Animation Magazine's EFM Issue - Mar 2023

CONGRATULATES OUR 53

FILM

BEST FEATURE

GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO

THE SEA BEAST

WENDELL & WILD

BEST INDIE FEATURE

MY FATHER’S DRAGON

BEST DIRECTION - FEATURE

GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO

Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson

MY FATHER’S DRAGON

Nora Twomey

WENDELL & WILD

Henry Selick

BEST FX - FEATURE

GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO

THE SEA BEAST

BEST CHARACTER ANIMATION - FEATURE

GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO

Tucker Barrie

BEST CHARACTER DESIGN - FEATURE

WENDELL & WILD

Pablo Lobato

RISE OF THE TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA

TURTLES: THE MOVIE

Ida Hem

BEST MUSIC - FEATURE

GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO

Alexandre Desplat, Roeban Katz, Guillermo del Toro, Patrick McHale

THE SEA BEAST

Mark Mancina, Nell Benjamin, Laurence O’Keefe

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN - FEATURE

GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO

Curt Enderle, Guy Davis

THE SEA BEAST

Matthias Lechner, Jung Woonyoung

BEST VOICE ACTING - FEATURE

GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO

David Bradley as Geppetto

GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO

Gregory Mann as Pinocchio

THE SEA BEAST

Zaris-Angel Hator as Maisie Brumble

ANIMATION MAGAZINE, SPREAD - REVISION 1

BEST EDITORIAL - FEATURE

GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO

Ken Schretzmann, Holly Klein, Emily Chiu, Hamilton Barrett

THE SEA BEAST

Joyce Arrastica, ACE, Will Erokan, Vivek Sharma, Michael Hugh O’Donnell, Daniel Ortiz

TELEVISION

BEST SPECIAL PRODUCTION

THE HOUSE

THE SANDMAN

BEST TV/MEDIA - PRESCHOOL

GABBY’S DOLLHOUSE

SPIRIT RANGERS

BEST TV/MEDIA - LIMITED SERIES

ONI: THUNDER GOD’S TALE

ANNIE AWARD NOMINEES

BEST FX - TV/MEDIA

LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS

Kirby Miller, Igor Zanic, Joseph H. Coleman, Steven Dupuy, Josh Schwartz

THE HOUSE

Germán Díez, Álvaro Alonso Lomba, Hugo Vieites Caamaño

BEST CHARACTER ANIMATION -

TV/MEDIA

ENTERGALACTIC

Aziz Kocanaogullari

ONI: THUNDER GOD’S TALE

Toshihiro Nakamura

STORYBOTS: ANSWER TIME

Henrique Barone

THE HOUSE

Kecy Salangad

BEST CHARACTER DESIGN - TV/MEDIA

ENTERGALACTIC

Meybis Ruiz Cruz

LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS

Alberto Mielgo

ONI: THUNDER GOD’S TALE

Rebecca Chan

SPIRIT RANGERS

Marie Delmas

BEST DIRECTION - TV/MEDIA

ONI: THUNDER GOD’S TALE

Daisuke “Dice” Tsutsumi

EXCEPTION / エクセプション

Yûzô Satô | サトウユーゾー

BEST MUSIC - TV/MEDIA

LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS

Rob Cairns

ONI: THUNDER GOD’S TALE

Zach Johnston, Matteo Roberts

THE CUPHEAD SHOW!

Dave Wasson, Cosmo Segurson, Ego Plum

THE HOUSE

Gustavo Santaolalla

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGNTV/MEDIA

ONI: THUNDER GOD’S TALE

Robert Kondo, Rachel Tiep-Daniels, Lia Tin, Yohei Hashizume, Masa Inada

THE HOUSE

Niklas Nilsson, Alexandra Walker

BEST STORYBOARDING - TV/MEDIA

KUNG FU PANDA: THE DRAGON KNIGHT

Grace Liu

LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS

Emily Dean

THE CUPHEAD SHOW!

