THE BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY & ART OF ANIMATION AND VFX ™ September| October 2022 BLE Edition
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TIME
OTTAWA COVER: The upcoming movie Ozi, Voice of the Forest is one of Mikros’ anticipat ed projects.
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Hypebeast Hearts
CARTOON FORUM COVER: APC Kids/Zephyr’s new show Mogu & Perol hits the markets.
Director
Fletcher Moules discusses the inspiration for and animation process of the new Kid Cudi/Kenya Barris Netflix show Entergalactic What Dreams Are Made Of 4 Creator Neil Gaiman and his VFX team discuss the stunning visuals of his new Netflix series The Sandman 4 14 14 58 58
PIXELATL COVER: The dynamic animation festival takes Guadalajara by storm Sept. 6-10. Poster art by Mighty Animation.
COVER: Netflix premieres the new animated special Entergalactic on Sept. 30.
Spirits of the Forest
Several new high-profile animated projects are taking a chance on NFTs and Web3 technology to build fan-based communities and connect fans and creators
MIP JUNIOR COVER: Cyber Group Studios brings its new show 50/50 Heroes to the fall markets.
The engaging new AMC+ series Pantheon pays homage to some great anime classics while breaking new ground on its own. creators of FXX’s new adult animated show Demon give us the scoop on their sassy spawn of
Three boys’ scheme to look cool has unintended results in writer-director Atsuko Ishizuka’s beautifully observed feature Goodbye, Don Glees! A BOUTIQUE CULTURE EMBRACES GROWTH 10 Mikros Animation expands its slate with a wide range of colorful, original features.
RISKY BUSINESS OR BRAVE NEW WORLD? 18
EVENT
A COOL, NEW ANIMATION DESTINATION 22
TELEVISION/STREAMING
ANIMATING AN AMERICAN LIFE 12 Award-winning animation veteran Robert Valley is attached to a new 2D-animated pic about songwriter, producer and activist Billy Rose. 36, ISSUE 8,
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MISADVENTURES OF TEEN MISFITS
The Molyneux sisters give us a sneak peek at the new season of their FOX animated comedy Great North HIS FIRE Gerber, creator of Disney Junior’s new show Firebuds, shares the secrets of his success. SPOTLIGHT Mexico’s famous Pixelaltl Festival offers something for every animation fan and industry player. FOR EURO FEST!
Brazilian director Alê Abreu
THE BIG
Cartoon Forum’s 2022 edition will spotlight 84 new animated series, minis and specials in September. Forum projects that looke quite promising this year. brother and sister enter their favorite video game in Cyber Group Studios’ latest animated venture Press Start!
SOME DEVILISH FUN 24 The
LIVE FROM OTTAWA, IT’S OIAF22! 40 YOUR OIAF22 CHECKLIST! 42 NINE SHOWS TO CATCH AT MIP JUNIOR! 44 OPPORTUNITIES AUTONOMOUS ANIMATOR 48 CIRCLE OF LIFE IN THE ANIMATION BUSINESS 50 VFX & TECH TECH REVIEWS 60 SHORTS A TASTY SLICE OF TERROR 62 TikTok star Lucas Ansel reveals the ingredients of 99¢ Pizza DAY IN THE LIFE A DAY IN THE LIFE 64 This month, we visit Unicorn Wars director Alberto Vázquez in beautiful La Coruña, Spain.
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Oscar-nominated returns to the big screen Perlimps, a stunningly beautiful eco-parable which dazzles the senses.
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A MULTITUDE OF IDEAS AND CHARACTERS! 34 Cartoon
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There has been a major backlash in the animation community as animation professionals responded to CEO David Zaslav’s brutal and callous disregard for the artform in the name of cost-cutting and corporate profits. Industry analysts claim that the company’s CEO had a mandate to save $3 billion and to use the axed shows as tax write-offs for the conglomerate. But as animation creators such as Julia Pott (Summer Camp Island) Owen Dennis (Infinity Train), Parker Simmons (Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart), Jennifer Skelly (Little Ellen), Stephen Neary (The Fungies!) and Myke Chilian (Tig ‘n Seek) pointed out on Twitter and to various media outlets, this was a terribly brutal and inhuman way to treat the professionals who work on these shows, as many found out their shows were canceled on the news. This whole year has proved to be a challenging period for both animation creatives and fans. After being mocked and exiled to the children’s table at the Academy Awards in March, we witnessed the quick death of several animated projects on Netflix, and we were bracing for more bad news when the HBO Max cancelation train hit us all pretty hard. Of course, we all know that the growth and shrinking of the industry is to be expected. Just a quick look back at the past few decades proves that this is not a new phenomenon. What stings most is the cold and unkind way these giant media machines treat the animation visionaries that are constantly feeding their pipelines. They demand loyalty from audiences, but show none to the bright forces that keep them in business. But as an optimistic friend pointed out, good shows eventually will end up finding a home. I have a feeling another smart outlet will soon nab the rich library of popular animated titles in the next few months. Let’s hope the great animated movies that were killed before leaving the edit bay will be developed and produced by smart and enterprising entities that see the potential in them. Luckily, there are still many people out there that see the value of investing in creators that share their stories and personal visions in animation. We won’t let a few dark spots dim the light of our favorite artform!
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“We worked late into the night, we let ourselves go, we were a family of hard working artists who wanted to make something beautiful, and HBO MAX just pulled them all like we were nothing. Animation is not nothing!”
Editor in Chief: Ramin Zahed Multimedia Editor: Mercedes Milligan Webmaster: Damaso Abrajan Asst. Webmaster: Lucy Abrajan Tech Reviews Editor: Todd Sheridan Perry Contributors: Martin Grebing, Trevor Hogg, Karen Idelson, Tom McLean, Devin Nealy, Chris Robinson, Tom Sito, Charles Solomon Sheri Shelton Director: Kim Derevlany Creative Director/Production Manager: Susanne Rector Circulation Director: Jan Bayouth
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— Summer Camp Island creator Julia Pott reacting on Twitter to the removal of her show from HBO Max.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH SUBSCRIPTIONS For account changes, renewals, cancellations, questions or comments: anics@magserv.com SUBSCRIPTION CUSTOMER SERVICE Animation Magazine | PO Box 16225 | North Hollywood, CA 91615-6625 | Phone: (818) 286-3199 anics@magserv.com Ramin Zahed Editor in ramin@animationmagazine.netChief FROM TOP: Infinity Train, Victor and Valentino, Little Ellen, Summer Camp Island and Bye Bye Bunny
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Cruel Summer S o, how are you feeling? I think we all need some major mood-enhancing meds after living through HBO Max’s big massacre of close to 40 beloved animated and family titles from its streaming library last month. Not only did we hear about the unceremonious dumping of beloved shows such as Infinity Train, Summer Camp Island, Victor and Valentino and Close Enough, we also got word that the streamer has canceled plans for high-profiles animated projects such as Batman: Caped Crusader, Bye Bye Bunny: A Looney Tunes Musical and Scoob! Holiday Haunt
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Spirits of the Forest
Oscar-nominated Brazilian director Alê Abreu returns to the big screen with Perlimps, a stunningly beautiful eco-parable which dazzles the senses.
t’s been 24 years since Brazilian director Alê Abreu’s first animated short Espanthalho (The Scarecrow) put the talented artist on the map. To most fans, he is best known for his charming first movie The Boy and the World, which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature in 2016. This year, the writer-director makes a triumphant comeback with a new movie titled Perlimps, which premiered at Annecy and will screen in competition at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in September.
A Multitude of Muses
When asked about the sources of inspiration for the movie, Abreu says there was a wide variety of drawings, stories and objects that led to what audiences will see on the screen. “The development of a film is never a very rational and clear process for me,” he says during a recent email interview. “I am inspired in many ways, music and painting mainly. I collect notes (loose drawings, bits of story, characters, etc.) over a long period of time before finding connections among them and discovering if there is a film there.”
By Ramin Zahed -
Perlimps executive producer Ernesto Soto adds, “From my point of view, the inspiration comes from a desire of Alê to inhabit the mind of a child. And to get in touch with the freedom we had when we were kids. The Enchanted Forest, where the story takes place, is apparently a physical space, but it also represents a state of mind.”
The colorful film centers on the adventure of Claé and Bruô, two secret agents from enemy kingdoms who have to join forces despite their differences to save the Perlimps from the Green Slime that threatens to destroy the forest. (The film’s title Perlimps was suggested by the film’s producer Luiz Bolognesi, who was inspired by the word pirilampos, “fireflies” in Portuguese, and refers to what the two main characters are searching for in the movie.)
I
According to Soto, it took about nine years to complete the movie. “We had four years of development since Alê’s first sketches, and fourand-a-half years of pre-production and production,” he says. “Alê has drafts and drawings that go back to 2014. In 2016 we had a bible to start our fundraising, which took almost three years. We started pre-production officially in 2018. Overall, adding the different stages, around 80 or 90 people worked on the film. The Brazilian currency has fluctuated much during the years that we have worked on the project, but if we consider today’s exchange rate, our budget would be around $1.85 million.”
The producer mentions that the animation industry in Brazil has been hit hard by the sociopolitical climate in the country over the past few years. “Brazil had many years of steady investment in the development of an animation industry with a lot of grants and public financing,” Soto points out. “All these incentives made the industry grow; a lot of new talent emerged and independent productions such as ours were possible. Unfortunately, under the current government, culture has not been a priority -
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“There comes a time when someone’s work is such a mixture of things that it is not so easy to identify the direct influences. But I could mention Roger Dean, Mœbius and René Laloux, not only for the reference to psychedelia that I tried to imprint on the film but also because of the fond memories I have.”
sep|oct 22 5 www.animationmagazine.net anymore and many of those talents are now working for studios abroad. But, I firmly believe Brazil will continue to be an important voice in the independent animation scene.”
FEATURES
— Writer-director Alê Abreu ECO WARRIORS: Two secret agents working for enemy kingdoms discover that they’re on the same mission to save Enchantedthe Forest from giants.terrible
Perlimps is produced by São Paulo-based Buriti Filmes and co-produced by Sony Pictures International and Globo Filmes. The animation for the film was hand drawn by Abreu and a reduced team which spent four years in a mountain village in Brazil. As the film’s assistant director Viviane Guimarães explains, “We created a studio and hired our own team to work on the film, but the animation itself was mostly done by Alê Abreu (Claé and Bruô scenes) and animator Sandro Cleuzo (John Ovenbird), with some additional animation by myself. Alê Abreu animated in Photoshop, Sandro Cleuzo in Toon Boom and me in TVPaint, so the software itself didn’t matter at this point. For the John Ovenbird scenes, the cleanup was also done in Toon Boom. For the Claé and Bruô scenes, we did the final art in Photoshop.”
A Student of Laloux
A COLORFUL WORLD: The early reviews for Alê Abreu’s new movie Perlimps have praised the film’s stunning color palette and timely theme of saving the environment.
www.animationmagazine.net 6 sep|oct 22
He does however mention several films that made a huge impact in his artistic development early on in his life. “I watched two films by René Laloux in a small film club in São Paulo many years ago: Fantastic Planet and Time Masters. In addition to inspiring me to work in animation, those films showed me a path for the kind of film I wanted to make. I also recently reviewed Isao Takahata’s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, and I believe it is one of the masterpieces of animated cinema.” However, Abreu says he has been less pleased with what he has seen on the screen in recent years. “As far as feature films go, I think there is a movement that seeks to take animation out of the aesthetic sameness of CGI productions,” he notes. “But very little of what I have seen lately has been pleasing or exciting.”
Abreu says as an artist, one of the greatest challenges of the film was to keep the initial feelings of inspiration and ambition alive throughout the years. “I had to hold on to the feelings that motivated me to make it throughout the production process with all its obstacles to overcome,” he admits. “I put a great deal of effort in not losing sight of the emotions that made me dive into the universe of the film, so that they could guide me during the production and finally be reflected in the movie.” The director also mentions that he cannot pinpoint one particular influence on the visual style of the movie. He explains, “There comes a time when someone’s work is such a mixture of things that it is not so easy to identify the direct influences. But I could mention Roger Dean, Mœbius and René Laloux, not only for the reference to psychedelia that I tried to imprint on the film, but also because of the fond memories I have of these artists in my childhood and“Withyouth.”this film I was guided mainly by color, a very powerful tool that brings an important layer to the adventure and is key to the understanding of the film,” Abreu told Variety earlier this year. “Childhood is represented in the film as a physical space where everything is possible, generating an incredible power of transformation through hope.”
The filmmakers are hoping that the new movie will connect to both younger and older audiences. “We hope that the audiences will have an immersive experience in a dreamlike fantasy world and that children and adults will be able to connect with their inner child,” says Bolognesi. “We think it’s a film that can please both family audiences and animation fans. In the end, I believe there is a message of hope and cry for peace, added to the urgency of preserving our natural resources.” ◆ Perlimps makes its North American premiere this month at the Ottawa International Animation Festival.
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“When writing a script, you have to create a firm sense of tempo,” she notes. “Until now, I’d leave that to a professional screenwriter. But this time I decided to challenge myself. The director specializes in as sembling a puzzle in a fun and entertaining way. But the script writer has to create that puzzle, which re quires using the opposite side of the brain.”
“A Place Further than the Universe is broadcast to people who have been supporting us for a long time,” she continues. “Goodbye, Don Glees! is a movie: view ers have to go to the theater on their own. Even if the film portrays young characters in a similar manner, I thought the audience would change significantly. I never wanted to betray the people who have sup ported A Place Further than the Universe, but I wanted to try new ways of telling a story, hence an original theatrical feature. In the future, I’d like to try my hand at a new medium.”
Solving the Puzzle As the story took shape, Ishizuka discovered that writing a script posed very different challenges than directing a screenplay someone else had written.
Although she’s worked as a director and storyboard artist on several TV series, Ishizuka is probably best known for her direction of the popular show A Place Further than the Universe (2018). Don Glees marks her debut as both a director of theatrical features and a screenwriter. She spoke in a recent interview trans lated by Ken Endo.
But while Toto’s been away, Roma’s made a new friend: the energetic Shizuku “Drop” Sakuma, who sports a hoodie that looks like a dinosaur’s crest. Drop stages an outrageous stunt to make Roma look cool to his classmates. The scheme works — every one’s stunned by the suddenly hip Roma and the glamorous “girls” who accompany him. But the plan backfires when the trio is falsely accused of starting a small forest fire during a local festival. The three boys set out to find their lost drone: It contains pho tos that will prove their innocence.
“From the beginning, I was thinking about empa thy and life-sized feelings. I initially thought of ‘fight ing evil’ as a theme that would be entertaining,” Ishizuka explains. “However, as I approached the story from various angles, I wondered if that was really a plot that expands the stories of these kids.”
Misadventures of Teen Misfits
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“In depicting the growth of a boy, I was most con - By Charles Solomon -
With animation produced by Madhouse, the film was originally released in Japan in February and was one of the features competing at the Annecy Festival.
Three boys’ scheme to look cool has unintended results in writer-director Atsuko Ishizuka’s beautifully observed feature Goodbye, Don Glees!
“I wanted to create an original story that would be seen by a wider au dience,” says Atsuko Ishizuka, the writer-director of the feature Goodbye, Don Glees!, which GKIDS will release theatrically in the U.S. this month. “There is a limited audience for broadcast works. A movie release would attract a separate audience.”
www.animationmagazine.net 8 sep|oct 22
The story she constructed centers on the summer adventure of three high school boys in a flyspeck ag ricultural town in a mountainous region of Japan. Ho kuto “Toto” Mitarai and Roma Kamogawa grew up as outcasts there, rejected by their classmates. They founded the club Don Glees, third-grader Toto’s at tempt to say “don’t celebrate” in English (he’s subse quently learned “don’t glee” isn’t grammatical).
Toto transferred to a high school in Tokyo the pre vious year. It wasn’t his choice: His family has decreed he will go to med school and take over his father’s practice. But he wears his thin veneer of urban so phistication as awkwardly as his trendy haircut. Roma stayed in the village and remained a loner, working on his family’s vegetable farm. The other boys at school scoffingly refer to him as “cow dung guy.”
“When working on a project I’ve learned it’s necessary to expand your characters field of view and show the learning and growth that come from it. There are always scenes where a character is being taught something or is actively learning and growing.”
GKIDS and Fathom Events will release Goodbye, Don Glees! in select theaters on September 14. Charles Solomon’s latest book The Man Who Leapt through Film: The Art of Mamoru Hosoda (Abrams) is available now. You can order your own copy at abramsbooks.com.
sep|oct 22 9 www.animationmagazine.net
- Writer-director Atsuko Ishizuka
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“Originally, I thought Iceland would be a nice place to have the boys face their lives and depict the mo ment they recapture the world in which they live. Isn’t this a place where we can go to give the characters a goal to strive for? That was the beginning of the plot of Goodbye, Don Glees!” Ishizuka adds. “When working on a project I’ve learned it’s neces sary to expand your characters’ field of view and show the learning and growth that come from it. There are always scenes where a character is being taught something or is actively learning and growing. The character grasps a concept like, ‘if you go to the ends of the Earth, you discover that there is even more left unexplored’ or ‘when your viewpoint is changed, you realize just how tiny your hometown actually is.’” Ishizuka’s intrepid trio succeed in reaching a dra matically rendered version of Iceland: They stand be side thunderous waterfalls and look in awe at the lava seething in volcanic caldera. But Ishizuka and her artists had to imagine these settings. “Unfortu nately, the COVID epidemic hit, so I couldn’t go loca tion scouting. We had to create the Iceland that ap pears in the work. If it looks believable, it’s a tribute to my imagination,” she concludes with a laugh. ◆
cerned with what to set as a goal,” she continues. “In modern society, I wondered, what is a dream, what is something everyone longs for? When values are so diversified, what is something everyone would be happy to get? If the main characters are real boys, I think to become a hero to your favorite girl, to be the cool guy, is what they long for.”
