows like Hilda and Kid Cosmic look amazing and are animated very, very well.

Likewise, we’re exploring real drama, alongside the traditional wacky and wild stories we’re used to seeing!”

Failure Is Essential When it comes to giving advice about creating your own animated show, Bennett says, “I’m probably not the person to give advice, but I did give a lecture at [University of West England] a while ago, and the topic I chose to talk about was failures. I got an impression upon entering the industry that the people I idolized were always successful and never

failed, but the truth is everyone failed a lot. I failed so much, and for me, the key to improving was accepting failures, actually embracing them and learning from them. It’s a supertough industry, so you have to try to create content that you love!”

He also says he hopes audiences will recognize a bit of themselves in Joe, Frisbo, Pete and Lily. “I hope people laugh and are entertained, but most of all I hope people connect and invest in this story of Joe Connolly and his daily struggles,” he concludes. “I hope kids watching can see a bit of themselves in it, and adults will remember their younger years.” ◆ Dodo premieres on HBO Max on Thursday, April 28. CAKE is distributing the show worldwide.

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photo Julie Lake

TV/Streaming

Raphael Bob-Waksburg

Return to a Mystical Realm The second season of Amazon’s Undone offers more mysterious encounters, stunning visuals and gripping storylines.

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hen we last saw Alma (Rosa Salazar), the heroine of Amazon Studios and Tornante Productions’ boundary-pushing Undone, she was in Mexico, waiting to be reunited with her father Jacob (Bob Odenkirk). Fans of the show will be happy to know that there are more mysterious events and beautiful animation in store in the second season of the entertaining series, created by Kate Purdy and Raphael Bob-Waksberg. Hisko Hulsing, the award-winning creator of acclaimed shorts Seventeen and Junkyard, is the show’s director and production designer.

The second season is also a blend of rotoscopy and 2D animation, courtesy of the teams at Austin-based Minnow Mountain and Amsterdam’s Submarine. “We were actually writing the second season as we were finishing production on the first pre-COVID lockdown,” says Bob-Waksberg, who is also the Emmy-nominated creator of the acclaimed Netflix toon BoJack Horseman and exec producer of Tuca & Bertie. “We were supposed to start production in 2020, but then we ended up filming the second season during COVID and were able to deliver the second season in January.”

‘The show sets out to ask questions and sort of says: This is something we don’t quite understand, and let’s explore it through these characters. It’s an artform that you bring your own personal perspectives to and interact with from your own point of view. Hopefully, that will create more empathy.’

— Co-creator, showrunner & exec producer Kate Purdy

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TV/Streaming Otherworldly Odyssey: Undone continues to explore the metaphysical experiences of Alma and Becca (voiced by Rosa Salazar and Angelique Cabral) using a mix of rotoscopy and hand-painted animation.

‘Season one felt as if we were building a car while driving it, constantly inventing new techniques and solving problems while being in production … So, I figured that our second season would feel like driving a Maserati on cruise control!’

— Director & production designer Hisko Hulsing

Expanding the Mystery Purdy says she was grateful to come back and continue to work with everyone who made the first season such a compelling watch. “It was a joy to be able to pick up where we left off with our collaborators, all the writers and animators, actors and our director Hisko, and just continue that process and deepen these relationships that we had already built during the first season,” she notes.

Bob-Waksberg chimes in, “Yes, I think the challenge and the joy from a creative standpoint was, how do we build on what we did before and not feel like we’re repeating what we did in season one, and not lose what’s special about season one — and maybe discover some new special things? It was also important to go to new places and try different kinds of stories that still fit in the world of our show.”

Purdy also points out that she is quite pleased with the way they were able to build up the main character’s relationship with her sister in the second season. “We get to learn more about Becca’s abilities this year, so we also witness how Alma and Becca (voiced by Angelique Cabral) grow as a result of their relationship.”

Remote from Amsterdam One of the impacts of the pandemic on the production was that director Hulsing, who’s based in Amsterdam, was unable to fly to L.A. to oversee the live-action shoots. “Season one felt as if we were building a car while driving it, constantly inventing new techniques and solving problems while being in production,” he recalls. “At the end of season one, it was a well-oiled machine. All artists in all departments — the oil painters, the roto artists, the animators — had had one and a half years to train

themselves, improve and reach very high levels of quality. So, I figured that our second season would feel like driving a Maserati on cruise control!”

He adds, “Then COVID came along and it became very uncertain if we could make the second season at all. We actually did some motion-capture tests with Rosa Salazar in a garage in Hollywood and we tried to rebuild her face in 3D, but we entered a very uncanny valley! Noel Bright and Steven Cohen from Tornante Productions luckily came up with a way to shoot it in a similar way as the first season, by testing the crew and actors on a daily basis. And we came up with a way to simplify the shoots. We had to work with a very well-organized, but super small skeleton crew of five people on set, who had to work like beasts!”

Hulsing had to resort to directing the crew from his own studio in Amsterdam, with a ninehour time difference. “It had to be prepared even more carefully than season one,” he adds. “So on top of storyboarding all 3,000 shots, we also created 3D previz that was overlaid on top of the two camera views so that our DOP Nick Ferreiro and his team and [producer] Patrick Metcalf, who was leading the set in person, could communicate with me all the time. I was watching four monitors with camera A, camera B, previz streams, storyboards and scripts from 4 p.m. until 4 a.m. each day and directing our artists in Amsterdam, before 4 p.m.! Because of the complex methodology, which involved shooting actors in greenscreen studios and then later painting in all the environments with oil paint, it was of the highest order to get everything right, so we wouldn’t waste time and resources.”