Karl Hadrika

CYBERPUNK: EDGERUNNERS

Yoshiyuki Kaneko

BEST VOICE ACTING - TV/MEDIA

STORYBOTS: ANSWER TIME

Fred Tatsciore as Bang

BEST WRITING - TV/MEDIA

LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS

Andrew Kevin Walker

THE HOUSE

Enda Walsh

BEST EDITORIAL - TV/MEDIA

GREEN EGGS AND HAM

Margaret Hou

KARMA’S WORLD

Damien Dunne, Ultan Murphy, Emma O’Brien, Fred O’Connor, Aiden McKenna

VOLUME 37, ISSUE 3, NUMBER 328 MARCH 2023

FRAME-BY-FRAME

ANIMATION PLANNER 8 March

THE MUST-HAVE LIST 10

TELEVISION/STREAMING

MEET THE NEW SPACE-AGE FAMILY

The duo behind My Dad the Bounty Hunter takes us behind the scenes of their dynamic new Netflix series.

Get ready to expect the unexpected from Disney/Marvel’s innovative new show Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur!

The team behind Warner Bros. new take on the ScoobyDoo heroine discuss their very grown-up, edgy show!

GOOD LAUGHS WITH A TRIO OF FRIENDS

We catch up with the talented creators of Apple TV+’ s charming new stop-motion show, Shape Island

Elise Allen and Monica Davila give us the scoop on their new Netflix show Princess Power FURTHER

Sam Riegel and Travis Willingham, exec producers/voice stars of The Legend of Vox Machina, share insights into the second season.

AWARDS

YOUR OSCAR BALLOT! 30

Here are the nominees for the 95th animation & VFX Oscars.

EVENTS

AFFAIR TURNS 25 34

The 2023 edition of Cartoon Movie offers a rich collection of auteur-driven titles and crowd-pleasing family fare.

YOUR CARTOON MOVIE ‘23 SAMPLER 36

Here is a brief overview of some of the projects that grabbed our attention.

HOME ENTERTAINMENT

ADVENTURES IN A RETRO FUTURE WORLD 46 Warner Bros. Animation dips into a nostalgic well with the new Legion of Super-Heroes film.

VFX & TECH

VISUALIZING A MAGNIFICENT NERVOUS BREAKDOWN 48

Take a peek inside the stunning VFX of Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths TECH REVIEWS 50

Under the hood of Foundry’s Mari 6 and Nuke 14.

SPOTLIGHT

PRESSING THE RESET BUTTON 52

China’s DeZerlin Media bounces back from the COVID years, launching exciting initiatives for animated features and TV projects.

OPPORTUNITIES

REMEMBERING THREE FATHERS OF THE CG REVOLUTION 54

AUTONOMOUS ANIMATOR 55

Double-Up Your 2023

DAY IN THE LIFE

A DAY IN THE LIFE 56

Bradley Zweig takes us around the Spin Master construction site for Rubble & Crew

COVER A: Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur premieres on Disney Channel/Disney+.

COVER B: My Dad the Bounty Hunter arrives on Netflix.

EFM COVER: Luminescence brings The Nutcracker and the Magic Flute and My Sweet Monster to the market.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

MEET THE NEW SPACE AGE FAMILY

The duo behind My Dad the Bounty Hunter takes us behind the scenes of their dynamic new Netflix series.

12 A HEROIC GIRL AND HER JURASSIC PARTNER 16

Get ready to expect the unexpected from Disney/Marvel’s innovative new show Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur!

16

FEATURES

12 40

40

SCALING FANTASTIC HEIGHTS

The new animated Spanish-Chinese adaptation of the Dragonkeeper saga is set to soar this summer.

Welcoming New Shows and Celebrating the Classics

Despite the major shake-ups we have seen in the streaming universe, animation continues to rank high on the most-discussed subjects in entertainment. We saw an impressive number of animated shows premiering on TV, cable and streaming platforms in the first two months of the year, and there doesn’t seem to be any slowing down as we glance at the list of upcoming shows and movies slated for the rest of the year. Now, if we could only find a way to stop streamers from removing completed shows from their platforms to cut costs and get tax benefits!