GROWING PAINS: After premiering in Japan in February and making a splash at Annecy earlier, the coming-of-age anime Goodbye, Don Glees! makes its U.S. debut this month, thanks to GKIDS.
Traveling via Imagination
Roma’s village is so isolated, there’s no reliable train or bus service; even the roads are in bad repair. The guys set off into the forest inadequately prepared and promptly get lost. Caves, ravines, rivers, a bear — and the lack of cell service — impede their progress.
Over a bonfire stoked with pages of the textbook Toto brought along, the three friends bond. As they learn about each other and themselves, Ishizuka expands the story both internally and externally. Roma and Toto discover the affection that unites the trio when Drop reveals he’s suffering from a fatal disease. This wrenching knowledge compels them to leave their “hick town” for Iceland, where Drop once lived.
Global Player In less than 10 years, Mikros Animation has contributed to ten animated features animation and to numerous episodic shows for the top ani mation studios, either as creative studio, line pro ducer or executive producer. The studio has also produced more than 250 hours of programming, broadcast by notable channels including Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, TF1, France TV, Gulli, M6, Gloob and Super RTL. The studio’s episodic con tent currently airs and streams in over 180 coun tries. Among the recent shows Mikros has helped produce with studios such as DreamWorks, Para mount, Sixteen South and Tencent Kids are Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight, The Coop Troop, Dragons: The Nine Realms and Star Trek Prodigy Mikros Animation has an interesting variety of animated projects in the pipeline. Among them is Ozi, Voice of the Forest, a charming new feature currently in production. Created by animation vet erans Rodrigo Blaas (executive producer & show runner of Trollhunters, animator on Ice Age, WALL•E and Finding Nemo) and Keith Chapman (Bob the Builder, PAW Patrol), this epic adventure set in the Indonesian rainforest and centers on a teenage orangutan named Ozi who sets out to find her parents in a land that has been devastat ed by Produceddeforestation.byGCIFilm, the movie is directed by Tim Harper (Fifi and the Flowertots, Roary the Rac ing Car), and showcases the talents of head of sto ry/character animation and writer Sean Mullen and production designer and art director Stephane Daegelen. The screenplay was written by Emmy winner Ricky Roxburgh (Tangled, Spy Kids). Amandla Stenberg voices Ozi, leading a cast that also features Laura Dern, RuPaul, Donald Sutherland and Djimon Hounsou.
www.animationmagazine.net
Ozi, Voice of the Forest, which is being produced by Mikros Animation in Paris and Bangalore, is also supported by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way, as it aims to raise awareness around the is sues the world’s rainforests face due to the grow ing levels of deforestation, and how this affects the ecosystems within those environments.
10 sep|oct 22
“W e are storytellers at heart.” That’s how Mikros Animation defines itself on its colorful website, which promotes the studio’s previous projects such as The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: Sponge on the Run, PAW Patrol: The Movie and Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion as well as its exciting upcoming slate, which includes movies such as PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie, Thelma the Unicorn and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. Under the leadership of industry veteran An drea Miloro, the studio has continued to estab lish itself as a good home for quality CG anima tion, both in the features landscape and in the streaming/TV series space. Mikros Animation, which was acquired by Technicolor in 2015, has headquarters in Paris, Monreal, Los Angeles, Bangalore and London. “Thanks to our global capabilities, we adapt our scale to always serve every project in the best possible way,” says Miloro, Mikros Anima tion’s president, who has held top exec positions at Blue Sky Animation, Fox, Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures Animation. “We believe great ani mation is about making connections with real people. To ignite connection and to make imag es unforgettable, we unite with filmmakers to tell their stories. We embrace our clients’ cre ative ideas in our culture of collaboration, mak ing our studios the home of the projects we are entrusted with. We help filmmakers define and develop their vision from script up to screen to make every project a unique one.”
A Boutique Culture Embraces Growth
Mikros Animation expands its slate with a wide range of colorful, original features.
FEATURES
“Through this film’s animation style, we’ve aimed to build something that feels both fun and whimsical, with the ultimate goal to marry art and entertainment with messages around global deforestation,” says Mullen. “Ozi, Voice of the Forest speaks to an essential cause, for which our aim is to drive awareness through a social and narrative dimension. Through this film’s niche animation style, we’ve aimed to build something that feels both hyper realistic as well as fun and whimsical, with the goal to marry art and entertainment, with the education message around global deforestation.” Mikros is also gearing up for another big ani mated feature that is familiar to cartoon and com ic-book lovers all over the world — Teenage Mu tant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. This epic new Ozi, Voice of the Forest
“The Ninja Turtles franchise is edgy, offbeat and humorous, and the Mikros Animation team is en suring we were doing justice to bringing the beloved turtles to big screens. The filmmaker’s vision was to introduce the characters through modern animation that maintains the fine balance between visually appealing and real istic. Focusing not just on craft, but also perfor mance, it’s our job to develop the unique person alities of each of these iconic characters, whilst staying true to the 1990s nostalgia that the fran chiseWhenholds”asked to define a perfect project for Mikros, Miloro responds, “Perfect can come in many different forms. I believe the essential element is when the creative studio and production come to gether and spark each other’s imagination. Mikros Animation builds on that spark and casts our teams around that creative vision. Whatever a needs,projectwe will find a
– Andrea Miloro, President, Mikros Animation
In 2023, the studio will continue to collabo rate with its studio creative partners on film, television, and long-form series projects. “In the past, Mikros Animation would become in volved later in the process, but now we are working with creators from pre-production to the final delivery more and more,” notes Mi loro. “We are also developing and packaging our own content.” Despite the challenges ahead, Miloro is quite optimistic about the future. “I see more opportunities than challenges,” she says. “We recognize that hiring new talent and develop ing technology to meet demands can be chal lenging. That can also be an opportunity. Mikros Animation will continue to develop and support our artists, technology teams, and pro duction management. To listen to the needs of our teams and that of our creative partners, to strike a balance and create the best stories. It’s not a simple proposition, but Mikros Animation has its own kind of magic. We have three glob al locations but are one united studio that strives to maintain a ‘boutique’ culture. Sharing ideas and our passion for creating will always push boundaries and be Mikros’ greatest strength. That’s always exciting!” ◆
Mikros
created the animation for Paramount’s The onMovie:SpongeBobSpongetheRun FUN HOUSE: Some of Mikros’ high-profile projects include The Coop Troop , Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie and PAW Patrol: The Movie FEATURES
sep|oct 22 11 www.animationmagazine.net take on the crime-fighting, pizza-loving heroes is directed by Jeff Rowe (The Mitchells vs. the Ma chines, Disenchantment, Gravity Falls) and pro duced by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and James Weaver. Point Grey Pictures, Nickelodeon and Par amount are the co-producing studios. The 3D CG animation is being produced by Mikros Animation in Paris and Montreal, and is currently on the look out for seasoned and budding animators to join its rank and to be part of this iconic production.
collaborathroughachievedareourUltimately,solution.projectstion,artistry,andpassionforstory telling.”
Embracing a Boutique Culture
“We are excited to join forces with Nickelodeon on this theatrical release,” says Adrianna Cohen, global head of production at Mikros Animation.
To learn more, visit mikrosanimation.com.
“Mikros Animation has its own kind of magic. We have three global locations but are one united studio that strives to maintain a ‘boutique’ culture. Sharing ideas and our passion for creating will always push boundaries and be Mikros’ greatest strength.”
Billy Rose was raised a poor child of Jewish immi grants from the lower east side ten ements of New York, and became a shorthand writing champion, a andclubtheonlargestcareer,AtoutdoorshowserandsongwriteraproducofBroadwayandmassivespectacles.theheightofhishewastheemployerBroadway,ranhottestnightinNewYorkwasmarried
A cclaimed animation artist Robert Valley, who is best known for his Oscar-nomi nated short Pear Cider and Cigarettes and the acclaimed “Zima Blue” and “Ice” epi sodes of Love, Death + Robots (the latter of which won the short form animation Emmy as well as two individual achievement honors), has embarked on a new long-form venture: a 2D-animated feature titled American Rose, based on the life of songwriter, Broadway producer and social activist Billy Rose.
Producer Wanted: This feature production is seeking an animation industry pro to join its team. We have a scripted musical biopic feature film in pre-production. Period piece, 1920’s – ‘40s. NYC. This is a passion project with some funding, so you’ll get paid! We need a producer who can create a business plan/budget for our investors. Strong expe rience and industry relationships/reputa tion is absolutely key. We have an Academy Award-nominated director and a wonderful team lined up. Must have an old soul. Send info to: Finkelstein6@icloud.com.
www.animationmagazine.net 12 sep|oct 22
Award-winning animation veteran Robert Valley is attached to a new 2D-animated pic about songwriter, producer and activist Billy Rose.
FEATURES
Animating an American Life
first to Fanny Brice (famously played by Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl) and later to Olympic champion swimmer Eleanor Holm. The entertainment magnate was also an unlikely political activist. He spoke out against American silence on the atrocities of the Holocaust, despite anti-Semitic pressure from prominent figures such as Joe Kennedy and Charles Lindbergh. In 1943, he produced Carmen Jones, the first allBlack Broadway grand opera, as a direct response to the racism es poused by the Nazis. Rose also owned venues in Times Square and operated the Ziegfeld Theatre from 1949 through 1955. ◆Valley
Robert
“Valley is bringing his immense talent and unique artistic vision to this bespoke project and our team is thrilled beyond belief to work with him,” says the film’s exec producer Steven Finkelstein, who has been pursuing this project for over four years. “Not only is Robert both bril liant and creative, he is also a genuinely nice person. He’s a joy to work with. He also has a depth of soul that allows him to access the ma terial and do justice to such a great and lit tle-known true story. We’re so excited, honored and blessed to work with him as a true partner.”
Finkelstein believes 2D animation is the ideal medium to tell Rose’s story. “Animation, especially with the talented Robert Valley at the helm, continues to stretch the boundaries of sophisticated storytelling,” he notes. “It al lows us the freedom to expressively tell the story of his incredible life with all its grit and glamor. Despite standing only 4’11”, Billy Rose was a creator of outsized fantasies and spectacles. He was born into poverty, tangled with mobsters during the Prohibition and be came a mogul during some of the most tu multuous years of the 20th century.” Visionary Talent Valley has had a colorful and well-respect ed career in the animation business. In addi tion to his recent award-winning episodes for Netflix’s Love, Death + Robots, he wrote and produced the 2013 animated Won der Woman series and worked as storyboard artist on shows such as Aeon Flux, Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, X-Men: Evolution, TRON: Up rising, Firebreather, Invincible and the famous Gorillaz animated music videos.
www.animationmagazine.net 14 sep|oct 22 TV/STREAMING
F or the last decade in entertain ment, studios and creators have made numerous attempts to line their coffers by speaking the lan guage of Millennials and Gen Z to varying levels of success. Although certain films and series may comprehend the behav iors and colloquialisms of both generations, their content often proves too formal to feign familiarity. Through his new Netflix show, En tergalactic, director Fletcher Moules and his team aimed to craft a series that was not only hip to youth lingo but embedded in the cul ture enough to converse with its natives.
“That’s the language of it. That’s what we’re actually aiming for,” says Moules, speaking of Entergalactic’s frequent, yet subtle, touches of hip hop and the fashion-centric “hypebeast” culture that permeate the series. Entergalactic — the brainchild of hip hop visionary Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi, black-ish creator Kenya Barris and Ian Edelman — was conceived as an exercise in seamlessly fusing music and narrative while speaking authentically about contemporary romance. Consequently, it was of paramount importance that the series ac curately reflect the zeitgeist. “That’s some thing that Cudi and Kenya said right from the start. [Entergalactic] is hitting that hypebeast community, hitting that connection to New Yorkers.”
Entergalactic follows Jabari, a street artist turned comic-book professional (voiced by Mescudi), as he moves into an opulent Man hattan apartment while grappling with feel ings of disillusionment begat by his success.
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Director Fletcher Moules discusses the inspiration for and animation process of the new Kid Cudi/Kenya Barris Netflix show Entergalactic
Opposite Cudi’s Jabari, both in billing and geographically, is his neighbor and love inter est Meadow, a photographer voiced by Jessica Williams. The budding connection between
Hypebeast Hearts
By Devin Nealy -
sep|oct 22 15 www.animationmagazine.net
To further solidify Sawtyruk’s design sensi bilities, Moules developed some ground rules for his crew. “So what I said to the animation team was, ‘this whole thing, it needs to feel like it’s handmade,” he says. “So, no spline ani
Kenya Barris Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi
— Director Fletcher Moules
Jabari and Meadow sends both artists on a journey of maturation, allowing them to find professional inspiration and poignant person al epiphanies. The series’ all-star cast also boasts Timothée Chalamet, Ty Dolla $ign, Keith David and Vannessa Hudgens.
The experience proved wildly influential for Entergalactic’s thematic and visual direc tion. “All that stuff, Black culture, modern dat ing, love and optimism … that all came from the songs,” says the director. Luckily for Moules, the themes of Entergalactic were con sistent with his approach to working in the medium of animation. “The animation I’ve al ways made is sort of fun, very colorful,” he says.Moules and company decided to use paint ed CGI to embody the “analog love story in an increasingly digital world” that Entergalactic endeavors to portray. “This is a piece of art. Music is a piece of art that you have a visceral reaction to,” says Moules. “Entergalactic visual ly needs to live in that same world. You need to see the artist’s hand on every frame.”
CITY BEATS: Described as a “TV event” by Netflix, Entergalactic is an adult animated music offering based on the upcoming album by musician and actor Kid Cudi.
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One Small Step, One Giant Leap
Fans of Kid Cudi might feel like they’re see ing double while looking at the series title, as Entergalactic is both a classic song and an up coming album in the rapper’s discography. “[Cudi] wanted to write an album of love songs,” says Moules, “and that song ‘Enterga lactic’ off his first album was such a huge, lov ing moment for him, about a new relationship, that he took that one song and wanted to make a whole album based on that.”
After a lengthy search for the perfect aes thetic, Moules found the right artist for the job. “I was working with Mike Moon, the exec at Netflix, and we found our art director, Mi chal Sawtyruk, in Poland,” recounts Moules.
“His paintings are so brushstroke heavy and very loose, supersaturated,” he says, “and so he was the first guy I brought on because I could see New York in that way.”
“The main inspiration was ... a new way to release music,” Moules continues. “We’ve seen Lemonade with Beyoncé, and thinking back to Purple Rain [about how] you could use narra tive to really help release an album in a new way.” The project’s ethos crystallized for Moules when Cudi allowed him to listen to tracks from the Entergalactic album. “I sat down with Cudi in the studio back in mid-2019,” says Moules. “He played ‘Willing to Trust’ and I, like, slapped him on the thigh and was like, ‘What the hell was that?’ I hadn’t heard a song like that. I was so overtaken by the warmth and the love.’”
Despite the growing ubiquity of painted CGI, such as in Netflix’s Arcane from Fortiche productions, Moules feels that Entergalactic takes the style in a fresh direction. “Obviously, there’s the great work Fortiche are doing. [They were] an inspiration,” he says. “We thought, ‘Okay, what’s our version of that?’”
“What I said to the animation team was, ‘This whole thing, it needs to feel like it’s handmade.’ So, no spline animation, no inbetweens, no mo-capping; none of that. Everything has to be on step. Every pose needs to be hand positioned by every animator.”
The stunning quality of Entergalactic’s ani mation showcases the fantastic talent of Moules and his team, as they relied on stan dard industry tools to create magic. “All the matte paintings and textures, we designed them in Photoshop with our Netflix team,” re counts Moules, “and then it all just ran through Maya and Nuke.” In addition to painted CGI, Entergalactic of ten infuses segments of 2D animation, pro duced by Titmouse, for the POV of supporting characters. “Entergalactic is a show of con trasts,” says Moules, “When Ky (Ty Dolla $ign) is telling his story, or we have Karina (Vanessa Hudgens) telling her story, I really wanted to highlight the fact that those moments were different.”
Preparing For Liftoff Like the entire entertainment industry in 2020, Moules and the animation team at DNEG had to contend with COVID restrictions while constructing Entergalactic. “In January 2020, we locked the cast,” says Moules, “and I was like, ‘With such great actors, I want to re cord them in a room together.’” However, quar antine drastically stalled the process. “We couldn’t record the actual actors until, like, super late … like mid-2021,” he says. “We boarded the whole film in Scratch, and actually locked boards and locked the story reel, and had the whole edit approved by Net flix,” says Moules. “So, that was the biggest challenge: Then [having] to record our actors, and then having to go back and put that in.” Although the process was taxing, having a global team of 350 people across 18 coun tries helped keep the production on track. “We’d start our day in Russia with our fashion designer working with Virgil Abloh,” says Moules. “We’d work across Eastern Europe through Ukraine, into London, and then go across to the U.S. and end all our days in Ko rea.”
www.animationmagazine.net 16 sep|oct 22 TV/STREAMING mation, no in-betweens, no mo-capping; none of that. Everything has to be on step,” Moules insisted. “Every pose needs to be hand posi tioned by every animator. And I don’t care if it actually ends up more choppy because what’s more important to me is that every expres sion, every movement has to be a choice.”