Despite all the challenges, Hulsing feels that the sophomore season is both aestheti-

cally and technically better than the first.

“This season has a very different approach than the first and it feels very fresh, without damaging the emotional truth behind it … We found ways in every department to improve all skills, taking off from where we left season one. Our showrunners Kate Purdy and Raphael Bob-Waksberg and their writers have written pretty genius stuff once again!”

The show creators also agree that mixing hand-painted animation and rotoscopy has been the perfect way to tell this ethereal tale.

As Purdy puts it, “All of our artists are bringing so much empathy and heart and soul to the project, and the fact that so much of it is actually handmade plays a big part in conveying the emotions of the show. I think you feel all of that. Of course, in terms of the themes of the show, we’re exploring the nature of reality. Our visuals sort of look and feel close to reality — but they are living in that artistic, imaginative space. The animation feels more representative of the emotion of reality than a physical photoreal depiction.”

Two Distinct Reactions Bob-Waksberg says he has also been very surprised and pleased by the way the show has reached out to those who don’t follow animation.

“I’ve heard from people who had perhaps avoided animated shows in the past,” he says. “Maybe they thought animation was just for kids or it was just used for goofy comedy. I hope our show makes people realize that there are all kinds of amazing stories out there that are being told through this amazing medium of animation.”

Purdy says the response from audiences has been quite fascinating. “I get two different kinds of responses,” she says. “Some people tell me that they suffer from mental illness or anxiety or depression or OCD, or have a relative who does.

Then, there are others who tell me they’re spiritualists and hear angels and voices, so the mystical elements resonate with them. This is part of the central mission of the show, which asks: Is Rosa experiencing what is known as the ‘unseen world’, or is it mental illness? The show sets out to ask questions and sort of says: This is something we don’t quite understand, and let’s explore it through these characters. It’s an artform that you bring your own personal perspectives to and interact with from your own point of view. Hopefully, that will create more empathy and we can see that there are so many perspectives and different answers in the world. So, maybe we should be open to other people’s interpretations.” ◆ The second season of Undone premieres on Prime Video on April 29.

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Event Spotlight

Animation Spotlight in Cannes The 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival and Market will take place from May 17 to 28 this year. Since the official selection will be announced after we go to print, you can find out about which animated titles will (possibly) be in the running at the fest by visiting our website after April 14. But here are few items we managed to collect about animated fare that could be making news at the market in May:

Return of a Pixar Player

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hile Pixar’s much-anticipated movie Lightyear won’t open in theaters until June 17, we’ve been hearing rumors that the film will screen out of competition in Cannes. In years past, the festival premiered two other Pixar titles — Up and Inside Out. This spinoff of Toy Story (1995) follows the adventures of the Space Ranger who inspired the action figure, directed by Angus MacLane (co-director of Finding Dory) and is penned by none other than Pixar CCO Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc.; Up; Soul). We wouldn’t be surprised to see voice stars like Chris Evans, Keke Palmer, Taika Waititi, James Brolin, Uzo Aduba and Efren Ramirez basking in the glamour of the red carpet on the Croisette.

Meet TikTok, Your New Shorts Patron!

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veryone’s favorite spot for insane dance routines, annoying teen influencers and obvious life hacks has become the official partner of the Cannes Film Festival. The popular star-making app is launching its inaugural #TikTokShortFilm contest,led by BAFTA-nominated Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh (The Missing Picture) and jurors Basma Khalifa, Camille Ducellier, Angele Diabang and Khaby Lame. Eligible short films should be between 30 seconds and three minutes in length. The selection will be done by representatives of TikTok around the world. Three awards will be handed out during the festival at an event attended by Cannes chief Thierry Fremaux. With one billion users around the world, TikTok could be the perfect launching pad for talented and creative shorts directors.

A Doorway to Enchantment

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here’s always a lot of excitement when Japanese helmer Makoto Shinkai has a new movie in the works. This year, the acclaimed auteur of Your Name. and Weathering with You is putting the finishing touches on Suzume no Tojimari (Suzume’s Locking-Up the Doors), a mystical tale about a young man and woman who find an old door in an abandoned house in the mountains, which unleashes a series of disasters all over the world. Set to be released in Japan this winter, the movie is produced by CoMix Wave Films and features character designs by Masayoshi Tanaka, animation direction by Kenichi Tsuchiya and art direction by Takumi Tanji. There’s a good chance the film will make special appearances in Cannes and Annecy this year.

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Event Spotlight Life of a French Master

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his year, ON Animation Studios’ ZAGTOON movie Ladybug and Cat Noir Awakening is premiering on Netflix, but the studio has another big project in the works that will probably be making the market rounds pretty soon. ON and What The Prod’s upcoming feature The Magnificent Life of Marcel Pagnol is based on the life of iconic French author/filmmaker and will be directed by none other than Oscar-nominated auteur Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville, The Illusionist).

“I have always been a great admirer of Marcel Pagnol’s work, so I was immediately won over by the idea of writing and directing an animated biopic on his life,” says Chomet. “It is through the innocence of Marcel as a child that I have chosen to re-transcribe the profoundly human and universal values of the man, because I am convinced that our era needs to return to this poetry and language of humanity.”