Our two cover stories this month — Disney/Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur and Netflix’s My Dad the Bounty Hunter — are perfect examples of innovative new shows that raise the bar both in terms of content and good-looking animation. Make sure you dive into Tom McLean and Devin Nealy’s excellent interviews with the creators behind these two new series that offer insights into their creative processes and long road from initial idea to final delivery.

On the adult animation front, the second season of Prime Video’s The Legend of Vox Machina continues to get raves from fans and critics alike, so we were very pleased to have two of the show’s brilliant exec producers and voice actors, Steve Riegel and Travis Willingham, chat with us about the secrets of their success, their special way of creating the world of Exandria and their (very secret) plans for the third season.

Warner Bros. Animation’s new Velma series has been quite divisive on all fronts. Whether you love or hate the show’s very meta, savvy and decidedly adult approach to Hanna-Barbera’s source material, it’s always good to know what the creators (Charlie Grandy and Mindy Kaling) were thinking as they embarked on their challenging journey. The results may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but maybe someone will solve the mystery of why the show became the object of so many hateful attacks online and also ended up as HBO Max’s most watched new show of the month ... Where’s Scooby when we need him?

While February is one of the slowest months of the year in terms of new movie releases, we had plenty of projects to write about thanks to Cartoon Movie’s big 25th anniversary edition. You can read about some of our picks for most-anticipated titles coming out of the Europe in this issue. We send Cartoon Movie’s general director, Annick Maes, all our best and congratulate her and her hard-working team on the global success of this popular event.

Speaking of anniversaries, let’s not forget that our favorite awards show, the Annies, is celebrating its 50th edition this month. We all look forward to raising a toast to the memory of the wonderful June Foray, who started this celebration back in November of 1972. Just like the animation industry it supports and celebrates, the Annie Awards have grown magnificently over the past five decades. We look forward to attending this entertaining event this month as we know ASIFA-Hollywood’s bigwigs Sue Shakespeare, Frank Gladstone, Jerry Beck and everyone else involved in this production are planning lots of cool surprises and one heck of a show this year. One thing’s for sure: Animation folks definitely know how to entertain. And we promise, no humans will be punched. (We can’t vouch for the animated characters!)

Ramin Zahed Editor in Chief ramin@animationmagazine.net

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

“Yeah, man I tell you whot man, that dang ol’ Greg, talking about ‘O.G.’ and then that Mike Judge … inspirations, man … The original show, dang ol’ classic … Got my kids, man, walking around talking about,

—

commenting on Hulu greenlighting the revival of Mike Judge & Greg Daniels’ King of the Hill

MARCH 2023

VOL. 37, ISSUE 3, NO. 328 info@animationmagazine.net

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Accounting: Jan Bayouth

EDITORIAL

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Editor in Chief: Ramin Zahed

Multimedia Editor: Mercedes Milligan

Webmaster: Damaso Abrajan

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Tech Reviews Editor: Todd Sheridan Perry

Contributors: Trevor Hogg, Karen Idelson, Martin Grebing, Tom McLean, Devin Nealy, Tom Sito, Jeff Spry

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‘That’s my purse! I don’t know you!’ Feeling blessed, man, I tell you whot, ‘Feel So Good’ is a great song, I don’t care what no-dang-body says …”

Showrunner Saladin Patterson

Voice acting legend June Foray (1917-2017) established the Annie Awards in 1972.

Animation Planner

It’s not quite spring, but the toons are in bloom at festivals all over the world this month! New York Int’l Children’s Film Festival (3.3-19), Tricky Women/Tricky Realities (Vienna; 3.8-12), SXSW (3.10-19), Monstra (Lisbon, 3.15-26), Animation Dingle (Dingle, Ireland; 3.24-25), Tokyo Anime Award Festival (3.10-13), Athens Animfest (3.16-19), Ciné Court Animé (Roanne, France; 3.20-26) and Kaboom! (Utrecht, Amsterdam & Online; 3.24-4.2), to name a few…

2

Final Academy Awards voting is open through March 7, so don’t forget to cast your ballots!