DOPE CAST: A charming artist (Kid Cudi) decides to make room for love in his life after a encounterchancewith a hip DollaChalamet,includesThe(JessicaphotographerWilliams).castalsoTimothéeTy$ign, Vanessa Hudgens, Christopher Abbott, Jaden Smith and Macaulay Culkin.
By allowing each character a unique per spective, Moules was able to distill Entergalac tic’s macro thesis of diversity on a micro level. “Cudi and Kenya wanted to hire a Black direc tor,” admits Moules, “but there wasn’t enough availability. So we worked really hard on our show team … to hire as many African Ameri cans as we could to help the animation indus try. [So] that Entergalactic could be a beacon to help that in our whole community.” ◆ Entergalactic premieres September 30 on Net flix. The project was produced by DNEG Studios, Mad Solar, Netflix Studios and Khalabo Ink Society.
Risky Business or Brave New World?
Game of Krap Chickens
Krap Chickens will lay eggs daily in the wallet of their owners. The eggs are non transferable ERC-20 tokens, and only work for the egg’s original owner; a chicken will stop laying eggs if it’s sold. This allows for a kind of fandom ranking, where fans with the most eggs can be recognized for the level of their fan engagement. And plans are afoot for additional ways for the most devoted fans to earn even more eggs, and rewards for those who accumulate them.
All the attributes of these chickens are based on elements in the show that sharp-eyed fans will be able to search out as Easter eggs, Bilfield says. They also grant owners access to a screening room where episodes will be shown early, as well as behind-the-scenes content and a store filled with exclusive merchandise.
Krapopolis is set in ancient Greece and is about mortals trying to build from scratch humanity’s first city. “They’re trying to figure out all the things that are obvious to us that are not yet ob vious to the people on the first civilization,” says Matt Bilfield, project lead for Krapopolis at FOX’s Blockchain Creative Labs. “What’s cool about the Web3 component that we’re building in is it’s kind of our version of going through that same process of teaching people how this new tech nology can impact the growth and the building of a community and fandom of a show.”
What does that mean? Well, by the time you read this article, Krapopolis.com will already have minted 10,420 unique NFTs called “Krap Chickens.”
- By Tom McLean -
www.animationmagazine.net 18 sep|oct 22 TV/STREAMING
Several new high-profile animated projects are taking a chance on NFTs and Web3 technology to build fan-based communities and connect fans and creators T echnology and animation have always been joined at the hip. Film made ani mation possible, television spread it to every corner of the globe and computers took it to new levels of creativity. So it should be no surprise that animation is a hotbed of experimentation for new technolo gies such as Non-Fungible Tokens, better known as NFTs, which are part of the next generation of internet technology referred to as Web3. Both Web3 and NFTs have struggled for broad under standing and acceptance — a goal hindered by the risks involved in investing in NFTs and fre quent scams involving the technology. But that hasn’t stopped animation from ex perimenting with the new tech. To date, the ex periments have had less effect on the actual production of animation, but as the trio of ac counts below show, have already been shown to have tremendous impact in bringing in new voices, building fan-based communities and connecting creators and fans in new ways.
Token owners will get to vote on how certain aspects of the show will play out, such as which weapon a character will carry into battle or which background element might be incorporated. “You can essentially take part in some decision making within the show,” says Bilfield. “The next thing is we’re going to start figuring out ways to incorpo rate the chickens themselves.”
One of the most high-profile projects is Dan Harmon’s new animated series Krapopolis, which is set to debut on FOX TV next year, but Web3 technology has already given it a head start on building a community and an audience.
The results have so far paid off, with the Krapop olis Discord channel boasting around 15,000 members, many of which are creating fan art for a show that hasn’t aired a single episode. “I think that this experience is really paving the way for the way that shows can be marketed in the future, using the communities to sort of drive that inter est level,” Bilfield says.
Sixth Wall came to the project in the wake of its first NFT-based animated series, Stoner Cats, says producer Lisa Sterbakov. While the show, which sold NFTs of individual cats, was a success, there was a desire to build content directly with a com munity.“Wealso heard a lot of feedback from the Stoner Cats community on, ‘We want content faster. We want more direct interaction and direct involve ment in the content,’” Sterbakov says. That lead to a production partnership with Lindsey McInerney, who while working for AB In Bev — perhaps better known as Anheuser-Busch — wrote in 2020 an influential thesis on the Metaverse, crypto and Web3. “The thesis there was that if you abstract the business of beer away from ABI, they’re actually an entertainment business,” she says. “They bring people together to be enter tained and are the world’s largest sponsor of sport media entertainment. And so a lot of it was sort of rooted in that.”
“I think you’ll keep seeing people iterate and trying to figure out what it means to involve a community in the creation of con tent— maybe the next big television show or movie be sort of community created and community owned,” she says.
— Lindsey McInerney, Co-Founder & CEO, Sixth Wall Stoner Cats
The Gimmicks
Animation company Toonstar and Sixth Wall, the digital arm of actress Mila Kunis’ Orchard Farm Productions, has jumped into Web3 in a big way with the online animated series The Gimmicks
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Ready to Rumble Inspired by shows like South Park, The Gimmicks is about a group of washed-up former professional wrestlers voiced by wrestling talents including Luke “Doc” Gallows, Karl “Machine Gun” Anderson and Rocky Romero. The characters have been entered into a compe tition bracket where the community votes will eventually decide on a winning character that will get its own full episode. “We actually hit a million DIC Punches,” says NSFW TOKENS: Dan Harmon’s FOX series Krapopolis and Sixth Arm’s Stoner Cats are two high-profile animated shows leveraging NFTs for marketing and financing. Krapopolis
TIME President Keith A. Grossman hurled the company into the Web3 era a year and a half ago, offering up NFTs, accepting cryptocurrency and finding ways to use the technology to change the company’s relationship with its customers. The breakthrough for Grossman on the kids’ entertain ment side of things was seeing how NFT collec tions created communities larger than the num ber of owners, and that members of those communities become advocates for and, essen tially, marketers for the brand. That combined with his daughter’s instant at traction to Robotos after she spotted one of its NFTs on his computer screen made it clear that this had potential. “We have these unique tokens, and they’re these unique IP, but they actually speak a different language to a larger community that has nothing to do with NFTs,” he says.
TIME Studios and Nelvana are producing new shows with NFT creators Pablo Stanley ( Robotos ) and Wil Lee ( the littles ).
The technology also is spreading that ethos throughout the production of the shows. Nelvana has committed to full series instead of just pilots. But they’ve also sped up the production process to satisfy the notoriously impatient Web3 audi ence, Grossman says.
Stanley and Wil Lee into kids’ animated series. Stanley’s new series is titled Robotos and follows a group of friends that go on fantastical adven tures in a world set in a distant future, while Lee’s the littles will introduce viewers to a preschool girl who uses her imagination to befriend a set of sweet but rambunctious bears.
The result was a new experience unlike any she’d had in 30 years of working in children’s me dia. “It was very interactive, it was very gregarious,” she says. “They would say, ‘What color should that be? What shape should their head be?’ … Sudden ly you had a collection of people who were invest ed in the creation of this content, and that was a fascinating world for me, because I’d never done content in that way before.”
At the end of each episode, there’s a chance for token holders to vote on some aspect of how the story will continue. And for every vote, a token holder receives what’s called a “DIC Punch.” (Ster bakov is quick to point out it stands for “diverse inclusive community.”) Additionally, each token’s character has a wiki page where the NFT owner can log in from their Web3 wallet and create a backstory about their character. Other token holders can read the pages and use their DIC Punches to vote for the ones they like, showing which characters are most popular in the overall Animationcommunity.isperfectly suited to this kind of ex periment, which McInerney says she expects is the starting point of a new evolution for content.
It helps that the shows start with character de signs, but the existing Web3 communities also have input as production progresses. “We’re able to accelerate the process of getting this to market, and also being able to go back to that community that Keith referred to as our marketers, and show ing them (key elements) along the way,” Pe rez-Brown says.
Sterbakov. ”So even though we only have 10,000 tokens, and we have about 4,000 people on our community, they have interacted on chain in this project a million times.” Back in March, the show sold 10,000 NFTs, each featuring a unique character. The NFTs were mint ed on the Solana blockchain because it enabled low fees and has a low environmental impact, Ster bakov says. While those tokens aren’t needed to watch episodes, which drop weekly online, they do come with benefits.
CHARACTERS:FANTASTIC
And that connection is what’s unique about this process, Grossman says. “The barriers between creator and community have actually come down,” he says, citing the infrastructure of Web3 for com munication and ownership across borders. ”So all of a sudden, somebody with a great idea who does something niche … has the ability to connect to a means of distribution.”
“I think you’ll keep seeing people iterate and try ing to figure out what it means to involve a com munity in the creation of content, what it means to democratize the access to content and to writers rooms, and to bring creators closer to communities, and what it means to have, you know, maybe the next big television show or movie be sort of com munity created and community owned,” she says. Bears and Robots TIME Studios and Nelvana are also teaming up to adapt NFT collections from creators Pablo the littles
He turned to Maria Perez-Brown, head of TIME Studios Kids and Family, to reach out to NFT cre ators and find ways to take these brands from blockchain to the big screen.
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◆
— Matt Bilfield, Krapopolis project lead, Blockchain Creative Labs Robotos Keith A. Grossman
“What’s cool about the Web3 component that we’re building in is it’s kind of our version of going through that same process of teaching people how this new technology can impact the growth and the building of a community and fandom of a show.”
sep|oct 22 21 www.animationmagazine.net TV/STREAMING
In addition to Chang and Kim, the impressive voice cast includes Paul Dano, Rosemarie DeWitt, Aaron Eckhart, Taylor Schilling, Ron Livingston, Chris Diamantopoulos, Raza Jaffrey and the late William Hurt (in one of his final performances).
Literary Origins “It all actually started with the desire to do hour-long adult animation, something that we just don’t have enough of here in the U.S. Then, it was about finding the right material to suit that. Anima tion led the way,” says Silverstein. “We discovered these short stories by Ken Liu that AMC had op tioned, probably originally intended for a live-ac tion adaptation, but I saw the opportunity to take this grounded world and escalate it to this global thriller and surreal, virtual world.”
Lee, who is a big fan of powerful films such as Grave of the Fireflies, Evangelion and Mind Game, adds, “To be honest, animation is a melting pot. We have a Japanese vibe, but there is also a French animation vibe, on top of what the individual art ists brought to the show.”
The engrossing and highly addictive show was written, created and executive produced by Craig Silverstein (TURN: Washington’s Spies, Nikita) with animation produced by Titmouse under the direc tion of Juno Lee (The Venture Bros., Star Trek: Lower Decks). Chris Prynoski, Shannon Prynoski, Antonio Canobbio, Ben Kalina and Lee are exec producers. (DR Movie in S. Korea and Incessant Rain in Nepal were the show’s overseas production studios.)
A Cool, New Animation Destination
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Lee says when Silverstein first came to Tit mouse, he already had a good idea of what he wanted the show to look like. “Let’s be honest — for a show like this, for the subject matter, the tone, a lot of our references come from Japan. The visuals inspired some of the writing and the reason. When Craig mentioned the work of Makoto Shinkai (Your Name., Weathering With You), I was very impressed, but then I was like, ‘Hey, those are feature films, and we’re on a TV timeline!’ But it was clear that we dig the same things aesthetically. Being in sync like that helps a lot.”
“The first thing I thought was, this is too good to be true,” says Lee. “In animation, it’s really hard to find adult-oriented animation — something that’s not just about vulgar humor or violent for the sake of being violent. Of course, everything has its place, but when I read the scripts, I thought: This is a dream come true. Even as we were making the pi lot, I didn’t want to get my hopes up. And then COVID happened and I thought, man, this is not going to happen, it will probably get pushed. But here we are. We did it. The whole virtual produc tion aspect of it kind of tied in with the theme of the project as well.”
The pilot script for the show was delivered in the spring of 2018. In 2019, the team spent nine months producing a proof-of-concept animated short which got the greenlight at AMC, and then production began in 2020 while finishing the scripts for season one. Silverstein said Titmouse became their number one choice to do the anima tion right after their first meeting.
Silverstein, who mentions Studio Ghibli movies and the work of Satoshi Kon as some of his anima tion inspirations (as well as Sunbow’s early 1980s G.I. Joe series when he was a kid) says, “If you want to make an animated adult thriller, you revisit the clas sics. You watch Hitchcock and Perfect Blue. All these -
The engaging new AMC+ series Pantheon pays homage to some great anime classics while breaking new ground on its own.
A MC Networks dives beautifully into the animation pool this month with its stel lar new series Pantheon, a sophisticated sci-fi drama based on a collection of short sto ries by Hugo Award-winning author Ken Liu. The slow-burning show opens quietly enough with a look at the life of a bullied teen (voiced by Katie Chang) who receives mysterious help from her deceased father (Daniel Dae Kim), whose con sciousness has been uploaded to the Cloud. It soon opens up to reveal a global conspiracy in volving “Uploaded Intelligence” which may trig ger a new kind of world war.
By Ramin Zahed -
Since this was Silverstein’s first animated venture, says he was quite taken by how organized the pro duction was. “It’s the most well-organized project I have ever seen,” he notes. “We owe a lot of it to our amazing line producer Charlie Sweitzer, but it was simply amazing to watch. Another thing was how incredibly iterative it was. There are so many bites of the apple and so much polishing. It was interesting to see how the animation and fine-tuning process continue even past the sound design. To see that fi nal level of polish in coloring and composition and finished animation shots come together in the end was my favorite part of the process.”
Based on Intelligence,aboutfromshortcollectionaofstoriesKenLiuUploaded Pantheon focuses on a bullied teen who online.fromwelcomereceiveshelpsomeone
MESSAGES:MYSTERIOUS
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Juno Lee
things talk to each other. We wanted to continue that conversation and use Hollywood-style storytelling, subtle performances and have longer scenes.”
— Creator/exec producer Craig Silverstein
“As you know, one of the rules of TV animation is don’t stay on a character too long,” explains Lee. “But we have an hour-long dramatic show, so we would let shots breathe and stay on things longer. In other shows, you have to cut quickly to the ac tion. It’s fun, but it was also a challenge for us. This is also reflected in the show’s cinematic sound de sign and the casting of the voices.”
Clear Vision Lee says working with Silverstein was a great experience because he is very clear about his vision and what he wants. “If he doesn’t know something, he says so. He has this habit of pausing, because he’s thinking about the answer, which is great. Craig is a big animation nerd, too. I’m constantly shocked by all of his amazing anime references and his advanced knowledge.” Both Silverstein and Lee hope that the show will open the door to more quality ani mated shows for adults. “I hope audiences find Pantheon entertaining and thought pro voking and that they get excited about the story,” says Silverstein. “Beyond that, the real dream is that it creates an appetite for more animated shows like Pantheon.” Adds Lee, “I hope we are allowed to make more shows in the same vein. Animation is an other medium for telling stories, and it’s not just for kids. When people ask, ‘Why is this animated? It feels like a live-action show!’, the answer is, ‘Well, why doesn’t it have to be animated?’” ◆
Pantheon premieres September 1 on AMC+ with new episodes airing weekly. Season two is already in production. “If you want to make an animated adult thriller, you revisit the classics … We wanted to use Hollywood-style storytelling, subtle performances and have longer scenes.”
Homage to Horror Greats Kirschner adds, “We are all huge horror nerds and were looking to create something in the hor ror-comedy world with a strong female lead. We began with a slant on a Rosemary’s Baby type sce nario, a woman with a cursed womb, and that eventually evolved into a story about a reluctant mother and her 13-year-old Antichrist daughter, attempting to live a normal life in the suburbs but constantly thwarted by evil forces, including Satan, who wants custody of his daughter’s soul. We found the themes of a mother-daughter relation ship, the nightmare of puberty and the trials of a broken family all lent themselves super well to the horror genre.” Development on the project began in 2017 and the pilot was greenlit in early 2020. “It feels like forever,” says Fowler. “We presented the seeds of the idea to Jake, Lucy and Danny DeVito and Au brey Plaza about five years ago and somehow tricked them into coming on board, then we brought it to Dan Harmon and Steve Levy and tricked them to come on board, and then we brought it to FX and five years later we have a show! We are still pinching ourselves. Actually, when I think about it, five years isn’t that long de velopment-wise compared to the absurd length of time development can sometimes take.” The ani mation, which is split between the team at Shad owMachine, Atomic Cartoons and Red Door Ani mation, is done in Toon Boom Harmony. According to the exec producers, over a hundred people worked on the first season of the show, most of them remotely. “Some of our Zoom calls can be crazy,” says Fowler. “There are lots of little boxes — but they’re filled with wonderful people.”
When it comes to visual influences and artistic in spiration, the show creators mention a wide variety of sources, ranging from cartoon faves such as Rick and Morty and BoJack Horseman to horror classics like Sus piria! Kirschner tells us, “We find a lot of inspiration of style from horror films like Rosemary’s Baby, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Evil Dead series and Jordan Peele, John Carpenter and Cronenberg films, as well as B horror movies and so much more. Miyazaki films are incredible and we occasionally find inspiration from them at points throughout the season. We also love and are inspired by the style of animated shows like Rick and Morty, Bob’s Burgers, The Simpsons and Over -
Some Devilish Fun
A ll hell can and will break loose in FXX’s crazy new adult animated series Little De mon, which began sizzling on the cabler last month (August 25). The show, which is created by Darcy Fowler, Seth Kirschner and Kieran Valla and produced by ShadowMachine, follows the R-rated adventures of Satan’s daughter and her re luctant mom as they try to live a normal life in Del aware. The sassy new series features the voices of Aubrey Plaza as Laura, Danny DeVito as Satan and Lucy DeVito as their daughter, Chrissy, and is also exec produced by Plaza, Dan Harmon and Jersey Films 2nd Avenue’s Jake, Lucy and Danny DeVito.