A Surreal Treat

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e’ve been covering the development and production of Pierre Földes’s fascinating movie Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman for the past few years — and we hope in 2022 we finally get to enjoy this Haruki Murakami adaptation on the big screen. Using rotoscopy and a mix of 2D and 3D animation techniques, the surreal film brings his short stories to life with “a lost cat, a giant talking frog and a tsunami that help a bank employee, his frustrated wife and a schizophrenic accountant save Tokyo from an earthquake and find a meaning to their lives!” The film is a co-pro between Cinéma Defacto and Miyu Productions, with The Match Factory handling international sales.

Feline Trouble

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ine lives are simply not enough! A pampered cat who has taken his life for granted learns a big lesion when he is allowed to come back to Earth with a whole new set of lives — each in a variety of different forms!

That’s the entertaining premise behind 10 Lives, a new animated feature directed by Chris Jenkins (Duck Duck Goose, writer of Surf’s Up) and produced by GFM Animation and L’Atelier Animation (Leap!). GFM Animation’s other big title Blazing Samurai will hit screens on July 22.

A Magical Realm

To save his missing brother, a young wizard apprentice teams up with a tiny hairy elephant and an outlaw with a mysterious power in Lendarys, a Franco-Canadian production directed by Philippe Duchene (character designer on Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles). The film, which has a $30 million budget, is being launched globally by All Rights Entertainment and is produced by PM S.A. and 2 Minutes Animation (Calamity, Zombillenium). ◆

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You’ve Got a Friend in Spain!

The Spain AVS Bureau offers convenient services for international content producers.

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ast year, the Spanish government launched a new audiovisual plan called the Spain AVS Hub to promote and support the country’s fast-growing array of entertainment and art content. This plan included the creation of a new Spain Audiovisual Bureau, which according to Elisa Garcia Grande, the executive director of ICEX-Invest in Spain “was conceived as a one-stop shop to centralize the support related to the internationalization of the audiovisual industry, both for attracting investment and projects to Spain [Implementation, filming, production] as well as assisting Spanish audiovisual companies and productions to develop their projects abroad.” She adds, “With this service, we want to provide foreign producers with a customized service that will help land their projects in Spain and coordinate their contacts with all the Spanish entities involved in the process.”

According to Grande, the bureau will give support to the full range of activities related to the creation, production, and distribution of animation, including technologies closely linked to this activity. Through this service any foreign producer can solve issues related to establishment and growth in the country and learn about the services that ICEX-Invest in Spain and the rest of Spanish public bodies offer to foreign producers. “At ICEX Invest in Spain, we will provide soft landing services, networking services and start-up attraction programs,” she notes. “We will also assist you during the process, explaining the legislation and regulatory frameworks as well as finding the proper locations, studios and infrastructures, crews, equipments and suppliers for post-production.

We’ll identify the funds and aid programs for co-production and co-production agreements with third countries that suit you best and will look for your best partners.”

In addition to highlighting funding and incentives, the bureau will help clients get in touch with Spanish firms—offering company

directories, business contact for companies and advice on production service companies. “We’ll share with you our directories of creators, professionals and training centers which offer postgraduate studies in audiovisual,” she adds. “We’ll highlight new business models, with an emphasis on the opportunities opened up by digital transformation and new forms of distribution.”

Grande points out that Spanish artists and animation studios are internationally recognized for their creativity when it comes to generating content. “It is a sector with a great diversity in its array of talent and types of producers, from 2D children’s animation to 3D family cinema, as well as experimental hybrid projects or adult animation,” she notes. “It is not by chance that, among the last four films that have won the award for best European animated film, three are Spanish or co-productions with Spanish companies—Another Day of Life (2018), a co-production of Kanaki Films; Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (2019), a co-production of Dragoia Films, and Josep (2020), -co-production of Imagic TV.” Another key attraction is overall the improvement in Spanish tax incentives, both for national production and for services abroad (with a special mention to the Canary Islands incentives, which reaches 50% of the eligible cost in the territory) which allow an excellent relationship between high-quality and production costs. As Grande explains, this very

appealing framework stimulates the relocation of foreign productions in our country, optimizing bureaucratic processes and facilitating their access to the entire European market.

Among the top-notch animated features and TV series to keep an eye out for in 2022 are: Tad the Explorer 3 (director: Enrique Gato) Lightbox Entertainent.

Momios (dir: Juan Jesús García Galocha) 4 Cats Pictures Unicorn Wars (dir: Alberto Vázquez) UniKo Studio They Shoot The Piano Player (dir: Fernando Trueba) Estudio Mariscal Inspector Sun and the Curse of the Black Widow (dir.: Julio Soto) The Thinklab Media, Tripictures Jasmine & Jambo (Teidees Audiovisuals, TV3) Mya go 2nd season (Motion Pictures, TV3) The Happy Farm (La Granja Feliz) (Motion Pictures, TVE) Polinopolis (Mago Production, TV3 y TVE) Momonsters’ 2nd season (Big Bang Box, 3 Doubles Producciones, Antaviana Films y TVE) MiBots Universe’ 1st season (Wise Blue Studios, Filmax, A Punt, TVG) The strength of the Bureau is to serve as a centralized point of information in which all the Spanish entities related to the internationalization of the audiovisual sector are involved.