7

More than 50 feature projects are hoping to connect with co-producers and financing partners at Cartoon Movie in Bordeaux this week. [cartoon-media.eu]

10

Unicorn Wars, the  latest genrebending adult animated feature from Alberto Vásquez, hits select theaters and On Demand via GKIDS today.

12

The big night is finally here! Tune into the 95th Oscars airing live on ABC to find out which animated feature, short and VFX blockbuster take home the gold. [oscars. org]

17

Kate DiCamillo’s The Magician’s Elephant gets new animated life in Netflix’s movie adaptation, marking the directorial debut of veteran animator Wendy Rogers.  In theaters, Zachary Levi is back in action to fight the Daughters of Atlas in WB’s Shazam: Fury of the Gods

The inaugural Niigata Int’l Animation Film Festival runs through March 22 in the coastal Japanese city. [niigata-iaff.net]

The next chapter in magic-less boy Asta’s quest to become the great magical emperor of the world arrives as Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King premieres simultaneously in Japanese cinemas and on Netflix worldwide.

Or, grab your dice bag and hope for a nat 20 theatrical experience with Paramount’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

Help Pud the Cat and Ham the Dog on a comical galactic quest in the Netflix interactive special We Lost Our Human

To get your company’s events and products listed in this monthly calendar, please

The Magician’s Elephant

We Lost Our Human

Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King

Unicorn Wars

FRAME-BY-FRAME

The Must-Have List

The Art of My Father’s Dragon

F ans of five-time Oscar-nominated Irish studio Cartoon Saloon were thrilled when another beautifully crafted 2D project took wing on Netflix in November. Adapting Ruth Stiles Gannett’s classic books gave the artists under director Nora Twomey (The Breadwinner) a more contemporary setting than their Irish folklore trilogy, while still presenting a tender story at a refreshingly gentle pace. Author Ramin Zahed takes us behind the scenes to uncover the scaly secrets of the film’s storybook-inspired 2D animation, with lovely imagery and exclusive interviews with Twomey, producers Tomm Moore and Meg LeFauve and more. Producers Bonnie Curtis and Julie Lynn of Mockingbird Pictures penned the foreword. [Abrams | $45]

The Story of Disney

100 Years of Wonder

A must-have coffee table compendium of the studio’s history and legacy, full of rare art and photos.

[Disney Editions

| $50 | March 7]

Cut!

How Lotte Reiniger and a Pair of Scissors

Revolutionized Animation Picture book for very young readers about a pioneering filmmaker!

[Greenwillow | $19]

Strange World

Take home the whole Clade clan on disc this month! The Don Hall/ Qui Nguyen-directed

Animation Masterclasses: From Pencils to PIxels

Learn how to become a “Master Animator” with this artistic fundamentals-first guide, conceived and honed by veteran animator and instructor Tony White. The book is divided into four sections, beginning with core principles of movement (squash & stretch, timing, walk cycles, etc.), taking you through how to apply these principles to digital rigs, project pre-production and production. Having trained under toon legends like Art

Babbitt and Richard Williams, White is an enthusiastic and passionate teacher of the craft, and his latest title is sure to become a classic text alongside The Animator’s Workbook and Jumping Through Hoops. [CRC Press | $60]

Legion of Super-Heroes

Encanto 4K SteelBook

Disney adventure comes packaged with transportative bonus features, including behind the scenes featurettes on the making-of the film, a spotlight on the real science that inspired the artists, the creature of the Strange World and more, plus outtakes and deleted scenes. [Disney | DVD, BD, 4K | Feb. 14]

Journey to the 31st century with Supergirl (Meg Donnelly) in the latest DC Universe Movie, directed by Jeff Wamester. Demoralized by the tragedy of Krypton and the troubles of adjusting to a new planet, our heroine takes her cousin Superman’s advice and jumps through spacetime to visit the Legion Academy, where she makes new friends and enemies.