The creators of FXX’s new adult animated show Little Demon give us the scoop on their sassy show about the spawn of Satan!
“The whole project started as an idea about a young woman with a cursed womb, and then we thought it would be more exciting to fast forward to her giving birth to the Antichrist and that An tichrist happened to be a girl,” says Fowler. “At first the Chrissy character was about five years old, but as we continued to develop, we kept ag ing her up and eventually found that making her a teenager was the most thematically rich terri tory to explore. We also loved this idea of a moth er-daughter story and framing it in this sit com-like setup, but with truly dark elements. Before this we had always worked on live-action shows but once we found the engine for this se ries, we knew it had to be animated.”
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“I hope people will come for the jokes and the gore and stay for the characters … It’s a freaky, special gang at the center of our show, and we’ve had a blast building a season around them.”
“The takeaway message is that the world is insane and full of horrors, but we still need to love and pro tect the ones closest to us,” concludes Valla. “We also want people to relate and empathize with our char acters — especially Laura and Chrissy, a mother and daughter who are trying to adjust to their new nor mal amidst this tug of war with the Devil. Most of all, we invite our audience to escape into other realms with us for sensory overload and lots of laughter!” And that sounds like some goodness even Sa tan would approve of. ◆ Little Demon debuts Thursdays on FXX and Fridays on Hulu.
Of course, writing about Beelzebub and his family life also provides its own set of issues. “Satan, and anything that even mildly hints at something ‘bibli cal,’ is well known territory,” Kirschner points out. “It was our job to figure out what we wanted to see as inspiration from what people have been believing and/or reading for centuries, from all facets of reli gious and religious-adjacent texts, and what other parts we wanted to create entirely from scratch.”
“Their wants and behaviors are what drive each episode, and the more we know what makes them tick the easier it is to break story,” says Fowler.
Look for lots of eyebrowraising scenes and laughs from the dark side in FXX’s new animated series Little Demon , which features the voices of Aubrey Plaza and Lucy and Danny DeVito.
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— Darcy Fowler, co-creator & exec-producer
Valla adds, “The biggest challenge on this show was balancing the construction of this massive uni verse with realms and religion while simultaneously grounding our stories in this very relatable situation of a custody battle and a strained mother-daughter relationship. Our show’s scope is also quite large, so producing all of these episodes in the time frame we had was a true undertaking as well.”
A Freaky, Special Gang
Seth Kirschner Kieran Valla
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Kirschner agrees. “I hope people first and fore most think it’s fun, funny and ridiculous, and a great escape with us into these insane worlds and realms, but I also hope people feel the heart in this show and find some relatability with these re ally fun characters and stories.”
the Garden Wall.” Adds Valla, “We are also fans of big world building TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer We aren’t afraid to go dark in this show, both con tent-wise and visually, and want to continue to push the limit of adult comedy animation in this regard.” Fowler mentions that she loves that two strong women are at the heart of the series. “Laura, our mother, is a badass Emma Peel meets John Wick, a Wiccan warrior who can rip out someone’s throat like Patrick Swayze in Road House,” she says. “And then Chrissy, her daughter, is an awkward teen who just discovered she has robust demonic pow ers — in our show she goes from self-conscious girl to a force to be reckoned with. It’s been really satisfying and thrilling to break episodes with these two ladies at the center.” “I love the spectrum of what we’re able to ac complish in comedy and horror,” notes Kirschner. “It’s great to have a playground of characters to explore the depths of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and the wide area in between and overlapping. That we can take these characters to such heightened situa tions and make them relatable. I also love that we can have some genuine, heartfelt moments sur rounded by some ridiculous and stupid humor.”
The showrunners point out that getting to know the characters and their particular situations was one of the toughest challenges of the first season.
The creative team is excited about their new addition to the booming adult animation industry and hopes audiences will be entertained and hooked. Fowler says, “I hope people will come for the jokes and the gore and stay for the characters. Not just Chrissy, Laura and Satan, but Bennigan, Darlene, Erwin, Snake-with-Arms — it’s a freaky, special gang at the center of our show, and we’ve had a blast building a season around them.”
PERFECTLY POSSESSED:
he wonderfully talented and hilari ous sisters Wendy Molyneux and Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin have a big place in the hearts of animation fans (and this magazine’s staffers) for being writers on Bob’s Burgers and creating FOX’s charming show The Great North (with Minty Lewis), which begins its third season this month. We had a chance to have a Zoom chat with the Emmy-winning duo about what to ex pect to see on their show this fall. Here is what they told us: Congrats on the new season of your popu lar show. We know you just went back to a real writers room to start working on the fourth season for 2024. Wendy: Yes, we haven’t worked in a room for over two years, so it’s been very exciting. I had to adjust my deodorant level for working in groups. In fact, I have one in my backpack and I’m ready to go! This year, we have 15 writers including Lizzie and myself. What can we expect in the third season?
Wendy: I am a real holiday freak and I just enjoy seeing Beef and Jerry [Ron Funches] spend time together. In the holiday episode, Jerry’s costume gets stolen and they go on a Big Lebowski-esque journey through the underbelly of Lone Moose, which also includes meeting Lone Moose’s vil lain, Dick Chateau, played by Tony-nominated British actor Adam Godley. It is always great to con these fancy actors to do some animation. He really brought that character to life. I also en joyed our first musical episode, seeing Ham join a punk band was also a lot of fun, but I enjoy all our episodes. They’re all our children. Were you just totally starstruck with any of your guest stars?
Lizzie: I would say in the waterpark episode (the “Slide & Wet-judice Adventure”), It was so much fun to record with Pam Grier. She is such a leg end and was so hilarious.
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Murray Bartlett (The White Lotus) guest voices on the premiere episode. What were your favorite episodes and the most challenging ones to date?
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Lizzie: The most challenging was the water park episode in season two. It’s always hard to ani mate water, and we built a whole episode full of water, but it turned out beautifully. It was such a fun episode and it turned out so great to see it all come together.
Wendy: I definitely am an absolute freak for mu sical theater people, so when we got Patti LuPone on the “Tasteful Noods Adventure” epi sode of Season Two, I told her, “Patti, you are lucky we are recording on Zoom, because if we worked together, you wouldn’t be safe! I would steal your scarf or purse, just to have something of yours!” It’s good that we were at a distance, because I have worshipped Patti LuPone ever
The Molyneux sisters give us a sneak peek at the new season of their FOX animated comedy The Great North.
Wendy: We have a lot of Tobin-based episodes and we’re going to learn more about the tradi tions of the town of Lone Moose, Alaska, includ ing the Moose Poop Festival based on a real one held in Talkeetna. We also find out about a sau sage-based boys’ pageant in which Ham [voiced by Paul Rust] and Moon [Aparna Nancherla] par ticipate, and we find out a dark history for their dad Beef [Nick Offerman] and his dad. We have some really fun only-in-Alaska epi sodes coming up and also some great guest stars new and returning, including the return of Guy Fieri in a very special Halloween episode. We have a line-up of today’s favorite comics like John Early, Patti Harrison (Debbie), John Gemberling and Nicole Byer as our guest voices.
Making More Lone Moose Magic
Lizzie: I grew up on The Simpsons … I remember coming home early from trick or treating to watch the “Treehouse of Horror” episodes. When I was in elementary school, it was so exciting to see an animated show that was so funny and my older siblings and parents could also enjoy it with me.
since I was a child … After speaking to her, I should have just walked into the ocean because basically, that was probably as good as it gets!
TREASURES:ALASKAN
Which episode generated the most response from viewers and which ones were you most touched by?
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Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin [ph:oto Matt Logelin] Wendy Molyneux [photo: Jeff Drake]
Wendy: I think it’s a really exciting time in ani mation. All boats rise together, so when you see something cool and exciting on another show that inspires you do something more within your own show and to push yourselves. Our amazing artists at Bento Box show us stuff that we never would have thought of. I know there are always expansions and retractions in the business, but I think we have limitless possibili ties for new voices today. We’ve seen a huge in crease in representation for females, POC and non-binary creatives. Everyone used to think about animation as a mostly male industry, but we have many new faces and voices now, and as that continues, it just keeps getting better.
Lizzie: We definitely got a lot of response from the episode in Season One in which Ham and Crispin [Julio Torres] first get together (“Pride & Prejudice Adventure”) and the episode in Sea son Two where Ham tries to redo his coming out with more drama (“Say It Again, Ham Adven ture”). I think maybe it’s unusual to see a young gay male couple who are in their teens and are accepted by the people around them. And, they’re also very funny. I know that growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, it was tough to find super positive, stable representations of LGBTQ+ youths on air. A lot of the contributions on our staff have been from our writer Charlie Kelly. It’s been great to see young people watching that are connecting with that, because cartoons can’t save the world, but at least maybe we can make it .0005 percent better!
Which toons made a big impact on you when you were growing up?
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The Great North will dig deeper into the traditions of Lone Moose and offer an allfantasy triptych this fall.
Any advice for young people who want to work in animation?
Season three of The Great North premieres on FOX on September 24.
Lizzie: The great thing about animation is that there is no limit to what you can do. It’s an exciting world to work in, and to those who are interested in it, I’d say, “Go for it!.” The more, the merrier!
Wendy: Our dad always showed us what he had liked, so he got VHS copies of the Rocky and Bull winkle show and Mr. Peabody and Sherman shorts, and I used to love those as a kid. In high school and college, my brother and I were big fans of Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Dr. Katz, which was our introduction to Loren Bouchard. We would get home early and watch those shows, just vegging out on the couch — totally sober, for the record! There had been no mari juana and alcohol use when we enjoyed those cartoons!Onething about animation is that it creates its own fandoms and because it’s fun to share it’s fun to watch together and have those inside jokes. I know Bob’s Burgers has certainly produced those groups of fans, so it’s just fun to be part of that tradition, knowing that there are other kids com ing home late from college and watching some animation before they hit the hay. ◆
reators of stand-out animated shows for younger kids have to make magic happen on many levels. They have to deliver engaging animation, present solid stories that can be quickly grasped and weave a meaningful message through all of it.
Craig Gerber, creator of Disney Junior’s new show Firebuds, shares the secrets of his success.
A Boy and His Fire Truck
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Craig Gerber, executive producer and cre ator of Disney Junior’s Firebuds, comes to this new show with years of experience doing just that.Gerber was executive producer and creator of Elena of Avalor and executive producer of Sofia the First. He’s also an Emmy winner for the Sofia the First theme song. After many seasons of working on shows geared toward the preschool set, he found himself inspired once more by his own sons to create a new series that would speak to them. “My youngest son is now seven, but when he was three he was obsessed with fire trucks,” says Gerber. “He would carry around a fire truck, almost like you would carry a pup py, and put on a fire chief outfit. It got both me and my wife thinking that we should do a show about a family of fire trucks. I always want to try to do something that I haven’t seen before, so I thought about a show with a kid and his best friend that is a fire truck. So, that led me down the road to kind of come up with a world of Firebuds, where there are people and they’re talking to vehicles and they live as equals.”
Lifesaving Adventures
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The main human character, Bo, is the son of two first responders and the show focuses on the life-saving work done by them. Gerber wanted to show children the heroic nature of
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The cast of the show includes Lou Diamond Phillips, Yvette Nicole Brown, Lily Sanfelippo, Jecobi Swain and Declan Whaley as Bo. Gerber was sure to invest time developing the design of the fire trucks and their back grounds as well. He knew they needed a dis tinct look for all of the elements to fall into place for their audience. “It’s been a huge design challenge, to be honest, to create a world where we’re a tiny little kid and a giant fire truck can actually be in the same room together,” says Gerber. “We have a great design team and when you get to give the designers and the artists that challenge to create a new world, that’s half the fun. To have the windshield wipers (of the fire trucks) be the eyebrows was really a spe cial moment for me because it helped create that eye frame and make the fire trucks really feel like characters. A lot of different folks contributed to the look and design of every thing. We actually looked at a lot of vehicles that were out there and there were very in tentional decisions made to try to create our own look for these vehicles. Ultimately, we decided in the case of the cars, we need to put the eyes on the windshield because that was the most pleasing place to put it. That happened early on.” The staff of the show is made up of five writers who write the 11-minute episodes. Locally, there are also 40 to 50 crew members at Walt Disney Television Animation working on the Firebuds. ICON Creative Studio, one of the largest independent animation studios in Canada, also works on the show. Due to the pandemic, Gerber hasn’t been able to travel to Canada to meet their crew, but hopes to do so soon.
All the Right Notes Gerber, who is a pop music fan, wants the music and songs in the series to be appealing to all ages. So, he’s incorporating different mu sical styles and keeping his eye on avoiding anything monotonous. He hopes that parents and older kids will also be able to listen to the music, like the theme song “Firebuds Let’s Roll,” written and performed by Beau Black, multiple times without it being tiring. This philosophy dates back to his work on Sofia the First “My goal has always been to create shows that the whole family can enjoy together,” says Gerber. “When it’s time for the younger one to get their choice, I want it to be a fun experience for the entire family across a variety of ages. It makes it a little trickier because you’re trying to include something for everyone. But, the re ward is great because it means that the whole family will look at that time as a fun time spent together.”
◆ Firebuds premieres September 21 on Disney Channel, Disney Junior and Disney+.
“I always want to try to do something that I haven’t seen before, so I thought about a show with a kid and his best friend that is a fire truck.”
— Creator and exec producer Craig Gerber
sep|oct 22 29 www.animationmagazine.net first responders who put others first and come to the rescue of people in their commu nity. Gerber’s own grandfather was a police detective in New York and he feels a special connection to first responders through him. Bo is also part of a blended family that in cludes a Filipino father, and Gerber worked closely with cultural consultants to include representation of Tagalog in Firebuds
PUTTING OUT FIRES: Disney Junior’s Firebuds follows a team of kids who are the children of first responders and their talking vehicle sidekicks. Lou Diamond Phillips and Yvette Nicole Brown are part of the cast.
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The 11th edition of Mexico’s famous Pixelaltl Festival offers something for every animation fan and industry player.
José Iñesta: We are super excited that after two years of online events we will be able to meet in person in Guadalajara, Mexico. I’m also thrilled about the response of the inter national community that is participating in our event and also the support of the Latin American studios that are coming. This is our 11th edition and we have Argentina as our country of honor and we will have several ac tivities to showcase the amazing anima tion that they have done in the past. The theme that we picked for this edition is also very uplifting, since we want to emphasize the importance of seeing ourselves through an other’s gaze. That’s the reason our mantra for this year is that if you come to Pixelatl, you can find yourself through other people com ing as well (Aquí Te Encuentras!).
Aquí Te Encuentras!
Our creative partner for this year is Mighty Animation, who did the art and our Festival trailer and they are celebrating their 10th an niversary so Pixelatl will have plenty of cele brations this year. Why did you find a new location for the popular event? Since we started Pixelatl, a lot of the partici pants in our festival were from Guadalajara, so it was a natural decision to move the event where our audience was. Also, I have to men tion that the state government of Jalisco and the towns of Guadalajara and Zapopan are heavily supporting the audiovisual industry with several programs for infrastructure, equipment, training, content development and other investments that support the local talent. That’s the reason that most of the most prestigious animation studios from Mexico are in these cities: Mighty, Demente, Aska Animation, Mr. Machin, Exodo, Taller de Chucho, Mako, Amber, Polar, 1Simple Idea, Hi kuri, etc. I don’t have to mention that also in Guadalajara is the oldest and more important film festival from the country: The Festival Internacional de Cine de Guadalajara. So re ally, it was a natural decision to pick the place where we want to continue to support the Latin American Animation Industry which is our main objective.
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here is no better way to get your animation career in gear this month than visiting the 2022 edi tion of the Pixelatl Festival, which is set to take place Sept 6-10 in its new location, the glorious city of Guadala jara. We were lucky enough to catch up with the event’s charming and dedicated director, José Iñesta to get the full picture of what’s in store for attendees. Congrats on putting together another fantastic edition. Can you tell us a little bit about what to expect this year?
What are the big points of focus of the festival this year? The main focus of our festival this year is that we are getting back together. We have a lot of important screenings like the Best of Annecy, Unicorn Wars, Valentina, etc. We also have a program from Argentina, and our official se lection has the best animation from the world and from new voices (students and Mexican films that sometimes don’t make it to interna tionalRegardingfestivals). the talks and panels, we have very valuable content from Animation from Spain because, with their tax incentives and amazing team of creatives, they are producing a lot of high quality animation for the world. We will showcase studios to partner with for co-productions and also new talents that are starting to emerge. Also, we have a conference with Sergio Jiménez, the producer from Acad emy Award-winning The Windshield Wiper Our Exhibition space will be filled with new artists from the editorial world and video game industry. Also a lot of schools will pro mote their programs and we will have a lot of recruiting and portfolio reviews that are very José Iñesta The beautiful city of Guadalajara hosts the 2022 edition of the Pixelatl Festival.
For more up to date info, visit pixelatl.com.