As Grande mentions, “At the level of the Spanish public administration, several ministries work together with ICEX-Invest in Spain: The Ministries of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation; Finances; Migrations, Foreign Affairs, and Culture among others. In addition, the regional investment attraction agencies and the extensive network of film commissions and film offices, led by the Spain Film Commission, are involved too. The bureau will add other partners as its activity evolves and the needs of the audiovisual companies become more complex.” ❤ To learn more, please visit investinspain.org.

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NextGenerationEU

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VFX Licensing Gigantosaurus

Bruno Danzel d’Aumont

To Vegas and Beyond J

Cyber Group Studios outlines its key licensing and marketing activities connected to its big animation brands in 2022. ust in time for the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas (May 24-26 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas) we caught up with Bruno Danzel d’Aumont, VP of international licensing and marketing at Paris-based animation powerhouse Cyber Group Studios. In this insightful interview, he tells us about the studio’s latest licensing campaigns and key 2022 animation tentpoles.

Animation Magazine: Can you tell us a little bit about what Cyber Group will be focusing on at the Licensing Expo in May? Bruno Denzel d’Aumont: The Licensing Expo is a global show, and since Cyber Group Studios is selling its series all over the world, it is a great opportunity to meet with our existing partners and potential future ones to share the company’s latest updates. For example, we’ve recently invested in real-time animation, a new technology that allows us to produce high-quality content using live actors at a fraction of the cost of traditional animation.

Also, as part of its ongoing international expansion plan, Cyber Group Studios has acquired a majority stake in Bristol-based animation studio A Productions, the multi-award-winning Italian animation studio Graphilm Entertainment and the Singapore-based studio Scrawl Animation.

What are some of the new shows you will be

bringing to the event?

At the Licensing Expo, we will, of course, continue to promote our global preschool property Gigantosaurus, with new content to come internationally. It will be a great opportunity to share our upcoming plans with our licensees, agents, and new partners. Additionally, our most recently developed shows — Digital Girl, The McFire Family, Press Start! and Final Fantasy IX — will be presented for the first time.

These four new series have a strong licensing appeal for different age targets.

Where are some of the new areas of focus for the studio and how do you see these areas will evolve and grow in 2022 and beyond?

On the licensing side, Gigantosaurus will continue its expansion around the world, opening new product categories not only in 2022, but also in the coming years. The new series that we will present at the Licensing Show will also contribute to our growth in the coming

years. Our recent technology developments such as real-time animation will also be an area of focus for the coming years.

What do you think are some of the most impactful trends in the world of animation and licensing?

One of the biggest trends is the direct access to the consumer: not only is the content directly accessible by the consumer through the various platforms, but so are licensed products sold through the digital retail network.

This trend requires extreme agility and targeted communication through products’ corresponding content towards stakeholders and consumers.

Cyber Group has been an active player in the gaming arena in recent years. Can you talk about some of your exciting initiatives?

We released our first video game in March 2020, an action-adventure game on console

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VFX Licensing The McFire Family

and PC called Gigantosaurus the Game that targeted kids and families. This game does include a cooperative multiplayer option, enabling kids to play their favorite characters with their friends or relatives. It is still selling very well across the world. It was followed in June 2021 by The Last Kids on Earth and the Staff of Doom, an action-adventure-RTS game on console and PC. On Android/iOS we released Taffy: Feed the Kitty and Sadie Sparks: Magical Match.

More games are in production on either console/PC or Android/iOS, and some will release this year! All Cyber Group Studios games are family-friendly and provide a safe and fun environment for our young audience. They enable the fans of our TV series to further immerse themselves in their favorite shows.

What kind of advice would you give an animation start-up who would like to dip their toes in the challenging world of modern licensing?

I think that the key phrases are good storytelling, appealing characters and access to the various media with long-term perspectives. A high quality of animation and creativity are also required. Finally, content must be accessible to consumers globally through the various media platforms. Lastly, the licensing business is driven by good partnerships and compelling products. ◆ Press Start!

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Re-Imagining the Dark Knight VFX supervisor Dan Lemmon shares the secrets of the visual magic of Warner Bros.’ new blockbuster The Batman.

By Trevor Hogg

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ver since his remake of Swedish vampire tale Let the Right One In, filmmaker Matt Reeves has established a reputation of bringing something new to familiar fare. The director, who also helmed two successful Planet of the Apes reboots, showed his mastery at the superhero genre with the new adaptation of the DC’s The Batman, which has grossed over $600 billion at the box office worldwide.

Making the leap from being a facility supervisor at Weta FX on Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes to overseeing the visual effects for The Batman is Oscar-winner Dan Lemmon, who has become a member of Reeves’ inner circle. “There was a bit of teething for me on The Batman coming out from under the umbrella of a facility’s infrastructure and tools,” admits Lemmon. “Fortunately, I had great support at Warner Bros., both in England and back in Los Angeles. I was lucky to be joined by Bryan Searing as visual effects producer in post, with whom I had worked closely on the Apes films.”

Lemmon says he feels lucky to have collaborated with Reeves for the past decade. “Every project we’ve done together has its own unique problems to solve, but in the broad strokes, Matt is consistent in his desire to create spectacle and drama without compromising realism. He is allergic to anything that may distract the audience, even subconsciously, and take them out of the moment, inhibiting

their ability to connect emotionally with the film and its characters. Understanding that, I try to anticipate his notes and help steer the work toward his sensibility.”