[Warner | BD $30, 4K $40 | Feb. 7]

Specially packaged edition in celebration of Disney’s 100th anniversary.

[Disney | Feb. 7]

The Adventures of Batman: The Complete Collection

Thirty-four Caped Crusader cartoon adventures from the late ‘60s make their Blu-ray debut.

[Warner | $30 | Feb. 28]

Clannad / Clannad -After StoryKyoto Animation’s classic series (49 eps. total) on six Blu-ray discs with commentary.

[Sentai | $100| Feb. 21]

Mercedes Milligan

Meet the New Space-Age Family

The duo behind My Dad the Bounty Hunter takes us behind the scenes of their dynamic new Netflix series.

For those privileged enough to engage with the experience, parenthood exists as the ultimate portal for reconnecting with one’s inner child. The energetic duo behind Netflix’s new series My Dad the Bounty Hunter, found different access points to their youth through the show’s creation and development. For Patrick Harpin, the series’ “blue-collar” approach to science fiction allowed him to revisit childhood memories of his parents, while Everett Downing Jr. used the show to speak directly to his kids. “We were really inspired by our family members,” says Downing Jr. “[The family dynamic] is coming from a place of inspiration.”

My Dad the Bounty Hunter follows the intergalactic adventures of Terry, voiced by Laz Alonso, and his two children, Lisa (Priah Ferguson) and Sean (JeCobi Swain). Due to the inherent danger of his vocation, Terry conceals the true nature of his employment and unintentionally creates an emotional chasm between his children and estranged wife. During a weekend trip to their father’s house,

Lisa and Sean stow away in Terry’s car/starship and discover an entire universe of terrors and thrills that only their dad can help them navigate.

Running parallel to the realistic depictions of a fractured yet loving family, Harpin and Downing Jr. wanted the show’s technology to possess a functional yet weathered aesthetic reminiscent of their mutual love of science fiction classics like Alien and The Last Starfighter. “There’s a tendency in sci-fi to make everything look shiny and fancy,” says Harpin, who has worked as a story artist on TV shows such as Gravity Falls and features such as Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, Smurfs: The Lost Village and Ice Age: Continental Drift

“I’m constantly seeing beautiful designs and going, ‘I have to make it worn. I have to put duct tape on it.’”

Down-to-Earth Designs

The adherence to the design philosophy also appears in the series’ more terrestrial moments. “Even in the house on Earth, there’s stuff where we were like, ‘can we get, like, fake

vinyl floor at the entrance?’” jokes Harpin. “Let’s make it lived in. Like, look at your parent’s house.”

Harpin and Downing Jr’s attention to detail extends beyond the show’s technology and into the intricacies of the lead character’s complexions. In a bold commitment to nuance and realism, the predominately Black cast of My Dad the Bounty Hunter is comprised of various shades of melanin. Despite mild technical and studio difficulties, the duo insisted on making the character Tess — Terry’s estranged wife, played by Yvonne Orji — resemble the pigmentation of her voice actor. “There were so many talks we would have about the dark skin,” says Downing Jr. who co-directed the Oscar-winning short Hair Love, helmed an episode of Netflix’s We the People, and has worked as a storyboard artist on movies such as Vivo and Boss Baby.

“A lot of people have this mentality that they always want to sort of lighten it,” he says. “So, we had to push back like, ‘Hey, I know you guys are used to doing it, but no, it’s not a mistake. She is supposed to be that dark.’”

- By Devin Nealy -

“The hardest part is actually convincing people. People would say ‘is this too much? Are you going too far?’ And we’re like, ‘No, no, this is going to be great. You’ve got to trust us.’”

Fortunately, the show’s staff boasted a seasoned animation veteran to advocate for the duo’s decisions. “Yuhki [Demers], our production designer, he’s coming from Spider-Verse ... so this isn’t his first rodeo,” says Harpin. “Yuhki was there for it, and I would give him references, and he would [talk to] the studio,” recalls Downing Jr. “[We were] informing them how to light [darker skin] ... looking at photography of Black men and women.”

