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From Stage to Animated Screen! Mo Willems and Tom Warburton share the details of their new animated special Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Underground Rock Experience! By Karen Idelson
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n the wildly popular children’s book Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed by beloved children’s author and illustrator Mo Willems, a courageous sand puppy ponders his clothing and life choices. The book, which inspired a stage musical in recent years, has now become an eyepopping, animated rock opera, which premieres on HBO Max and Cartoonito this month. Willems and Tom Warburton co-wrote the script and co-executive produce with Greg Silverman and Jay Judah from Stampede Ventures. Willems also worked with composer Deborah Wicks La Puma on the songs. Megan Alrutz serves as producer for the Mo Willems Workshop. OddBot is the animation house for the one-hour special. Willems, whose many other well-known books include Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale, That Is Not a Good Idea! and The Pigeon Finds a
Hot Dog!, says he knew he wanted to preserve the style of illustration in his New York Times best-selling book in the “rock experience.” That meant cultivating a 2D look for the work.
Crafting the Perfect Look “There were many reasons not to do it in CG (their huge heads and tiny limbs and the fact that their eyes are on one side of the head like a flounder, for starters),” says Willems. “But, for this story to feel real, the characters had to feel real, tactile and huggable. Kudos to Mr. Warburton and the team at OddBot studios for doing that, just like they did for Muppet Babies.” Exec producer and co-writer Warburton, the Emmy-nominated animation veteran often credited as “Mr. Warburton” on shows like Codename: Kids Next Door and the CGI Muppet Babies, tells us, “Pre-production (design, story-
board, animatic, recording, etc.) was handled by OddBot studios with everyone working remotely, as is the case with most productions nowadays. Snowball Studios in Toronto expertly handled the 3D animation, while Xentrix Toons rocked the 2D animation that happened in the ‘Moleseum of Art.’ OddBot also handled post-production with the help of Boom Box Post for sound effects/mixing and Keep Me Posted for final picture output. All in all, a lot of very talented people made this happen — and me!” The idea for an animated rock opera was born from oodles of other ideas and projects that Willems had worked on. The author and his collaborators had already created a successful stage show based on Naked Mole Rat. “Three years ago, Greg Silverman at Stampede Ventures started us down the road of tak-
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june|july 22
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