Bat-Gadgets Galore The grounded mandate influenced the design of the signature gadgetry that Batman (portrayed by Robert Pattinson) deploys when battling crime. “For the grapple gun, Matt

looked to Travis Bickle’s concealed gun slide from Taxi Driver. In other Batman stories, his cape can turn into a rigid hang glider; that didn’t make sense in our world, but we reinterpreted that idea as a wingsuit.”

Reeves points out that Unreal Engine and virtual production were indispensable tools for the art department, cinematography, stunts, special effects and visual effects.

“That’s where we figured out how big the sets

‘Matt [Reeves] is allergic to anything that may distract the audience, even subconsciously, and take them out of the moment, inhibiting their ability to connect emotionally with the film and its characters. Understanding that, I try to anticipate his notes and help steer the work toward his sensibility.’

— VFX supervisor Dan Lemmon

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VFX VFX

Batmobile Boosters: Weta FX recreated the in-camera lighting effects through virtual cinematography, working out timing, composition and action beats of the CG portions of the car chase.

needed to be, where process screens would go, what the extensions would look like through the camera, where stunt rigging and special effects equipment would go,” notes Lemmon. “Being virtual, it was much easier to move walls around and problem solve before any physical construction had begun. We also emulated the properties of our large-format anamorphic lenses inside UE, and Greig Fraser [cinematographer] was able to work out a lot of his lighting problems in that space, too.”

The primary visual reference was the principal photography by Fraser. “Greig was using these beautiful ARRI Large Format Anamorphic [ALFA] lenses that ARRI had just developed. We shot with two versions of each lens — a carefully calibrated and tuned version that was optically pristine — and then Greig’s ‘character’ versions, where he had Andrew Prior, the lens designer at ARRI, detune the lens to the point where they literally could not focus on anything outside the center of the frame.”

Fraser advocated the use of LED walls as background and lighting tools for several scenes. “I was excited about the idea, especially for our dark, wet sets where we were going to get a ton of spill light from the backgrounds kicking around the set,” notes Lemmon. “My only reservation was having enough time in prep to get all of the environments up to a level where they would look realistic through the camera. We needed to have those in-camera finals, because otherwise the economics just didn’t work and we wouldn’t be able to afford the LEDs. It was a huge learning experience, and the truth is there is a lot that I would do differently the second time around, but I do think the technique was successful, especially in the dawn and the sunset scenes.”

In total, about 1,554 visual effects shots were completed for the feature, which had a reported $20 million overall budget. As Lemmon points out, “ILM led the work on Gotham, may 22

and their StageCraft group handled the real-time LED backgrounds during production.

Scanline VFX took on most of the third act and the heavy simulation work. Weta FX did the Batmobile chase and a few other standalone environments. And then Crafty Apes did a substantial amount of our 2D work, with splits, retimes, stabilizations, monitors and other cleanup work.”

Four practical Batmobiles were built by the special effects team for this 11th live-action movie centered on the Caped Crusader. “There was an Electric Hero Batmobile with a fullflame system that shot fire from the headers, side-exhausts and the afterburner at the back of the car,” explains Lemmon. “There was a Gasoline Hero Batmobile as well, which was powered by a Chevy V8 LSX 454 engine with 627 horsepower. It could switch from twowheel to four-wheel drive with the push of a button, which was important for precision drifting and power-sliding. We also had a Gasoline Pod-Drivable car, which was effectively identical to the hero gasoline-powered Batmobile, but it could be driven from a pod on the roof, allowing Rob Pattinson to safely perform in the driver’s seat while a stunt driver actually drove the car from the pod. And finally, we had a stripped down ‘Half-Hero’ Batmobile that was substantially lighter and could be used for stunts like jumping through fire.”

A practical version was captured for almost every shot. “The scene featuring the Batmobile jumping through the wall of fire was almost entirely practical,” reveals the VFFX supervisor.

“Dom Tuohy and the special effects team added an extra set of shock absorbers [to one of the Batmobiles] and extended the suspension travel, and then they sent it off a ramp through a 60-foot wall of fire, launching it 10 feet off the ground and 80 feet down the road before it touched down again. We handed over to a CG Batmobile after the car landed and bounced

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back up onto its extra long suspension, just so that it would look like the lower, meaner Batmobile in the rest of the sequence.”

Digital Assist As is customary in almost all VFX-driven movies today, performances of the main cast had to be digitally augmented. Lemmon says the kinetics were enhanced to tighten the timing and make some sequences snappier and more effective. “Some of the wingsuit sequence ended up being keyframed because it just wasn’t practical to do it any other way,” he says. “But by and large we tried to keep everything grounded in the photography.”

Batman’s iconic Gotham backdrops were shot in London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Chicago, and New York as well as on the studio backlot at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden. “We shot the main Gotham Square scenes in Liverpool, using portable LED advertising screens to provide the light from the jumbotrons that we would eventually add to the photography,” remarks Lemmon. “The Gotham City Police Department building was a mashup of the Chicago Board of Trade Building and the Liver Building in Liverpool. We photographed some of the high, wide aerial shots of Gotham Island in New York and then heavily augmented the city, while others we shot on the backlot outside of London and then substantially extended them.”

All of the departments worked together to create an immersive cinematic experience.