This year I’m also looking forward to the video game showroom, because we will be able to see the new content coming from the Latin studios that we couldn’t play with in the previous two years. Interacting with new IPs is always thrilling. Also, all the activities that will happen in Casa del Autor in Zapopan have me thrilled: We will have workshops, 24-hour comic jams and other fun activities for illus trators and comic-book artists. I just hope everybody has a great time being part of this amazing community, and that they feel supported by us and by the international community that is coming to share their knowledge and experience with us!◆
The service business will continue to grow. What I feel is a current challenge is the consol idation of international channels and platforms and their cost-cutting initiatives are hurting the content creators. Consolidation always hurts diversity and, at the same time, it hurts the au dience. We don’t need more sequels, even if they make business sense. We need new char acters, stories and creators that can share their world’s point of view. I’m happy that the studios make money with sequels, but they also should invest in new creators, new stories, and new IPs. We are living in a new world after COVID — therefore, we need new content that reflects this new environment that we are living in.
sep|oct 22 31 www.animationmagazine.net important for the students participating. Another big surprise this year is that we will have an exhibition of the puppets of Frankelda (HBO Max) from the Ambriz Brothers and the audience will have the chance to see the pup pets, backgrounds and other materials that were used in the series’ original production. Can you tell us a bit about the great ani mation guests you have at Pixelatl this year? This is a tough question... Where to start? We have amazing headliners like Dana Terrace (The Owl House), Matt Braly (Amphibia), Sofia Alexander (Onyx Equinox), Carlos Lopez Estrada (Raya and the Last Dragon), Dédouze and a lot of Latin American creators and showrunners like the Ambriz Brothers (Fran kelda), Alfredo Soderguit (Dos Pajaritos), among over 150 artists from 22 countries that will participate in talks, networking events, screenings, etc. This year, our Lifetime Achieve ment Award goes to Georgina Haynes for her amazing work as puppet master in a lot of stop motion animation projects, including Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio.
What is your favorite part of the festival?
My favorite part of the festival is the Cafe con activities in the mornings and the “Happy Hours” with studios in the afternoon, because I feel it is the perfect opportunity to ask per sonal questions of our guests in a more re laxed environment. Also, they are the activi ties where you feel part of the community, where there is no boundary be tween a famous show creator and an aspiring young animator.
Talking about evolution, I feel the festival is al ways evolving. We add new sections, because we are always listening to what the community wants. This year we created a program where speakers send us their topic or research and we will provide the space where they can share it with the community. I’m supper excited to see the students talk about their projects and also the winners of previous years in our comic or video game programs to share with the commu nity their journey and where they are currently.
What is your take on the animation in dustry in Mexico today and what do you predict for the business in 2023?
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How do you think the festival has grown and evolved over the years?
Why do you think everyone should at tend this year?
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Time for the Big Euro Pitch Fest!
Cartoon Forum’s 2022 edition will spotlight 84 new animated series, minis and specials in September.
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Behind the Scenes
Tiger and Bear • Xilam Animation (France) — Phil & Sophia Three projects previously pitched at Cartoon Springboard made it to Cartoon Forum: My Superhero Husband produced by Addart Production, a.k.a. Funny Tales (Greece), Best Friends Forever… Stranded! by Peeka boo Animation (Spain) and Doom Mates by Twentytwo Film (Germany). ◆ Visit cartoon-media.eu/forum for up-to-the minute info about this popular event, be presented this year at from 19 European countries, Million EUR, representing 3788212 (in MIO EUR) Up to 5 6’ - 10’ 23’ - 45’ 14’ - 22’ 10’ - 13’ 103214188 Pre-school* Children**26%52% CARTOON FORUM 2022 - STATISTICSBYTARGET BYBYFORMATBUDGET Young adults / 6%adults11%5%TeenagersFamily *Pre-school : Pre-school 2-4 & Upper pre-school 5-6 **Children : Children 5-7 (Bridge), Children 6-9 (Kids) & Children 9-11 (Tweens) 563111 KIDS AND CRITTERS: (clockwise from top) Studio Kimchi’s Zoey Oceans , Submarine’s Max , Millimages’ Welcome to Permacity and Folivari’s Nino Dino are among the pitches ready for 2022.
Among the familiar names attached to the 2022 selected projects are Phil Molloy (creative executive, Bob the Builder) as scriptwriter on Max, produced by Submarine (Netherlands); Marie Beardmore (writ er, Angry Birds Toons, Sonic Boom) is creator and producer of Mervyn’s Album, produced by Kick the Door Productions (Spain); and Reza Me mari (writer, Richard the Stork) has penned the script for The Last Whale Singer series, produced by Telescope Animation (Germany).
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uropean animation professionals know the summer season is officially over when it’s time for them to get ready for the annual Cartoon Forum pitch fest in Toulouse, France. The event, which takes place Sept. 19-22, promises to be another exciting gathering of toon pros, showcasing 84 new projects from 19 budgetectstheeventAccordingcountries.toorganizes,selectedprojhaveatotalof€379.3 USD)million (~$400Mwithan aver
age cost per project of €4.5M (~$4.7M USD). While the cost per minute of animation produc tion has slightly in creased compared to 2021 (€12,879 per minute vs. €11,887 in 2021), it’s coming back to the level reached before the pandemic (€12,250 perFranceminute).emerged as the country with the most active animation slate, producing or co-producing 37 pitches, followed by Ireland and Spain with eight shows, Germany with seven, Italy with five, Poland with three and Belgium and Denmark with two projects each. The rest of the countries each have one show screening at the Forum.
Here are what some of the more familiar animation studios are bringing to the Forum: Cartoon Saloon (Ireland)— Natu Natu • Cyber Group Studios (France) — The Tern • Daily Madness Productions (Ireland) — Mildew • Folivari (France) — Nino Dino • Laïdak Films (France) — Round and Round the Wishing Well (a sequel for Mum Is Pouring Rain) • Letko (Poland) — Happy Not Lucky • TeamTO (France) — Next Level: Odyssey • Wiggleywoo (Ireland) — Doopydoo • Wolkenlenker (Germany) —
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A Day with the Dogs
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A Multitude of Ideas and Characters!
Spotlighting a few shows out of 84 wonderful pitches is not an easy task, but we did our best to pick a few of the Cartoon Forum projects that looked quite promising this year:
This adaptation of the book by Dorothée de Monfreid (Les Toutous) is produced by French studio Dandelooo, which is best known for shows such as Billy the Cowboy Hamster, Stinky Dog and Mum Is Pouring Rain. The charming main character is a good-natured Saint Bernard whose peaceful life in the countryside is disturbed by eight ram bunctious young cousins during the holidays. Director Ced ric Guarneri and producers Jean-Baptiste Wery and Em manuèle Petry-Sirvin are leading the charming 2D preschool show.
Gustave Jeremy Barlozzo and Douglas Cavanna are the writer-di rectors of this offbeat show about an awkward and gull ible duck whose life changes when he falls head over heels for the sassy rabbit Jessyfer. Too bad he often listens to the misguided advice of his housemate, Pedro the elephant!
Next Level: Odyssey
You can always count on TeamTO to bring a cool show to the party, and this year is no exception. Targeting six- to 10-year-old audienc es, Next Level: Odyssey mixes the world of gaming with mythology: It follows the adventures of Kiran, who falls through a portal into the world of classic Greek mythology while playing games at the Louvre Museum. Our hero is soon tasked with helping Odysseus get back to Ithaca with the help of a junior goddess, Leuki. Inspired by Panique dans la Mythologie by Fabien Clavel and produced by Corinne Kouper, this 26 x 22’ show is definitely one to keep an eye on!
The 54 x 2’ show, which is intended for young adults and older audiences, is produced by Deadliners Production (Ar thur Blanc-Anthonioz) and co-produced by Andarta Pictures (Sophie Saget) in France.
Produced by Lithuania’s Art Shot in collaboration with Poland’s GS Animation and Lithuania’s M-Films, the 2D-animated show targets kids five to seven and looks like the kind of show that can easily find its way into viewers’ hearts. Shepherdess Warriors Abrave 10-year-old girl named Molly from a small medieval seaside village begins her training as a fighter in Shepherdess Warriors (Bergerès Guer rières) the popular French comics series by Jonathan Garnier and Amélie Fléchais. The graphic novels are the inspiration behind a terrific looking 13 x 30’ show produced in France by Mathieu Courtois and Vivement Lundi! and co-produced by L’Incroyable Studio (Johan Chiron). The project’s tween audi ence should really enjoy the epic scope and entertaining adventures of this fierce little fighter. ◆
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Think of it as a little bitty Friends sitcom for young animal buddies (without the ridiculously affordable New York apartments). Created by artist Gediminas Skyrius, written by Marija Kavtaradzė & Titas Laucius and directed by Urtė Oet tinger, the new Polish-Lithuanian series BFF is a charming comedy about a clum sy bear (Ben), an eager squirrel (Frida) and a cool cat (Freddie). We love Skyrius’ detailed illustrations and the show’s breezy sense of humor, which emphasizes the trio’s love for each other regardless of their social and familial differences.
EVENTS Natu Natu
BFF
This hot new nature-themed show from the creative minds at Ire land’s Cartoon Saloon is definitely on the hot list. The beautifully crafted 2D series follows two of nature’s little helpers, Natumi and Natuko, who love to play and explore. When something seems out of balance in the Garden, they love to figure things out! The 52 x 7’ show is directed by Fran Bravo, written by Cian McGarrigle and produced by Jason Tammermagi. In addition to being the powerhouse studio behind five beloved, Oscar-nominated movies, Cartoon Saloon has also deliv ered several popular animated series through the years, including Skunk Fu!, Puffin Rock, Dorg Van Dango and Vikingskool
When asked about the state of the global ani mation market, Marty responds, “While the market remains very interesting, we have realized the eight to 12 target requires particular attention, since within this age group animation has to com pete with other media — notably video games. In order to do so, it has to play with similar tools and offer audiences engagement, graphic sophistica tion, strong characters, high stakes and an addic tive, intricate plot. That’s the reasoning behind two new projects for eight- to 12-year olds we have coming up, both with APC Kids on the distribution side and in development with Zephyr.” ◆
Loveable Monsters Among Mogu & Perol’s many attractive qualities are Goda’s eye-catching designs and the powerful draw of stop-motion animation for young viewers. “There’s something unexplainably magical about the physicality of stop-motion animation, and that is true for children just as much as for adults — you just can’t stop watching!” adds Sauerwein. The clearly defined, memorable central char acters (a shy bigfoot and a more boisterous little creature) also bring a lot of appeal to this de lightful world. As Saurwein points out, “The series is 100 percent character driven, with strong and clear emotional arcs in every episode, which al lows the audience to identify with our protago nists. While Mogu and Perol’s polar opposite qualities make the show exciting and funny, there’s also something both delicate and deep that comes out of the world of Mori Mori island. This is a backdrop which showcases a very har monious way of life that leaves space for inde scribable joy and wonder in this natural world.”
Good Friends with Appetite
Zephyr’s lovely Mogu & Perol series is ready to make a splash at Cartoon Forum.
As APC Kids’ managing director Lionel Marty explains, “About three years ago, we created our production arm Zephyr to develop our own proj ects as well as to co-develop and co-produce properties with partners from around the world. Both companies share the same boutique ap proach in our DNA: focused on building a limit ed number of selected IPs for international au diences, and offering an alternative to big distribution groups through carefully curated content and bespoke solutions.”
mong the many charming animated shows debuting at Cartoon Forum this year is Mogu & Perol, a new project inspired by Domo-kun cre ator Tsuneo Goda’s award-winning 2018 stop-motion short about two friends enjoy ing delicious food and living in harmony on a lush island. The team at Zephyr Animation, the produc tion arm of renowned distributor APC Kids, was so impressed by it that they decided to develop an animated show based on the property. “We fell completely in love with the short and im mediately saw the potential for a series,” says Zephyr producer David Sauerwein. “We then had numerous meetings with [Dwarf Animation Studio’s] producer, Yuriko Okada, and with creator/director Tsuneo Goda, during which we spoke at length about the charac ters and the underlying ideas of the original short film. Working together we built a foundation of trust and collaboration, and began to move forward on the development of the series.” The producers then asked writer/story editor Marianne Barbier to come on board. “I’d worked with her during my years at Xilam, and she imme diately understood what we were trying to achieve with this show,” says Sauerwein.
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“We look for character-driven projects to cov er all target groups from preschool to family, across all genres from action-adventure to comedy, and from animation to live action,” he points out. “Currently, APC Kids is looking for ward to adding slapstick to our slate!”
Lionel MartyDavid Sauerwein
The project soon received support from France’s Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC), and shortly thereafter, France Télévisions of fered a co-development deal. To shoot the stop-motion animation test, Zephyr went to Vive ment Lundi!, the Oscar-nominated studio based in Rennes, France. “We’re in the midst of this develop ment now, with brilliant animator and director Goulwen Merret on board and a cast of carefully selected writers who really get the essence of the show,” notes the producer. The show is expected to be ready by late 2024 (all fingers crossed).
To learn more, visit aboutpremiumcontent.com.
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Mogu & Perol is only one of Zephyr’s hot proper ties. “We are completing the financing for our first 2D animated series, Lana Longbeard, a co-produc tion with Canadian studio Copernicus. Production for this 52 x 11’ adventure comedy for kids six to 10, set in a fantasy world, will start before the end of 2022 with Super RTL, and we are currently final izing initial broadcast deals for the series,” says the producer. “We have also signed a development deal on our series MiniTechs, a 3D animation for kids four to seven in co-production with Ferly, and we’re developing a 2D sitcom for kids with an in ternational platform.”
The upcoming show, which is set to debut on Peacock in early 2024, is developed by Scott Kraft (PAW Patrol), who is also the head writer and executive producer. Notably, the lead characters Sunny and Rue are East Indi an, and that is reflected by a diverse and au thentic cast and writers room.
A brother and sister enter their favorite video game in Cyber Group Studios’ latest animated venture Press Start!
“While we have seen video game-themed shows for older audiences and families, we ha ven’t seen any for the bridge audience,” Siss mann points out. “Accelerated by the pandemic, younger kids are engaging with video games more than ever and even socializing with friends via kid-friendly messaging apps and games. Like our heroes, real kids live in both the real world and these game worlds. So we know video games are super-relevant to this age target. And the stories are at once relatable — with Sunny and Rue dealing with real kid is sues — and aspirational by seeing them express their issues through the lens of being digital heroes in a heightened video game world.” Sissmann says he loves working with the show’s creatives to bring this world to ani mated life. “Scott Kraft is the best, and we are also fortunate to work with French director Éric Cazes. And we have great, supportive partners at Peacock. Beyond that, we love the storytelling: Each episode is full of heart and innovative, exciting and cinematic action. It’s going to thrill kids.” When it comes to the overall global anima tion scene, Sissmann says he is optimistic that lots of great projects are being produced all around the world. “Of course, with all the con solidation in the business, we are all going to be challenged to find those unique but rele vant stories that will continue to capture the hearts and minds of kids and families,” says the well-known industry veteran. “We are ex cited to be bringing shows like Press Start! and other similarly high-quality projects to global audiences.” ◆ Cyber Group Studios will bring Press Start! to MIP Junior this fall. The show will premiere on Peacock Network in early 2024. For more info, visit Sissmann
Sissmann, who has launched numerous suc cessful shows through the years (Gingantosau rus, Taffy, Droners, 50/50 Heroes and Zou, to name a few recent ones) says he and his team loved Flintham’s books and were excited to bring their distinct retro 8-bit-style illustra tions into a 3D world. “Because the series fea tures kids who go back and forth from the real world and video game world, Press Start! will feature two distinct visual styles: one that is beautiful but more traditional CG and the oth er that is video game-inspired and can be de scribed as a mash-up influenced by the likes of Minecraft, LEGO and retro video games.”
cybergroupstudios.com.Pierre
“Scott Kraft pitched an amazing take to adapt Thomas’s work,” says Cyber Group Stu dios president and CEO Pierre Sissmann. “His vision really brings to life the wish-fulfillment of kids getting to go inside a video game world and going on adventures with their vid eo game hero to battle big bad boss villains together. Scott’s take felt like a truly ‘Metaverse’ experience for kids before people were even talking about the Metaverse. We just intuitively knew that he had hit on some thing truly relevant for kids.”
A Winning Team
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F ans of the popular book series Press Start! by Thomas Flintham will be thrilled to know that Cyber Group Studio’s animated adaptation is on its way to becoming a reality. The hugely entertaining Scholastic series, which has sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide, follows the adventures of a brother and sister who are big fans of the fast-paced world of the Super Rab bit Boy video game series. When the siblings use their amazing gaming skills to win a su per-secret experimental game controller, they discover they are able to play inside the game, their lives are flipped upside down as they go from being Super Rabbit Boy’s biggest fans to being Super Rabbit Boy’s best friends!
Next-Level Entertainment
Live from Ottawa, It’s OIAF22!
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The competitions are a sort of highly subjec tive mixtape of some of the most engaging an imation films being made today. And what makes Ottawa unique is that we don’t segre gate. The short competitions feature narrative, non-narrative (i.e. experimental), commissioned (music videos, commercials, IDs) and student work. That makes for a somewhat eclectic expe rience. And sure, you won’t like every film, may be not even every second film, but you’ll find something that resonates. All of these films will be judged by a jury consisting of Oscar-nominee Hugo Covarrubias (Bestia), Canadian stop-mo tion animator Terril Calder (Meneath) and Croa tian collage artist Marko Tadić. Oh, and the next day you get a chance to “Meet the Filmmakers” during a session where I moderate discussions between the audience and attending competition filmmakers. It’s a mix of insightful, heated and silly.
Discoveries Short and Long So, it all starts with the five short competi tions (each of them hosted by two self-pro claimed comedians). That’s the core of the OIAF, the essence, the soul. There are feature, VR and series competitions, but the short film is the rea son every animation festival worth its beans be gan in the first place. Festivals exist to provide a platform for artists who don’t otherwise have easy access to an audience.
- By Chris RobinsonNetflix interactive comedy We Lost Our Human Koji Yamamura’s Dozens of Norths
The animation festival’s long-time artistic director gives us a sneak peek at this month’s much-anticipated event.