Similar to Tess’s character design, Harpin and Downing Jr. sought to use the show’s narrative to destigmatize an overlooked physical condition through Terry’s son. “[Sean’s facial] twitch is coming from my personal experience with my daughter,” states Downing Jr. “I wanted to show her a different type of bravery. It’s okay if you have a twitch, you can still build that confidence.”

Through A Child’s Eyes

Crafting a show with Downing Jr.’s daughter in mind, the pair aimed to construct a series that didn’t condescend to its younger fans on either a visual or narrative front. “[Kids] go to see real movies,” says Harpin. “I saw Jurassic Park when I was five ... [kids are] more literate

than we think they are.”

By anticipating a savvy audience, Downing Jr. and Harpin decided to double down on the show’s cinematic approach to storytelling. “Sometimes you ask stuff like, ‘what would Vince Gilligan [creator of Breaking Bad] do with this moment?” says Harpin. “We can really go there in the way [a shot] is composed.”

Instead of encountering apprehension from their team, the duo discovered that the show’s intentionally cinematic style helped liberate the creativity of their storyboard artist and the animators at Dwarf Studio, the French company (who has worked on shows such as Trash Truck, Monsters at Work, Pirata & Capitano). “A lot of times, it’s just like freeing yourself to pull from the movies you go see as an adult and use that visual vocabulary,” says Harpin. “What’s an interesting way to do this without dialogue? Sometimes animation can be so talky, and we were like, let’s pull back.”

“Once we told them, ‘Hey, this is what we’re looking for, this is our style guide,’ we were kind of shocked by how they were able to dive into that,” recalls Downing Jr. “Our crew wants to do that stuff. So, when we said, ‘go hogwild, that’s what we want to do,’ they were

excited to jump on that challenge.”

With their shared background as storyboard artists, Harpin and Downing Jr. encouraged their team through a shared enthusiasm for the craft. “[We would say] let’s do slow-mo for this moment like they do in Boogie Nights,” explains Harpin. “That was how we all talked. ‘We’re film heads, and you guys love film, so let’s geek out on that.’ Hopefully, the show feels like that.”

Great Minds Think Alike

When selecting their writers, the duo prioritized recruiting talent who shared their experience as artists. “Our room was kind of led by ex-storyboard artists who write,” says

DADDY ISSUES: My Dad the Bounty Hunter follows the adventures of close-knit siblings who stow away on their dad’s work trip, not realizing that he’s the toughest bounty hunter in the galaxy!

— Co-creator Everett Downing Jr.

Harpin. “We’ve been board artists, so when you say, ‘And there’s a battle scene with 1000 people,’ [we know] someone is going to have to draw that.”

“Doing a room like that where storyboard people were involved and vocal ... it helped everybody,” Harpin continues. “Because people who are not storyboard artists were like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s true. Maybe we won’t write an army of 5000.’”

In addition to employing industry-standard tools like Maya and Storyboard Pro, Harpin and Downing Jr. discovered unique opportunities for tech to strengthen their team during quarantine and beyond. “I think the biggest thing we used that was super key for us was Blender,” says Downing Jr. “Because our vis-dev department fully embraced it, people were doing low poly presentations for locations and ship designs even before

they started drawing, which gave us a good idea for scale.”

“Just by basically taking out the gates between departments and letting them talk to each other, and even jam together, you had way less confusion between art and story,” recounts Harpin, regarding the team’s focus on interconnectivity. “People in art were designing stuff based on a script, or [writers] are seeing boards like, ‘Oh, that’s how that person interpreted it.’”

Even with the stress of their show’s im-

CREATURES FROM OTHER PLANETS: Since the show takes our main characters to distant galaxies, the character designers had a blast coming up with a wide variety of villainous alien life forms.

pending launch, and a second season already in development, both Harpin and Downing Jr. still exude the carefree glee of My Dad the Bounty Hunter’s precocious kid protagonists. “The hardest part is actually convincing people,” says Downing Jr. with a smile. “[People would say] ‘is this too much? Are you going too far?’ And we’re like, ‘No, no, this is going to be great. You’ve got to trust us.’” ◆

“There’s a tendency in sci-fi to make everything look shiny and fancy. I’m constantly seeing beautiful designs and going, ‘I have to make it worn. I have to put duct tape on it.’”