Lemmon concludes, “My hope is that the audience gets so absorbed in the movie and sucked into the world that they don’t even think about the individual shots and sequences. Of course, I also think the Batmobile chase turned out pretty cool!” ◆ The Batman is currently playing in theaters worldwide. The film will debut on HBO Max in April.

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Tech Reviews C

Chaos Player

haos Group, most known for the V-Ray render engine which is now found in nearly all 3D platforms, has released a new version of its RAM player, Chaos Player.

This is a tool geared toward reviewing rendered image sequences of animation, VFX or whatever you may wish to view. While it supports playback of movie files like QuickTimes and AVIs, it works best with image sequences. And frankly, in a professional VFX situation, image sequences are the only way to go.

The player is extremely responsive. When you drag an image from the sequence into the interface, it immediately loads up the sequence into RAM (make sure you have a lot of RAM). The same is true for movie files. I’ve used other players that have to think for a second or two before you can begin your work.

Once you have your clip, you have control of how you want to view the material. You can switch between color space or load in your show LUT. Check your color range by exposing up or down.

Make color corrections with Lift/Gamma/Gain controls, and A/B between multiple clips. You

know — all the things that you would expect to be able to do in a player.

But Chaos Player has some additional great features. For instance: at the bottom of the screen, there’s a small timeline which grows as you add additional clips and acts as a pared-down, non-linear editor. Not only can you review shots back to back, but you can also adjust your in and out points on the clips in the way that we’ve grown accustomed to — with a timeline. Adjustment layers can be added on top for global color corrections, or you can add annotations onto a layer with either an overall note, or you can make notes frame by frame.

If you have elements that you are reviewing, you can composite them together for an initial review and then export out the settings of the comp to either Nuke or After Effects for the compositor

by Todd Sheridan Perry

to take it to final. You can even do it from live feeds — so, you have your own QTAKE system at your fingertips.

The system also has a robust command-line library to hook in and control Chaos Player with your own custom tools and scripts.

Moving forward, I would love to see some integration into the standard project tracking systems like ShotGrid and ftrack (which could probably be done in-house through the command line support). It would also be cool to see a connection between the color correction tools and a control surface.

If you are a Chaos House and are using V-Ray and Phoenix and the rest of the tools, then Chaos Player is part of the collection. But at $99 per year as a standalone, it is less than other players that may require a subscription to the tracking software they are connected to.

Website: www.chaos.com/player Price: Chaos Player, $99 per year; V-Ray Collection, $699 per year

I

SideFX’s Houdini 19

t should be a shock to no one that the all new advances in Houdini 19 can hardly be covered in this brief review. However, I’ll do my best to include all the major highlights of this always-amazing bit of software from SideFX. Known for its fluid dynamics, H19 has made it faster and easier to make things blow up with fiery explosions. A rewrite has made the solver faster, but it’s the tools that have made it more flexible.

The fast minimal solver is great for smaller simulations that do not need the size or accuracy of full scale sims. It is agile and adaptive and can be tracked to objects for emitting off of torches or cigarettes, but it can also be used for smoke, fog, etc. Further, these simulations can be controlled with an axis force tool to guide and swirl the sims — or a velocity scale, which provides control over areas of the simulation to adjust localized events like temperature or velocity. The perceived complexity does not stop there: the simulations can be deformed based on volume with standard modeling nodes like bend, twist and grid deformations.

Of course, what are explosions without extra debris? The Debris Source node has also received a rebuild for efficiency, the most substantial of which is that your rigid body simulation that drives the debris doesn’t have to be unpacked in order to spawn the secondary simulation.

Introduced a few releases back, the Vellum solver is also fairly new. Vellum is kind of the allin-one solver that allows fluid, rigid body, cloth, soft body,and grain to interact with one another all in the same solve. Like most of the other tools in Houdini, Vellum has been optimized, getting faster results by implementing the GPU. This helps

with the interactivity in the new Vellum brush — essentially, if you have a preliminary fluid or grain solution, you can use the brush to shape and “set dec” the result into something art-directed.

But Houdini isn’t only about dynamics: It also features a ton of character tools that fall into the CFX and KineFX categories. A muscle system is currently in beta within H19, implementing a multi-stage workflow of Vellum-driven soft-body muscles attached to the bones (so that the rest of steps have something to react to). Incidentally, these muscles have a hair-like ‘groom’ to them that can be ‘brushed,’ indicating the direction of the muscle striations which dictate how the muscles flex and relax. On top of that, there is a tetbased fatty, jiggly layer, and then another tetbased skin that wrapped around that. It’s not a new technique for the industry, but previous versions have been home-grown, and H19 is bringing it to the masses.

I’m running out of space and haven’t even reached the rendering in the fully released Karma CPU renderer and the alpha release of the Karma XPU renderer. Nor have I touched the Solaris USDbased scene assembly tools. Just know that this is quite a significant update — and from what I can tell, the Houdini peeps out there are happy. If you are not yet a Houdini peep, well, it’s never too late!

Website: sidefx.com/docs/houdini Prices: Various student, artist, indie, studio rates available.

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.om

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Opportunities

Autonomous Animator

By Martin Grebing

I

The Joy of Working for Yourself

’ve never been a big fan of coloring inside arts. But for the sake of this article, let’s focus because you want a change of scenery for a the lines. Well, maybe a little at first — but on the independent animator, artist or cre- few months while you work on upcoming once I figured out all the angles, creating ative small business owner/operator who is projects? As working remotely has become not tied down by the confines of a standard quite the norm, you can practically work anymy own lines became paramount.