T o paraphrase the not-so-great George Costanza, “We’re back, baby! We’re back!“ That’s right: After two years of serving up the Ottawa Internation al Animation Festival (OIAF) in the (dis)comfort of your homes, the OIAF returns to in-person activities this September 21-25. We don’t dare call it the post-pandemic phase, because we all know it ain’t over yet (and, well, the world is going to hell anyway), but we’re at least back on the road after two years parked in a garage. If the pandemic proved anything, it’s that festi vals are better in person. The last two years clear ly demonstrated that festivals are about much more than films. They’re about bringing a commu nity of people together to share emotional, intel lectual and social experiences. Okay, enough of my half-assed musings about existence. Let’s get on with what’s in store for OIAF22. Perhaps some of you will be attending for the first time, and maybe some of the veteran OIAFers have gotten rusty and for gotten how to navigate it all.
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Chris Robinson is artistic director of OIAF and author of Unsung Heroes of Animation, Canadian Animation and Mad-Eyed Misfits: Writing on Indie Animation. He also wrote the award-winning short Lipsett Diaries.
Xu An & Xi Chen’s The Loach John Weldon’s Log Driver’s Waltz
PEOPLE:ANIMATED (top) KravitzAmyis OIAF 2022’s director(bottom)President;HonoraryartisticChris Robinson.
sep|oct 22 41 www.animationmagazine.net Beyond that, we’ve got the Panorama screen ings. This is essentially a collection of films that didn’t quite make the cut for competition but that we feel should be seen by an audience. There are also two Young Audiences competi tions that are judged by kids. That’s always re freshing because kids’ juries aren’t part of the community and offer blunt assessments. Now, the OIAF isn’t just about the present and future of animation. Animation’s history is vital to the Festival. You see, quite often films just vanish quietly into the dustbins of history after their fes tival run (if they’re lucky enough to have a festi val run). The OIAF retrospectives and special screenings are a way to keep the past alive and to present works in a variety of contexts. This year, the OIAF is serving up retrospectives of ac claimed American indie (and OIAF22 Honorary President) Amy Kravitz. There’s also a tribute to the legendary Oscar-winning National Film Board of Canada animator John Weldon (Special Delivery). We’ve also got retrospectives of less er-known voices: Marko Tadić is a Croatian artist/ animator whose mixed media works fuse docu mentary, history and science fiction; Jonni Phil lips is an American artist who has quite a cult following in the world of computers, but who isn’t that well known on the animation festival circuit. And our jury member, Hugo Covarrubias, has put together a special screening looking at the rise of contemporary Chilean animation. And while you’re racing about between venues you can explore our Augmented Realities attractions, on display around downtown Ottawa.
The Pulse of the Industry Okay, now the OIAF is not just about showcas ing all that “weird, artsy-fartsy” stuff; there’s a whole industry side to the Festival as well. The Animation Conference (TAC) is a three-day-long conference that attracts producers, recruiters, and assorted studio folks from around the globe. Among the highlights of TAC is the popular Pitch THIS! (presented with Mercury Filmworks), which gives Canadian animators a chance to pitch a se ries idea to a jury of industry pros. There’s the An imation Exposé, which features a day-long series of talks by artists from your favorite shows and movies. This year, Rikke Asbjoern and Chris Gar butt will offer a sneak peek of their upcoming in teractive Netflix special We Lost Our Human Hey, but you know what? Let’s get to the most important part of the OIAF: the parties. As I prat tled on about before, the OIAF (and any decent fes tival, really) is about bringing people together from different parts of the world to have some fun and share knowledge and experiences. Every day at the OIAF, there is a party or social event of some kind; the most well-known of these is the Cartoon Net work Studios Animator’s Picnic, which includes the infamous Pumpkin Carving contest. There’s Bento Box’s Salon des Refuses (a chance to watch films that didn’t get accepted into the festival) and, of course, there’s the annual Saturday night bash, NightOwl. This year there’s an extra special treat: Nelvana’s Care Bears’ 40th Anniversary party. I have no idea what this will look like, but I understand that actual Care Bears will be in attendance. Damn, I’ve gotta stop. They only gave me 700 words, and I’m already over that limit. It’s best that you come and experience it for yourselves. That’s the only way to really understand the beautiful madness that is the OIAF. ◆ Head over to animationfestival.ca to find out about the many other events happening at OIAF22 and then start plotting out what will be a frantic, exhausting, memorable and inspiring week.
Find out what the top animation commissioners, buyers, develop ment execs and other power players are looking for at The Animation Conference (TAC), which takes place Sept. 21-23 at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier and various other locations around town. Don’t miss happy hour on the Ottawa River Boat Cruise.
Animators’ Picnic Bestia Hotel
Your Animation Festival Checklist!
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Enjoy a totally non-mainstream, artistic movie that you probably won’t get to see in regular theaters the rest of the year! Among this year’s feature selections are Anca Damian’s The Island, Koji Yamamura’s Dozens of Norths, Alê Abreu’s Perlimps, Alberto Vázquez’s Unicorn Wars and Lei Lei’s Silver Bird and Rainbow Fish ◆
Meetweek.)world-class
Learn more about animation around the world through the festival’s special programs and showcases. This year, Hugo Covarrubias, the Oscar-nominated director of Bestia, has prepared a not-to-be-missed special focus on Chilean Animation.
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Ottawa International
See some of the awesome animated music videos, commercials and ident spots created by the hottest talent around the globe, such as the cool Pharrell Williams’ music video “Cash In Cash Out,” directed by Francis Rousselet
Amanda Forbis (left) and Wendy Tilby Cash In Cash Out
Every year, there are so many great screenings, panels, chats, parties and special showcases planned for the OIAF that it can leave a first-time visitor a bit overwhelmed. So, here are some of our picks for the 2022 edition that we think you should definitely try and catch or live to regret it until the next festival comes around!
Hang out with some of the cool animation students, top animation artists and fellow animation lovers and carve some killer pumpkins at the festival’s popular Animators’ Picnic. Expand your mind and get inspired by enjoying some very cool non-narrative shorts, such as Sumito Sakakibara’s stunning 360-degree work Iizuna Fair.
The Island
Check out some of the best animated shorts by creative artists all around the world (such as Sophie Koko Gate’s Hotel Kalura) at the special screenings. (Don’t worry if you miss one. The kind festival programmers often screen each short twice during the animation stars such as Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby (When the Day Breaks) whose new short The Flying Sailor is part of the narrative competition.
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Toad & Friends Distributed by: Hoho Rights Format: 52 x 11’ Type of Animation: CG by Wild Child Animation
Exec Quote: Robin Gladman, Aardman’s head of acquisitions, notes, “Pop Paper City is a truly unique series — a fun and interactive adventure show full of creativity. The show was instantly recog nized at launch, during MIP 2020, by winning the coveted ‘Kids’ Series Pitch’ award, and it’s gone from strength to strength. We are very proud to bring Pop Paper City to kids around the world.”
Welcome to Lolyland
Pop Paper City Distributed by: Aardman Format: 52 x 11’ Type of Animation: Mixed Media Target Audience: Preschool
Target Audience: Preschool Created by: Produced by Hoho Ent. based on The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame Synopsis: Inspired by Kenneth Grahame’s literary classic, Toad & Friends is a brand-new animated series in which Mole, Ratty and Toad are joined by Hedge, a young hedgehog with a zest for life. Celebrating the countryside and the simple joy of being outside, we follow the riverbank friends in brand new humorous adventures as they discover moral courage, respect and the value of friendship.
Produced by: Cottonwood Media Format: 52 x 11’ Target Audience: Kids 6-10 Based on: Original comic books created by Cédric Asna (a.k.a. Ced), Emmanuel Martin (a.k.a. Gorobei) and Pierre Walterspieler (a.k.a. Waltch), published by Éditions Dupuis. Series is adapted for TV by Asna, Martin, Walterspieler and Alexa Dosne.
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Standout Qualities: While staying true to the classic story, this new series is brought up to date by highlighting friendship, community, nature and humor and introducing a diverse cast of new characters. Exec Quote: Oliver Ellis, joint managing director of Hoho Entertainment and producer of Toad & Friends, says, “With over 85 million copies of the book sold in 29 languages, The Wind in the Willows is not just a British classic, it’s a global classic. We can’t wait to introduce today’s children to our modern take on these beloved characters, with 52 sparkling new stories.” hohoentertainment.com
Synopsis: A regular 10-year-old girl is magically transported to the magical world of Lolyland, which is filled with unicorns, cyclops, dragons and all sorts of weird and funny creatures … And none of them have ever seen a human before, so imagine their surprise when they meet her! Penny’s journey is driven by her quest to find out where she comes from, and how to get back. She also has to complete missions for Lolyland’s bossy and wacky ruler, Granny Loly! Standout Qualities: A fun fantasy adventure show with a girl lead.
Created by: LoveLove Films
Delivery date: 2023 aardman.com
Standout Qualities: Stunning paper craft world with great charac ters, promotes ‘doing as well as viewing.’ Live-action montages within the show inspire children to make their own paper creations.
Producers: Zoé Carrera Allaix, Cécile Lauritano and David Michel
Nine Shows to Catch at MIP Junior!
Exec Quote: David Michel, CEO/co-founder of Cottonwood Media, says, “This is a perfect show for the market because it has this unique, slightest edgy, European quality while being a commercial product.”
Delivery Date: Q4 2024 cottonwood.tv
Synopsis: Pop Paper City is a vibrant 3D craft show set in a place where dreams can become reality. The series focuses on a group of unique friends who live in Pop Paper City, the capital of the stunning and endlessly peculiar paper world. In each episode, the characters find a new way to have fun together by creating new parts of their already impressive world, using craft to solve their problems and complete their adventure.
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The Smeds and the Smoos
Type of Animation: 2D Target Audience: 7+ Created by: Katie Lyons, development producer, Sixteen South Synopsis: Sisters Fiona and Flavia Fusilli are doing everything to try and make their family pasta restaurant a roaring success. Unfortunately, this particular restaurant is located in the secluded depths of a mountain valley, far from any potential pasta patrons. So, the family decides to launch a new delivery service, an idea straight from the brains of rookie pasta-delivery-drivers Fiona and Flavia. Equipped with a tomato-purée-powered golf cart to bring any pasta to any place, the girls never know what kind of adventure awaits them!
Synopsis: On a far-off planet, two families always avoid each other. The red Smeds never mix with the Smoos, who are blue, so when a chance encounter allows young Smed Janet to become friends with Bill, a young Smoo, their families immediately try to stop it. But as Janet and Bill’s friendship grows into something more serious, the two clans must find a way to get along to avoid losing them forever.
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Standout Qualities: Wacky comedy celebrating family life and community, with two dynamic sisters having absurd adventures as they try to deliver their pasta to weird and wonderfully remote locations.
Standout Qualities: Piggy is such a charming, lovable character! The stories feel “real” because they are based on the director’s own son’s games, feelings and viewpoints. The charismatic simple stories and slow pace of each episode allow the youngest children to discover and learn about things that surround them.
Spaghetti Sisters Distributed by: Sixteen South Rights Format: 52 x 11’ (in develop ment)
Exec Quote: Muriel Thomas, director of international distribution at Magic Light Pictures, says, “The Smeds and The Smoos is the 12th animated special we have brought to market and our 10th TV adaptation of a Donaldson/Scheffler title.We are delighted to be producing this cosmic tale which, like its predecessors, is right at the heart of the BBC’s Christmas schedule.” magiclightpictures.com
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Standout Qualities: This new special from the multi-Oscar-nominated Magic Light Pictures is narrated by Oscar nominee Sally Hawkins and features a stellar voice cast including Adjoa Andoh, Bill Bailey, Meera Syal and Rob Brydon. A cosmic drama based on a timeless theme about a love which overcomes division.
Exec Quote: Colin Williams, creative director at Sixteen South, says, “The idea for Spaghetti Sisters came during lockdown, when Katie observed food delivery workers coming and going during the pandemic. The absolute silliness of two spirited sisters trying to deliver food in such a remote location takes our work in a new direction — a binge-worthy series for kids with the vibes of Twin Peaks meets Gravity Falls.” sixteensouth.tv
Distributed/produced by: Magic Light Pictures
Our Piggy Distributed by: Dandelooo Produced by: Bionaut Format: 52 x 2’ Type of Animation: Digital 2D Target Audience: Preschool (2-5) Based on: The award-winning book by Jaromir Plachy Synopsis: Our Piggy is small, naive, curious and playful. Just like the youngest children, he is discovering and learning about the things around him — especially what these everyday things turn into within his imagination. A box becomes a tractor, a pillow becomes a bee — or is it the other way around? Is a washing machine more fun than a TV? Our Piggy discovers the world one step at a time, joining in is fun!
Format: 30’ special Type of Animation: CG provided by Blue Zoo Animation Target Audience: Kids & Families Based on: The book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler
Delivery Date: Fall 2022 dandelooo.com
Exec Quote: Emmanuèle Pétry Sirvin, Dandelooo’s producer/head of international, notes, “We love the round and colorful design which will appeal to early preschoolers in an original way. The difference between the daily situations and imaginative scenes are seamless which leads the viewer to jump into the creative world unknowingly. Our Piggy is so adorable, real and imaginative that kids will feel they are Piggy. Watching the series, you can feel the joy and love with which it was created.”
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Distributed by: Monster Entertainment Produced by: Little Moon Animation Format: 26 x 5’ Type of Animation: 3D CG Target Audience: Preschool Created by: Vanessa Robinson Synopsis: Every day, Fia and her best friend Ameer take a journey to Fairy Island, where they learn an enchanting new language through exciting adventures with the fairies and all their magical friends. As well as teaching Fia and Ameer new words in their additional language, they also teach them about kindness, acceptance and bravery — all whilst bringing our young audience along for the fun!
Vegesaurs Distributed by: Studio 100
Exec Quote: Vanessa Robinson, Little Moon Animation founder and producer, says, “Fia’s Fairies is an exciting new show about friendship and adventure but with an entertaining educational core. By introduc ing an additional language to preschool audiences through Fairy Island magic, we’re thrilled to support children and their families on their language learning journeys and know it’s going to resonate with children across the world.”
Producers: Executive produced by Frank Falcone and Rachel Reade Marcus of Guru Studio, and Maria Perez-Brown (head of kids & family, TIME Studios)
Executive Quote: “Vegesaurs is the perfect edutainment for upper preschool ers, offering amazing characters you will instantly fall in love with!” says Martin Krieger, CEO of Studio 100 Media. “Kids as well as their parents will be able to easily connect with Ginger and the other Vegesaurs and we are excited to announce a number of international collaborations very soon.
Fia’s Fairies
Standout Qualities: This new animated educational comedy series being developed with the support of TIME Studios’ Kids & Family division will teach kids how to develop a lifelong practice of separating fact from fiction, whether it’s a schoolyard rumor or misinformation online. TIME Studios brings nearly a century of journalism experience to the project, helping to introduce children to the foundational journalistic concepts of truth and fairness.
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Delivery Date: December 2022 littlemoonanimation.com | monsterentertainment.tv
Exec Quote: “We can’t wait to unveil Scoops at this year’s MIP Junior, an exciting new comedy that tackles the important and timely theme of media literacy. Kids will love junior reporter Ellerby, who like many children is naturally curious and has a relentless enthusiasm for asking questions. With the incredible support from TIME Studios, we’ve developed a series that encourages curiosity and critical thinking to help kids better navigate their life at home, in the schoolyard and in their community,” says Rachel Reade Marcus, VP of creative development at Guru Studio. gurustudio.com ◆
Format: 52 x 11’ Type of Animation: 2D Target Audience: Kids 5-8 Created by: Tone Thyne (Go! Go! Cory Carson, The Adventures of Napkin Man!, Wonder Pets!)
Scoops Distributed/produced by: Guru Studio
Synopsis: Vegesaurs are the juiciest and crunchiest creatures ever to rule the planet in a colorful prehistoric era. The young Tricarrotops Ginger lives in Vegesaur Valley, a little garden of Eden bathed in sunlight — a perfect patch that a rich ecosystem of the Vegesaurs call home. Each episode is a standalone mini-adventure driven by Ginger and her friends, the baby Pea-Rexes. The stories lean into relatable themes for upper preschoolers like mealtime, sharing, friendship and play. Standout Qualities: A fresh and unique take on the dinosaur genre with characters you can only find in this show. Vegetables were never so much fun!
Delivery Date: Available now studio100group.com
Produced by: Cheeky Little in assoc. with Australian Broadcasting Co. (ABC), France TV and Studio 110
Package: 20 x 5’ Time of Animation: CG Target Audience: Upper Preschool (4-7) Created by: Gary Eck and Nick O’Sullivan
Standout Qualities: A charming and very entertaining educational show, which pushes Unreal Engine 5 technology to achieve high TV standards.