— Co-creator Patrick Harpin

My Dad the Bounty Hunter premieres on Netflix on February 9.

A Heroic Girl and Her Jurassic Partner

Get ready to expect the unexpected from Disney/Marvel’s innovative new show Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur!

- By Tom McLean -

When it comes to Marvel, you never know what’s next. How else to describe Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, the new animated series based on the hit comic book series featuring the adventures of 13-year-old New Yorker Lunella Lafayette and her giant red T-Rex?

Taking its cue from some of the more ambitious animated superhero fare out there, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur delivers a fast-paced, hip, urban, beat-drenched, and utterly modern take on the superhero cartoon series. It also pushes the envelope of

expectations for what can be done with an animated series. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur boasts an all-star cast, headed by Diamond White as Lunella, and featuring Fred Tatasciore as Devil Dinosaur; Alfre Woodard as Lunella’s grandmother, Mimi; Libe Barer as Lunella’s best friend and manager, Casey; Sasheer Zamata as Lunella’s mom, Adria; Jermaine Fowler as Lunella’s dad, James Jr.; Gary Anthony Williams as Lunella’s grandfather, Pops; and series executive producer, Laurence Fishburne, in the recurring role of The Beyonder, a curious and mischievous trickster familiar to readers of 1980s Marvel comics.

Not Your Typical New Yorker

The show began with Oscar-nominated Fishburne — yes, Morpheus from The Matrix — who long ago swallowed the red pill that leads to becoming a die-hard comic book fan. The comic version of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, created by writers Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder with artist Natasha Bustos, debuted in 2015 and paired the brand-new Lunella Lafayette with Jack Kirby’s classic 1970s creation, Devil Dinosaur.

The mix of a brilliant African American girl running around 21st century New York with a giant red T-Rex prompted Fishburne — whose extensive credits include producing features such as Akeelah and the Bee and executive producing the live-action comedy series Black-ish, Mixed-ish and Grown-ish — to take it to his partner at Cinema Gypsy Productions, Helen Sugland. Calls were made to Marvel and Disney, and a unique deal was made for them to partner on the new animated series.

That’s where Steve Loter, an animation veteran of such series as Kim Possible and the

DisneyToons feature TinkerBell and the Legend of the NeverBeast, comes in as executive producer in charge overseeing the vision of the show and the day-to-day production. Loter says he met with Fishburne and agreed on an ambitious and exciting approach to the series.

“It’s a big show, and it’s a show that we really wanted to make sure had deep storytelling,” he says. “We treat the show as a 22-minute feature.” Each episode goes through multiple script iterations, gets its own color scripts, and characters go through multiple palette changes — all of which is atypical for TV animation production, Loter says.

“The first proof of concept piece that we created was a little animatic piece, and we combined it with the music of Childish Gambino and the song ‘Sweatpants,’” he says. “And I think that was a really great letter of intention. … It had a very kinetic energy, but then it also had this authentic music, which also

Smiling Friends

kids show, sure, but we wanted to make it for the entire family, and also wanted to kind of push the boundaries of what was expected in kids’ animation.”

That specialness began to attract talent to the show, such as Rodney Clouden, a veteran of adult animated series such as Futurama and American Dad! Clouden signed on to Moon Girl as supervising director for the first season. When Loter — who says he felt Clouden’s experience would help elevate the show beyond a typical kids’ toon — showed the animatic, Clouden was impressed.

“This is something that is different; this has

THE BIG APPLE’S FINEST: After the 10-ton Devil Dinosaur is brought into present-day New York City, 13-year-old genius Lunella joins forces with him to protect the Lower East Side from Graviton’s schemes.