I’m here to tell you how great being your jobby-job. where in the world and deliver your content to Working for self means having the power to practically any other place in the world, and own boss and working for yourself is, but I’m also here to tell you it’s not all roses. Going choose lifestyle first. How much money do you your clients might not even know the differout on your own can be a harrowing experi- want to make? How many hours per week do ence. And even if they did, they probably ence. In the beginning, you will more than you want to work? Would you want to take wouldn’t care. likely fail more than you succeed. There’s a this Tuesday off ? How about next month?

Working for yourself makes your calendar good chance you will be late with rent, your Want to sleep until noon because you were up elastic, causing days of the week to lose their car payments, student loans, and a host of oth- late last night checking out a DJ without meaning in the traditional work-sense. Highs er bills more than a and lows are not dicfew times. You may tated by the day of the not know when or week, but rather what where your next goals are accommeal will appear. You plished, how much fun may have to beg and you have being your borrow from everyown boss and how one you know. many times you thank the stars for not being The struggle to bea member of the Misercome your own boss is more than just a able Monday Club. collection of harsh Working for yourself learning lessons, it’s a means unlimited earnrite of passage. Howings potential. This one deserves repeatever, if you feel this is ing: unlimited earnings your true calling and potential! Chances are, you can persist Indie Stars: Artists such as Alberto Mielgo (Windshield Wiper), Joanna Quinn (Affairs of the Art; photo: M. you’re already an overagainst a world that Rojas) and Bill Plympton (Demi’s Panic, Guard Dog) have been able to juggle personal, indie animated achiever and make no seems hell-bent on projects with commercial fare throughout their amazing careers. qualms about working the demise of all who dare buck the system, the rewards can be expo- needing to call into work, pretending to be 80+ hours in a week, so why not do it for yournentially sweeter. But be warned, once you’ve sick? Not a problem! As long as you have all self, while moving toward your own dreams? tasted the sweet life, there’s no turning back. your responsibilities taken care of in advance Want to make $10k this week? There’s nothing Once you achieve a certain level of success, or so everything runs smoothly while you’re on holding you back, it’s all up to you to find the clients and projects to make it happen. practically any level of success from working for siesta, the sky’s the limit.

Working for yourself certainly has its chalself, the mere thought of returning to the 9-to-5 lenges and is definitely not for everyone, but grind under the thumb of an overbearing boss The World = Your Oyster! will forevermore send nauseous shivers straight Working for yourself also means you can for those that dare to tread this path, the reto your gut. work anywhere you want. How would you like wards can be things of legend. Working for Before digging too deep, let’s take a look at to make $1,000 a day from your home studio, yourself is more than just doing your own exactly what being independent means from never needing to change out of your pajamas thing, more than having unlimited earnings a dictionary perspective: 1) Not relying on while a movie marathon of your favorite films potential and more than being able to call others for aid or support. 2) Not being under plays in the background? I don’t know about your own shots. To those of us who are able to achieve it, working for youryou, but for me that sounds a lot like heaven. the rule or control of another. self is essentially freedom. ◆ These definitions could apply to those that What about taking your laptop and umbrella are independently wealthy and don’t need or to the beach, sipping on fruity drinks under Martin Grebing is the presiwant to work. They could also loosely apply to the sun, hearing the waves crash against the dent of Funnybone Animation the unemployed or even a wandering monk sand and seagulls caw while animating a Studios. He can be reached who travels through the Old West armed only character for a local advertising agency? Or at funnyboneanimation.com. with his spiritual training and skill in martial how about taking a sabbatical to New Zealand www.animationmagazine.net 36

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H ome E ntertainment

Sorcerers’ Apprentice Gege Akutami’s esoteric creation Jujutsu Kasien takes the world by storm.

By Charles Solomon

G

ege Akutami’s 2018 manga Jujutsu Kaisen and its animated TV series and feature film adaptation have become quite a global phenomenon. Released at the end of December, Jujutsu Kaisen 0 overtook Evangelion 3.0+1.0 as the top-grossing film of 2021 in Japan — but most of its run took place in 2022, so it’s currently the biggest hit of two years. U.S. anime producer and distributor Crunchyroll reports that the Jujutsu Kaisen TV series is so popular, it’s been dubbed into English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and German, and subtitled in nine additional languages, including Arabic, Italian and French. The 24-episode TV series, which is produced by MAPPA and directed by Sunghoo Park, began its run in Japan in October 2020.

Meanwhile, the manga has sold more than 60 million books worldwide; the English translation has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.

John Bae, Weekly Shonen Jump editor for at Viz, comments, “To be honest, Jujutsu Kaisen’s popularity blindsided me a bit … I kept thinking it’s too edgy and filled with too many esoteric references … Boy oh boy, was I wrong! Its popularity just exploded. It’s exciting, thought-provoking and, to me, one of the most unique and original manga series out right now.”

The story centers on Sugisawa High student Yuji Itadori, who possesses extraordinary physical strength and speed.

Just before he dies, the grandfather who raised him tells Itadori, “You’re a strong kid, so help people. It doesn’t have to be all the time. Just whenever you can. You may feel lost. Don’t expect gratitude, Just help them.”