Synopsis: The show follows eight-year-old fact-finder Ellerby, her best friend Olsen and their ever-present camera as their natural curiosity leads them to discover the truth behind the wild stories people love to share in their tight-knit commu nity. Whether Ellerby is digging into important questions (like why the paper factory smells like dirty feet) or exploring more personal truths (like why PJ’s parents aren’t together anymore), she uses tried and tested reporting skills to judge the credibility and reliability of the information.
sep|oct 22 47 www.animationmagazine.net EVENTS with an a ordable personal loan. Let us help you: ∞ Consolidate Debt ∞ Fund a Special Event or Vacation ∞ Purchase New Equipment ∞ And Much More Apply online today at: firstent.org/personalloans Federally Insured by NCUA. Membership eligibility rules apply. All Credit Union loan programs, rates, terms, and conditions are subject to change without notice. Loan proceeds may not be used to refinance existing First Entertainment Credit Union loans. Debt consolidation loans are subject to direct pay to your creditors. All loans are subject to credit approval. towww.animationmagazine.netYourNumber-OneConnectiontheGlobalAnimationCommunity
ow that your animation studio website is up and running, you have online and in-person presentations prepared and your team members are waiting in the wings, ready to power dive into new projects, it’s time to shake the client tree and see what new projects you can make land in your lap. Get Your Mind Straight Before taking your first step, establishing the prop er mindset is crucial. Completely and permanently remove the word “sell” or “sales” from your internal dictionary. The goal is not to bludgeon a prospect into submission, but rather find highly qualified prospects who can benefit greatly from your services and who want and/or need what you have to offer — and will be more than happy to pay for said services. Start Local The single best place to start looking for anima tion prospects is your favorite online search en gine. The number of targeted, quality prospects you can generate in mere seconds from an effortless online search could take weeks and cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars mere decades ago. Although it is more common than ever to work remotely for clients all across the country, pros pects that don’t know who you are may be more inclined to speak with you if you are local.
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When crafting your follow-up email, keep it short and sweet. Include your business name and website address, how the prospect could benefit from your services, and that you would be happy to give a brief presentation to their directors, project managers and owners at their convenience. This should take no more than three or four sentences. If you have any other small documents such as a digital brochure or an eye-catching image, feel free to attach that to the email, but keep the file size to a minimum (less than 2MB total), to reduce the chances of the email getting lost in the ether.
Shaking the Client Tree
Toward the end of the email, mention that you will follow up in about a week. This pre-qualifies you to contact them again and also allows plenty of time for them to review your site and hopefully talk about you with the rest of their team. Whether you land a project at this point or not, try to schedule a presentation sometime soon, because getting face time with the decision mak ers in a business is invaluable. Generate a detailed log of each interaction in a text document or simple spreadsheet. Before you know it, you’ll have a list containing dozens of leads, some of which have turned into loyal clients, thereby providing your initial conversion rate. You can use this spreadsheet and conversion rate to further develop your proprietary marketing system, which can then be passed on to your future marketing director. ◆
Follow-Up Makes It Happen
Martin Grebing is the president of Funnybone Animation Studios. He can be reached at funnyboneanimation.com.ScroogeMcDuck knew the importance of keeping a detailed log of all his financial interactions, leads and conversion rates. (Image courtesy of Disney’s DuckTales.)
www.animationmagazine.net 48 sep|oct 22 OPPORTUNITIES
By Martin Grebing -
To get started, simply go to the search engine of your choice, type in your city, state and the type of client you want to have. For example, “St. Louis, Mo., dentist.” If you live in a very small town where busi nesses and potential clients are sparse, use the nearest, biggest city in your search. In a fraction of a second, your screen will be filled with page after page of prospects. Start visit ing their sites, jotting down the contact phone numbers along with a short sentence describing how they could benefit from your services. Repeat until you have approximately 15 leads. Permission Before Submission Take your list somewhere quiet and comfort able. If you don’t have a landline, be sure to find a place where you get excellent reception. You want to get someone on the phone — absolutely no email for first contact! When speaking to a prospect, remember you are not selling anything. You are only asking per mission to send your information. This is usually a quick, two-step process. Introduce yourself and your niche and ask if it would be OK for you to send them a short email introducing your com pany and how the prospect could benefit from your services. The receptionist (who also doubles as a gatekeeper) may forward your call to some one else in the company that might be interested or normally handles this type of request. If so, home run. Introduce yourself and your niche to the new person and ask if you can email them your information. If, on the other hand, the recep tionist sounds a bit leery about forwarding a stranger to their boss or giving out their email address, say you completely understand and would be more than happy to send your informa tion directly to the receptionist and then it can be forwarded internally from there.
AUTONOMOUS ANIMATOR -
The secret is to never put all your hopes and dreams in one project, or one company. Oh, be a loy al employee, and be professionally disciplined. Just don’t expect them to remain grateful to you. I can’t tell you how many times I was told, “We are not just a company, we are a family!” “You’ll always have a job with us!” And they laid me off anyway. What you should have faith in is your talent and your co-workers. Because when empires collapse, when the dust clears, they will be the ones there for you. We are all a tribe. Bob Kurtz called us “wonder fully damaged people.” Animators all know each other. I got more new jobs by word of mouth than ever by knocking on doors (metaphorically). I knew an old animation assistant named Jim Logan. He worked for Tytla, Bakshi and Richard Williams. Jim once told me: “Once you become a follower of the Goddess of Animation, she takes care of you. Some days it seemed like there was nothing out there. I worried how I would pay my rent and feed my family. Then, the phone would ring.” Good luck, good hunting. I’ll see you on the other end at the Motion Picture Home. I’ll save you a lawn chair. ◆
Tom Sito is an animation veteran, historian and professor at USC. His credits include Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, Shrek, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Prince of Egypt and The Lion King.
TOON TOWN BUDDIES: (left) Tom Sito, Bob Kurtz, Chuck Jones and Rob Minkoff; (top) Tom hard at work during his Disney years, and posing with the Aladdin crew in 1992.
The Circle of Life in the Animation Business
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- By Tom Sito“Once you become a follower of the Goddess of Animation, she takes care of you.” — Jim Logan
www.animationmagazine.net 50 sep|oct 22
Filmation, Filmfair, Ruby-Spears — are all gone to day, with the exception of Walt Disney. And yet we are all still here. All still working. Because through it all, the one constant is us. The animation artist. We are still going. Studio closes? We pack up our stuff and move on to the next job. Like the medieval stone masons. This castle’s done? Valdemar just said the Duke of Chartres is planning a new cathedral. At least a hundred years’ worth of work. I’ll get my tools.
When I first got into animation I bought into the whole Frank & Ollie thing. Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston were the legendary Walt Disney an imators who graduated from Stanford University, then went straight into Disney’s. They spent the next 46 years being the most fantastic animators ever, retired wealthy and wrote books. I’m like, sign me up! Later as a professional, I realized the situ ation of the Nine Old Men was unique, but not the rule. Freddie Moore and Bill Tytla didn’t end up that way. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera won a bushel of Oscars for MGM. They got laid off anyway when the studio downsized in 1957. They became suc cessful when they started their own company and got into the new technology of television.
The animation business goes through cycles of boom and bust. In the late 1970s-1980s it was down. Then by 1986-1995 it was up. Then in 2003 it went down. And this is just the Hollywood scene. Other countries like Japan, China and France have their own cycles. Remember, if theatrical animation goes into a slump, broadcast and streaming may be up. If they are down, then games companies. Or vi sual effects. Or online content. Don’t be afraid to diversify. Forty years ago, I got laid off from the Richard Williams Hollywood Studio on Barham Blvd. I looked around and the only company hiring was Filmation. They were doing an action-hero show called He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. I was more a comedy guy than action-adventure, but I trimmed my sails and got the job. I made out pretty well for those years, and the show became a big hit. To this day I am invited to talk at Fan Cons for He-Man and She-Ra. So you never know what the next thing will be. A decade ago few expected Amazon and Netflix would be big in film production.
OPPORTUNITIES
The importance of staying positive during tumultuous economic times.
owadays young animators read the industry news and worry about their job prospects. This studio is not hiring, that one is laying off, another just canceled a big project. Well ship mates, take it from this old salt: It was ever thus. I’ve seen studios rise, and studios fall. Places that once had buildings and annexes all over the world are now not even a footnote in a movie trivia book. All the studios that were big when I first came to Hol lywood in 1977 — Hanna-Barbera, DePatie-Freleng,
Keep the Faith in Your Talent
sep|oct 22 51 www.animationmagazine.net OPPORTUNITIES Septemberanimationfestival.ca21→25, 2022 Ot FAnimationInternationaltawaestival PatronsMajorSupportersGovernmentShowcasePartners THANK YOU TO OUR SUPPORTERS!
According to Anas, the studio had origi nally planned to release Mechamato as a feature back in 2020, but due to the chal lenges of the Covid pandemic, they quickly switched plans and decided to focus on the series instead. The Perfect Pair So, what makes this show so popular with the fans? “With Amato as the brains, and MechaBot as the brawns, the duo has a unique chemistry that also makes them the perfect match-up,” says Anas. “Togeth er they have to find and capture other bad robots that are hiding in the city. Every epi sode features new creative mechanizations and cool new robots for Amato and Mech aBot to capture. Our young hero has a lot of crazy and far-fetched ideas for inventions, which he is able to realize with the help of MechaBot’s abilities. This allows the show to explore elements of imagination and cre ativity, which we hope will inspire and moti vate kids today to become more creative and better at problem-solving.”
Monsta, which celebrates its lucky 13th anniversary this September, has big plans for the future. In addition to BoBoiBoy and Mechamato, the studio also produces the hit animated shows Papa Pipi and Fly with Yaya. “We hope to become the voice of South East Asia,” says Anas. “We would like to expose the world to the stories, cultures, values and artists of Southeast Asia. Thus, all of our upcoming shows will revolve around universally appealing concepts with a good mix of local elements. We strongly believe this will bring the next generations closer to each other despite coming from different places around the world.” ◆ For more info, visit www.monsta.com
Malaysian studio MONSTA has ambitious plans for its popular Mechamato franchise.
www.animationmagazine.net 52 sep|oct 22 Advertorial
alaysian studio Monsta is best known for its popular animated series BoBo iBoy which was first introduced in 2011 and ran for three seasons and also in spired two movies. This year, the studio is back with an exciting second season of its show Mechamato and a feature as well. Mechamato follows the adventures of Ama to, a creative boy and his fantastic robot MechaBot, which has the power to turn any object into a high-tech device. “After the success of our first IP BoBoi Boy, we wanted to create a new animated series centering on the friendship between a boy and his robot,” says Anas Abdul Aziz, the studio’s Chief Content Officer. “In 2014, we developed and pitched Mechamato to multiple broadcasters and partners from different regions and platforms, and gar nered a lot of interest.”
One of the big selling points of the show is how it is inspired by various elements of Malaysian culture and how the creative team integrates them within the storylines and the show’s high-tech animation. As Anas explains, “The town of Kota Hilir is in spired by the city of Malacca, which is a melting pot of different cultures and races. Mechamato also showcases some iconic Southeast Asia mainstays as the martial art known as “Silat” and traditional dish called “Karipap”, the food that MechaBot loves to eat.”According to Anas, Mechamato is pro duced at the studio’s facilities in Cy berjaya, Malaysia. The production uses Autodesk Maya to produce the CG animation. Since its debut on Cartoon Network in December 2021, Mechamato is now one step closer to global arrival after being acquired by Netflix and multiple European broad casters including TV JOJ, SIC K and Minika Çocuk. Mechamato is well received in more than 30 countries across Asia Pacific, Middle East and Europe. In addition, Mechamato
A Boy and His Mechabot!
Creative
Movie is in the final stage of production, scheduled for year-end release and looking for international distributors to come onboard with this popular project.
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“The series would not be possible without the CEO and co-founder Dmitriy Yan’s intrepid ideology to inspire children and make them learn through having fun,” she points out. “He brought together a passionate team of cre ative individuals who made this series a reality. Jasurbek Butaev is the talented animation di rector, with years of experience animating kids shows and movies such as Jinglekids and The Stolen Princess. He worked in animation stu dios in Ukraine and Uzbekistan, as well as mentored animators all over Central Asia, the Caucasus, India and Indonesia.”
os Angeles-based Bimi Boo Kids is getting ready to launch its first major animated se ries, The Incredible Stories of Bimi Boo and Friends. The company, which specializes in creating fun cartoons, games and toys that promote learning, is hoping to introduce their charming new preschool show to buyers and producers at the fall TV and animation markets around the world.
Advertorial
Ani Poghosyan, Bimi Boo Kids’ Cartoons Division COO/Producer tells us, “We are a company that creates products and content for a wholesome and safe childhood as a key component of a bright world. The company creates fun and educational apps for pre schoolers, safe and eco-friendly wooden toys and now it is developing a preschool show that pushes for a playful sense of curiosity and upholds children’s agency.”
Bimi Boo Kids charming new show aims to inspire curiosity and embrace diversity.
www.animationmagazine.net 54 sep|oct 22
The Incredible Stories of Bimi Boo and Friends is described as kind, educational and adventurous—with lots of nuance and heart. “It has space for different kinds of children, repre sented by a group of different animals, to ex plore themselves and explore the world,” says the producer. “The possibilities are endless. We hope to give Bimi the opportunity to go out side his little town and explore different cul tures as new seasons come forth, to delve deeper into a wider range of topics, from sci ence and art. With a diversity that exists among the characters, there are different spins, angles from which to view the world, creativity, humor and learning. We are excited as to what will come next after the first season.”
Bimi Boo’s Talented Global Team
According to Poghosyan, the show is written by Lottie Finklaire, Terry Newman, Jessica Al pha, Amber Prass and Aaron Schubert. “They’re all wondrous storytellers with many awards and years of experience telling stories for young kids up their sleeves. The art director Victoria Bulanova, is an illus trator and artist from Central Asia, with a special knack for creating sensory, beautiful worlds and characters for kids. She oversees the lighting and final compositing of the show, making sure that the visuals do not overstimulate but at the same time trigger the imagination.” She also praises the show’s various depart ment heads. “Our 3D environmental designer Sergey Tsoy gives Bimi Boo and his friends that soft, velvety textured feel and helps build a friendly and cozy environment around the sto ries. Our post-production specialist Anatoly Sot nikov handles the final aspects of the show, making sure that the show has that kind soft, colorful feel.”
The series creators are hoping that the se ries will teach young viewers to collaborate, compromise and embrace differences. “Since Bimi Boo and his friends are very different from one another, the stories are not devoid of con flicts and misunderstandings, but it’s not something that they are not able to overcome, giving practical examples to kids on how to get along and learn from our mistakes,” says Pog hosyan. “The series also shows that there are no topics out there that you can’t tackle and that boundaries can be overcome with knowl edge and passion. We introduce children to a wide range of subjects from arts to sciences, spurring on children to accept their unique passions, to try out different things and to set tle into a state of constant learning.” She adds, “The Bimi Boo team consists of ex perienced designers, graphic artists, program mers, animators, and educational experts. To gether, our unstoppable team makes an amazing array of games, cartoons, and toys designed to accelerate children’s learning. My background is in children’s rights and informal education. I have a MA degree from Columbia University, and have researched the use of creative media, including TV and popular entertainment in dispersing val ue-based education to children — something that has been invaluable in crafting the method ology of the show.”
Poghosyan concludes, “If I had to sum up the show in one sentence, I’d say: Good cartoons make you want to stay home, great cartoons in spire you to roam. And we thrive to create exact ly that; a kind of series that would inspire kids to roam, play and learn.” ◆ For more info, visit bimiboo.com
A Blueprint for a Better World
The premise of the show is simple and universal: We all have to learn! “Our little robot named Rookie likes nothing more than that,” says the show creator. Curious, open and friendly the little bot explores his world and meets new friends, discovers new things and expe riences little adven tures in each epi sode. Mouse, the moon, magic or mu sic: The simple and charming stories en tertain with wit and joie de vivre – and a cheeky twist. Rookie’s encounters focus on friendliness, openness and empathy, but also perseverance, respect and patience — and with each episode he gets to know his world a little better!
The producers of the show hope that children will look at Rookie Robot differently compared to other shows on the market. “We hope they see something that they could actually have made themselves - and that makes it very ac cessible,” they conclude. “The short episodes are entertaining on the one hand and education al (we have to take care of each other and our planet) on the other, encouraging curiosity and showing that we are all stronger together.” ◆
For more info, visit rookierobot.comChristian Leiss (left), Josef Pallwein-Prettner (right) at MIFA/Annecy
Even Robots Need to Learn
“The feedback from buyers, broadcasters, and production colleagues at Annecy was amazing,” says Pallwein-Prettner. “It was per ceived as unique because of its style and the fact that it was created by kids. At that event, we also managed to sign up a new specialized world distributor, London-based Meta-Media (Sara Cooper) and new deals are already sealed (e.g. Filmin/Spain, Portugal).”
Advertorial
The first season of the show premiered on Daekyo TV and Baby TV in South Korea in 2021, and it was also licensed to Canada’s Knowledge Network and ORF Austria’s Flimmit. The second season will begin pro duction in October and will be ready for deliv ery by the third or fourth quarter of 2023.
www.animationmagazine.net 56 sep|oct 22
Created by Kids for Kids!
A curious bot learns about the world in the original preschool show Rookie Robot. Aclever drawing of a robot by a fouryear-old girl inspired Josef Pall wein-Prettner to create his charming animated preschool show Rookie Robot Explores the World. The 26 x 3-minute se ries targets two to five-year-old kids and is produced by Austria’s Sine Lege Film in Vi enna, in cooperation with Christian Leiss of Leiss Animation Studio and Post Produc tion. “Our show is a fun journey through first encounters and discoveries,” says Pall wein-Prettner. “Rookie Robot is one of a kind: It is created by kids for kids: All the characters are developed from children drawings, and its simple, colored in, illustra tion-based animation style is different from most programs on the market.” “The em phasis on a simple cartoon style has a spe cial retro touch. The hand-drawn 2D anima tion is produced using Toon Boom Harmo ny,” adds Leiss. In addition, the show is non-dialogue (music and sounds only), so it’s easy to understand for children all over the world. “We are lucky to have a very tal ented young woman, Nadia Zimov, as head of animation,” says Pallwein-Prettner, who is also managing director of Sine Lege Film. “Sebastian Wiesflecker composed the catchy original song ‘Rookies Rock’ and Gerald Hartwagner is responsible for the wonderful sound design, which tells the stories on the acoustic level with guitar and sound effects. He’s an outstanding talent (and punk musician), while Markus Cermak supervised the whole animation production process.”