In Akutami’s world, negative human emotions produce a vile energy that generates “Curses,” supernatural monsters that account for more than 10,000 deaths a year. Two of Itadori’s friends in the Occult Research Club break the seal on an extremely powerful cursed object — the severed finger of the formidable demon Sukuna. To prevent his classmates from being killed by the monsters it attracts, Itadori ingests the finger. He’s following his grandfather’s admonition, although probably

not in the way the old man intended.

His rash action saves his friends, but poses serious problems for Jujutsu High student Megumi Fushiguro and teacher Satoru Gojo, who battle the Curses. If Sukuna took permanent control of Itadori’s body, he could wreak terrible destruction on the world. As it is, he can only control the teen for a few seconds at a time. The “higher-ups” have decided that instead of executing him immediately (thereby destroying the malevolent power of the

Fight scenes are not Akutami’s strongest suit as a manga artist: The pages are so dark, it can be difficult to follow the action. But he has a flair for creating creepy, bizarre monsters that translate well onto the screen. The Jujutsu Kaisen manga and TV series offer an always popular hero’s journey that blends combat, friendship, supernatural foes, training and slapstick comedy, filtered through Akutami’s offbeat sensibility.

Itadori doesn’t appear in Jujutsu Kaisen 0. The feature is a prequel that ‘Jujutsu Kaisen offers an always popular hero’s takes place a year earlier, and journey that blends combat, friendship, focuses on nervous, morose student Yuta Okkotsu, who supernatural foes, training and slapstick comedy, meets younger versions of filtered through Akutami’s offbeat sensibility.’ Panda, Maki and Toga. His absence hasn’t bothered the finger), they’ll send Itadori to Jujutsu High School. franchise’s fans on both sides of the Pacific. But He’ll learn to combat curses and grow strong those fans are still eagerly awaiting Itadori’s reenough to consume all Sukuna’s digits. Then turn in Season Two of the broadcast series, slatthey’ll execute him. ed for release in 2023.

Itadori isn’t exactly the sharpest katana in the By the way, it should be noted the true identity of armory. He’s not driven by the deep need to help Akutami is shrouded in a cloud of mystery. “Gege others that motivates Deku in My Hero Academia. Akutami” is only a pen name. The author’s notes left Nor has a personal tragedy led him to dedicate his at the end of Kaisen chapters are often accompalife to preventing others from suffering, as Tanjiro nied by a one-eyed cat avatar. The gender and sexdoes in Demon Slayer. But like Tanjiro and Deku, ual identity of the artist is also an enigma. While Itadori begins a program of rigorous, violent train- Akutami is referred to using he/him pronouns, their ing to control his latent powers. The initial manga gender has never been officially confirmed. It all and first season of the anime focus on his first adds to the special mystique and growing popularyear at Jujutsu High. In addition to Gojo and Fush- ity of this creative band of sorcerers. ◆ iguru, Itadori interacts with three senpai (upperclassmen): genial Panda, brittle Maki Zenin and The first season of Jujutsu Kaisen can be streamed Toga Unumaki, whose powers limit his vocabulary on Crunchyroll. Jujutsu Kaisen 0 was released in to fillings for onigiri (rice balls). select U.S theaters in March.

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C ontinued

THE PREMIER CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION ON COMPUTER GRAPHICS AND INTERACTIVE TECHNIQUES After two years of connection, inspiration, and discovery in our virtual venue, SIGGRAPH 2022 is back with more participation options than ever before.

From joining us in Vancouver, virtually, or both, you have the opportunity to choose your own path to learn, network, and celebrate our community.

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A D ay I n T he L ife We spend a day in Brooklyn with the amazing John Hodgman, co-creator of the awesome animated show Dicktown (FX/Hulu).

2

1 I slept all night holding the camera in front of my face so I could capture the very moment I opened my left eye for you.

4

I work in an office not far from my home. Using this picture, you could probably track me down. Please don’t do this.

Every morning I start by tidying up my desk in case a magazine wants to take a picture of it.

On the right are some boxes and wires that I use to record my podcast, Judge John Hodgman.

3 My office is on the second floor of this building. This is the whole of my cardio these days.

5 I always like to check in on the miniature version of me that I keep trapped in a plastic box.

7

8

My co-creator and co-star of Dicktown is Mr. David Rees. This poster, though, refers to a time when he made his money as an artisanal pencil sharpener.

True story.

Lunch time!

Don’t worry, I did not eat this cake of uncooked ramen noodles. I threw it away.

These days I just like sipping the broth.

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9 Here I am taking a break to hang out with my son. Sike! That is not me. That is cartoon me, a.k.a. John Hunchman, Former Boy Detective. And that’s not my son, but Lance, the famous juvenile delinquent played by Griffin Newman

I have ordered a private subway car to take me from Park Slope to Carroll Gardens for my drinks date. It’s a little extra money, but it’s worth it.

6 Also in my office I have this wonderful birthday present that was sent to me by my friend Ken Plume. It commemorates my role as eccentric millionaire/duck John D. Rockerduck on Disney’s DuckTales.

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My drink with my editor was fun. But honestly the best part of the night was coming home to realize that our son is watching The Godfather Part II. What a long movie! It’s also good. I really miss Bruno Kirby.

After this I went to bed!

Thank you for spending the day with me. ◆

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