SeaSon1-out now SeaSon2-coming Soon Produced by SINE LEGE FILM in cooperation with LEISS Postproduc tion Distributed by www.meta-media.co.uk/rookie-robot/ C r eatedby kids forkids ONE OFAKIND! (26x3'perSeason) Watch Teaser
What Dreams Are Made Of
There was also extensive interaction with Mor pheus. Holt explains, “He’s got his cloak on. There were lots of wind effects. We have all that stuff in camera where you see hair blowing. We were try ing to combine wind effects where you’ve got flames involved. You can’t have too much wind — otherwise, you could set fire to things.”
Creator Neil Gaiman and his VFX team discuss the stunning visuals of his new Netflix series The Sandman.
www.animationmagazine.net 58 sep|oct 22 VFX & TECH
One of the production’s major set builds was the Undercroft. Steele explains, “I wanted to have all of the elements of fire and water. It was built as an underground dungeon and has a moat run ning around it on the inside with flames every where. We built tons of lighting fixtures to hold flames. The centerpiece that Morpheus is locked up in went through so many different looks. It was hard to get everybody to agree on it.”
Visual effects supervisor Ian Markiewicz was also heavily involved in the story devel opment with Heinberg. “Ian had a desk in the writers room and would spend several hours a day with us developing the visual effects and budget side of things organically at the idea stage before we would put it in any outline,” saysProductionHeinberg.designer Jon Gary Steele says he really wanted to be part of the project. “I had 125 images that were all as ‘out there’ as the graphic novel, which everybody loves. All the heads of the departments showed these imag es to their teams to get them excited about what they’ll be working on,” he notes.
Capturing the Human Elements
The series has a strong visual through line with Gaiman’s popular source material. “Dave McKean had famously done the covers for the comics, which were a combination of paintings and collages,” says the show’s executive produc er David S. Goyer. “We brought in Dave to do the title sequences. We would pull from the panels and say to our individual visual effects vendors, ‘Your remit is to actually make this scene drawn by various artists two dimensionally photoreal.’ That was always the remit with the different characters. How could you make it photoreal, whether it be Martin Tenbones, Mervyn Pump kinhead, Goldie or Gregory the Gargoyle?”
Building the Universe
The sets were filled with practical atmospher ics. “When Morpheus is captured, there were lots of smoke, flame bars and fire that had to ignite,” reveals special effects supervisor Mark Holt. “We built all of these candles where you would push a button and they would self ignite. It was like a spirit being born. Every little thing has a gag in it that we had to do live on set.”
Framestore, ILM, Important Looking Pirates, Untold Studios, One of Us, Rodeo FX, Union FX and Chicken Bone VFX created 2,900 visual effects for the 11 episodes, while previs and postvis were handled by Proof and animatics by MonkeyShine.
“Matthew the Raven [voiced by Patton Os walt] is the most advanced bird asset created at Framestore,” notes VFX supervisor Ian Mark iewicz. “He has an intense feather system. It’s - By Trevor Hogg -
After Apple greenlit Goyer and Josh Fried man’s Isaac Asimov adaptation Foundation, Allan Heinberg took over showrunner duties. “We saw the show as an emotional family comic-drama and the visual effects would help us create these otherworldly realms,” notes Heinberg. “But the focus was always ‘human’ for all of us.”
I n 1989, celebrated fantasy author and com ic-book writer Neil Gaiman (American Gods, Stardust, Coraline) introduced the world to Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams in Vertigo Com ics’ The Sandman series. After years of being in development hell, the comic’s adaptation has finally made its way to Netflix with the 11-ep isode first season directly inspired by the first two volumes, Prologues and Nocturnes and The Doll’s House “In the comics you have a fabulous array of ways of depicting images,” notes Gaiman in a re cent interview. “But they aren’t people who live, breathe and move.” This new adaptation provides the opportunity for the characters such as deities which represent powerful natural forces known as the Endless to be embodied by actors. “With Tom Sturridge we got lucky in a lot of ways be cause we got somebody who looks exactly like the Morpheus in the comic. Kirby Howell-Bap tiste doesn’t look exactly like the Death in the comics, but spend three minutes in her company and you know exactly why she was cast.”
sep|oct 22 59 going to be exciting to see all of the different things that he can do in terms of performance and how intricate that feather system is — whether he’s grooming his wings or fluffing them out or taking flight or landing.” He mentions that most of the Raven’s work involved the character either on the ground or perched. “He has long scenes with other char acters and that means he has performance needs,” says Markiewicz. “He is in those scenes. A lot of them had a practical bird to photo graph with actors reacting to it, which was im mensely invaluable.” Deak Ferrand at Rodeo FX assisted with the conceptualization of Morpheus’ palace, referencing sculptures from around the world. He explains, “An interesting challenge is that the palace in the comic book evolves all of the time. The initial process was figuring out how that palace looked in its pristine state. But then also one of the big reveals at the end of Episode 101 is that the palace falls in deep ruins. Our thinking was that [Morpheus’ king dom] The Dreaming should be a representa tion of the collective consciousness. It was important to us that the palace itself reflect ed a broad cultural context.” Heavenly Gate Production designer Jon Gary Steele mould ed a section of the Gate of Horn, one of the two gates in The Dreaming which were carved by Morpheus when the world was young. “He built a 20 x 25 approximate full section of the gate, which was beautifully carved and placed at the base where some of the sequences were staged,” recalls Markiewicz. “That small 20 x 25 section became part of the gate that was 300 feet wide by 300 feet tall, but it was a process of how best to divide those elements across departments and figure out how to leverage everybody and all of the crafts peo ple. The show always tries to give something in the form of practical. Whenever possible, I would be the first person to lobby to not shooting on greenscreen.” He also points out that the team always kept dog-eared, annotat ed or screen-grabbed copies of Preludes and Nocturnes and The Doll’s House on hand. “We leaned heavily into the source material as a guide and always had Neil Gaiman nearby to shepherd us,” he says.
www.animationmagazine.net VFX & TECH
— Creator & exec producer Neil Gaiman
BEAUTIFUL BEAST: The team at Rodeo FX worked on the poignant scene between Cain (Sanjeev Bhaskar) and Gregory the Gargoyle in episode two of the series.
“I technically know when we’re in visual effects and when it is real, but once the episode is finished, even I’m not sure. It’s astonishing!”
Gaiman says he himself enjoyed the visual effects process of the project. “There are epi sodes of The Sandman where what we shot gives you a fabulous taste — and then, you know with the visual effects it will be even better,” says the fantasy master. “Then, there are some episodes that almost feel like sketches. We’ve cut all of the action, but until we see what the people are looking at and reacting to it’s not going to look real. Then we have char acters who are partly visual effects. Matthew the Raven is an amazing amalgamation of real ravens, puppet and visual effects. I technically know when we’re in visual effects and when it is real, but once the episode is finished, even I’m not sure. It’s astonishing!” ◆ You can catch the first season of The Sandman now streaming on Netflix worldwide.
UNDERWORLD BUILDING: The moody backdrops of the series were shot primarily within an hour of Shepperton Studios near London. ILM, Framestore, Rodeo FX, cbfx, One of Us and others worked on the massive project. Right: The character Mervyn Pumpkinhead was shot on set and augmented with facial animation to achieve a photoreal effect.
I ’m pretty convinced that the amount of stuff that SideFX puts into a mid-point release of Houdini is actually greater than any other com pany puts into their full releases. By their defini tion, SideFX basically calls this a small release where they aren’t focusing on anything huge — just, you know — a few time-saving features to help artists be more efficient. To that I say, “Pfft!” The launch event took an hour and a half to talk about things. I don’t think I can even cover every thing, and this is a longer-than-normal review!
First up: Solaris, the lookdev/layout/lighting environment for Houdini gets a number of new features. A new set of brushes in the Layout LOP (Lighting Operator), gives you the power to dis tribute USD objects throughout your scene by painting on surfaces. This is nothing new in the 3D world, but the methodology is definitely streamlined. You can organize libraries of objects you can then use to “fill” your brush. And then you “paint” those objects. The new Stack Brush takes it to a new level by allowing you to put objects on top of objects — stacking. Bricks, rocks, boards, whatever, will sit in a physically accurate way on top of each other. The Line Brush will take the objects filling your brush and distribute them along a designated line. This is great for archi tecture where you have repeating patterns of designs. As always, the distribution is procedural, so the number and spacing are adjustable. Fur thermore, the viewport within Solaris mode now has a render region function. Layout can get re ally heavy really quickly, and while the viewport renderer is fast, it certainly doesn’t hurt to be able to marquee around an area that you want some more accurate feedback. One of the key aspects of Solaris are the Lights features. And what’s new? Filters! Specifically, through a MaterialX node.The filters act as “gels,” which may not sound that exciting. But when you have a large array of lights, you can add the filter to all of them, resulting in a broad, simple con troller over color and exposure. But you aren’t just limited to color — there are also gobo and projector features in case you would like to make some complex shadows without building a bunch of geometry to cast the shadows. Or may be you have a projector casting something on a wall. The power lies in the network of the filters, where you can build a look by processing the projected image within Houdini, rather than go ing outside to Photoshop to make a new texture. The Karma renderer is replacing the triedand-true Mantra renderer. And Houdini 19.5 also has beta access to Karma XPU — which is the GPU accelerated flavor of Karma. Karma is look ing to support MaterialX more fully, but with a few extra functions to fill the gaps as MaterialX matures. These features include support for cur
www.animationmagazine.net 60 sep|oct 22 VFX & TECH Tech Reviews - By Todd Perry -
SideFX’s Houdini 19.5
VFX & TECH vature, facing ratios, render time rounded edges, and “coving” for shoring up edged on displaced surfaces to prevent tearing. However, the import ant thing about the MaterialX adoption is not only interoperability between different renders, but the fact that Karma XPU isn’t designed to work with VEX networks. So, while some of these features could be built in VEX, you wouldn’t be able to render it in Karma XPU. SideFX is working to make sure that Karma and Karma XPU will be as similar as possible. In conjunction with rendering advances, hair and fur tools have also been bumped up. Groom ing brushes have better control, especially with mirrored grooming across a character. This is great, but the real power is in the rendering. The hair can be sent to both Karma and Karma XPU, so getting sample renders during look-dev has sped up dramatically. And even more important is that render-time hair generation has moved from Mantra — not only to Karma, but to other render ers that are Hydra delegates like Arnold and Ren derMan. So, your look dev is going to be retained, even if your end production renderer isn’t Karma. And I haven’t gotten through barely half of the features presented on the launch: There are also additions to the Pyro FX to speed up simulations through instancing, scaling velocity in sims to re duce calculation time but retain smoke detail. This detail can be seen in better viewport render ing. And game workflows have not been forgot ten.Idon’t even have time to get into the new FLIP fluid advances. There is a lot of power in this package. I encourage you to head on over to the launch video and get all 90 minutes of magic. I should probably start writing the review for Hou dini 20 now … given all the little hints of what’s to come from the team at SideFx. Website: sidefx.com Price: Free (Houdini Apprentice); $269 (Indie: One-Year Rental); $399 (Indie: Two-Year Rental); $499 (Artists: One-Year Rental); Studio (Various, visit website for rates). ◆ Todd Sheridan Perry is an award-winning VFX supervisor and digital artist whose credits in clude Black Panther, Avengers: Age of Ul tron, The Christmas Chronicles and Three Busy Debras. You can reach him at todd@teaspoonvfx.com.
sep|oct 22 61 www.animationmagazine.net
www.animationmagazine.net 62 sep|oct 22
Ansel is also very modest about his TikTok fame. “I think a lot of it was being at the right place at the right time,” he says. “I got into it right as lockdown started and just tried to make fun edited videos that would fool audiences or spark discussions in the comments. The interac tions the videos brought to them, with people debating legitimacy and editing techniques in the comments, definitely attracted the algo rithm to push them further.”
You can watch 99¢ Pizza and learn more about Ansel’s other projects at lucasansel.com.
A Tasty Slice of Terror
The director says he really enjoys the prob lem-solving aspects of animation. “Everything from the writing, to the production, to the post-production was riddled with difficult puz zles,” he says. “It’s hard to make something ‘sim ple’. I really wanted the final piece to feel com plete and airtight. My friend Aidan Burke and I jotted down a few lines of dialog together and my friend Amalia Attias helped create the charac ters’ little costumes. But beyond that, everything else I did by myself. Then, right before submit ting to Ottawa, I asked that same friend Aidan if he’d help me rework the sound effects and bring the audio of the piece to the next level.”
Solving the Puzzle
TikTok star Lucas Ansel reveals the ingredients of his terrific 99¢ Pizza.
The talented artist says he fell in love with animation at a young age when he watched Rankin/Bass’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. “I would watch that special year-round growing up,” he says. “I also seriously love Brad Bird, Gen ndy Tartakovsky and Tim Burton. My dad and grandfather both worked in the film world and I always loved movies. Sucking an audience into a story using all of these little visual tricks is noth ing short of magic. I think I gravitated towards animation over live action because even more goes on behind the curtain, and I love how few people really know how much work it takes.” He’s also having fun learning about people’s different reactions to his haunting ode to latenight pizza. “A friend of mine who goes to an other college sent me their classmate’s home work that coincidentally compared 99¢ Pizza specifically to Gregory La Cava’s animation,” Ansel notes. “I just thought it was insane that my work could be the centerpiece of a ran dom kid’s essay. I was super flattered.” We also have to thank Ansel’s mom for being an early champion of his talents. “The best advice I ever got about animation came from my mother,” he points out. “Growing up I’d lock myself in my room making LEGO animations and literally never remember to save my files. So every other day, my computer would die after hours of animating and I would completely break down. After wiping away my tears for me, my mom would convince me to get back on the horse and start the scene over. She always told me the second time around, the animation would come out better than the first, and she was always right. She taught me to never be too precious about my work and to be willing to redo it for a better result!” ◆
R hode Island School of Design grad uate Lucas Ansel’s clever and dis turbing stop-motion short 99¢ Piz za manages to achieve a lot in less than three minutes. The short, which is screening in competition at the Ottawa International Animation Festival this month, was inspired by Ansel’s own late-night pizza joint adventures in the Big Apple. “Due to either language barriers or inebriation, there was al ways some sort of miscommunication and I al ways found them really entertaining,” says the talented animator and TikTok star, who divides his time between L.A. and N.Y.C. Ansel began working on the short last October and finished it in about three months.
“After creating a simple animatic with doo dles and a rough audio using Photoshop and Premiere, I created the entire city block and in terior of the pizzeria in Blender,” he recalls. “Then, once I had figured out the lighting of the digital space, I tried my best to recreate it and shoot the stop-motion puppets against a green screen. I also added all of their mouth replace ments in post using After Effects.” Among the project’s challenges was dealing with so many unknown variables early on. Ansel had never used Blender or done a lot of green screen work, and he hadn’t tried digital mouth replacements before. “I think just trusting myself and my eye was the biggest hurdle I had to over come,” he says. “I’ve been stop-motion animating for close to 15 years now, so I’m super comfort able with that, and I really wanted to branch out and learn 3D programs. There is something su per eerie about the combination of the two.”
Lucas Ansel SHORTS
A DAY IN THE LIFE
3:45 p.m. Back to work. I still occasionally publish illustrations, like my weekly one for Pronto magazine. I usually work with India ink and watercolor. I don’t want to lose my spirit as an illustrator and I love drawing on paper. 6 p.m. I revise what I have written of the script and make character sketches for the future (hopefully) film. Revision is very important, because after several hours I can see what I wrote in the morning more clearly.
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11 p.m. Normally we watch a movie or read, but tonight there are festivities in our city, so we came down to watch the fireworks. It’s a nice way to end the day — but tomorrow, we have to keep writing! 3 10 a.m. Time for work. Two months ago I started the script for my next feature. I really like screenwriting, but I’m still at a very early stage and not sure about a lot of things I’m writing. I drink three cups of coffee … bad idea! 7 7: 30 p.m. I go for a walk with my girlfriend Bea, who has just come home from work. This is when we talk, share what we have done during the day, and I complain. She puts up with my insecurities and (sometimes) depressive character!
9:15 a.m. I take a walk before work. I live in La Coruña, a quiet city in the north of SometimesSpain.itis a boring city, but it has a cliffs.manycloselandscapespectacularverytohomewithbeachesand
1:30 p.m. Today I went to the home of some animator friends to eat paella — a typical Spanish dish made with rice, saffron and other things you must cook just right. We ate vegetable paella because some of them are vegans.
This month, we have the great honor of visiting acclaimed Spanish writer, director and comic artist Alberto Vázquez, whose new movie Unicorn Wars premiered at Annecy and will also screen at Pixelatl and Ottawa this month. He writes, “Two months ago I finished my new feature film Unicorn Wars, on which I’ve been working for almost six years, and right now I am in a very strange phase both professionally and personally. I feel a big emptiness — and also, today is a holiday in August. Even so, I work every day because I have a lot of things to do!” 21 4 8:30 a.m. I get up and monthapplecoffeebreakfast:haveandpie.AagoI had COVID, and there are days when I feel quite Todaytired.isone of them.
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AFM ®22 SANTA MONICA | NOV. 1-6 A MERICAN F ILM M ARKET . COM | B RINGING F ILM T O L IFE
sep|oct 22 A DAY IN THE LIFE