“This show thrives on input from the entire team. Having come from features and from the story trust sensibility, where everyone has a voice to make the movie or the TV show the best it can possibly be, this is really important to me. And I wanted to maintain that even moving into TV.”

—

Exec producer Steve Loter

energy, it’s got a vibe. It felt really authentic,” he says. “There’s a sophistication, there’s thought and care in terms of how we’re structuring the stories and the characters and the development. And the music, too.”

One of the keys to unlocking this approach was the success of Sony’s Oscar-winning feature Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Loter says. Not wanting to copy the look of that feature, Loter says he and Clouden tapped into their inner New Yorker — both are natives — to create an authentic representation of life in the city. “Not only does that mean that it’s street accurate, like the streets and the buildings are actually accurate to the place that we’re portraying, we wanted to kind of maintain the vibe and sensibility of it,” Loter says. “We looked at the essential New York artists — we looked at Andy Warhol and his screen-printing process; (Jean-Michel) Basquiat; (Keith) Haring; the famous street murals in New York City; the graffiti in the ‘70s and in the ‘80s; and we tried to find a way to combine all that into a look — and then merge that also with kind of a comic book sensibility.”

They also added modern technology — it’s nearly impossible to tell stories about today’s

youths without incorporating the ever-present icons of the mobile phone and social media. “It’s a very good way, especially for a show that’s very graphic, to get a message or an idea of what’s going on in the character’s head,” says Clouden. “It’s like — Boop! — there’s an emoji that pops up, and it just tells everything that needs to be said without even using words.”

The look of the characters evokes all those influences, filtered through a pen-and-ink esthetic that provides strong contrast with the backgrounds while evoking the series’ comic-book roots. “They feel very, very hand drawn,” Loter says. “There’s a lot of spotted blacks in the characters, so that so if you just look at a character before color is applied, it already feels like a very complete piece.”

Achieving the final result of this requires a high degree of collaborations in the creative phase. “This show thrives on input from the entire team,” he says. “Having come from features and from the story trust sensibility, where everyone has a voice to make the movie or the TV show the best it can possibly be, this was really important to me. And I wanted to maintain that even moving into TV.”

Honoring the Artists’ Visions

Clouden says that openness creates, for everyone working on the show, a sense of ownership. “You see your input there in the script,” he says. “It’s something that makes the artists feel like they’re more involved in the whole process of it.”

For example, Loter cites supervising producer Ben Juwono for his ability to take the stories to a new level in the storyboard phase. “Sometimes, he’s actually involved in the writer’s room so that he can understand the vision of it moving forward,” Loter says. “And then he just takes it to a whole other level. It’s almost like a second vision on the project.”

The animation studio, Australia-based Flying Bark Productions, has early access to the show’s materials and provides dailies on their work for review. “In a lot of cases, it’s just line work in black and white,” Loter says. “But it gives you an idea of what the scene is … It does kind of tee you up for success, because you’ve already seen all of these in their early forms.” ◆

Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur premieres Feb. 10 on Disney Channel, joining the Disney+ lineup on Feb. 15.

STELLAR VOICES: Diamond White and Fred Tatasciore provide the voices for the lead characters, while Alfre Woodard, Sasheer Zamata, Jermaine Fowler and Gary Anthony Williams round up the supporting players.

This is something that is different: There’s a sophistication, there’s thought and care in terms of how we’re structuring the stories and the characters and the development.”

— Rodney Coudner, supervising director

Pictures are from the Sprite Fright production by the Blender Studio and arelicensed under Creative Commons

A Very Divisive, Modern Velma

The team behind Warner Bros. new take on the Scooby-Doo heroine discuss their very grown-up, edgy show!

Velma Dinkley is having a moment! Yes, the smart, bespectacled teenage ghost hunter who was first introduced in Hanna-Barbera’s Scooby-Doo, Where are You! in 1969 has finally gotten her own animated series, thanks to the team at Warner Bros. Animation and exec producers Charlie Grandy, Mindy Kaling, Howard Klein and Sam Register.

Of course, this is not your parents’ oversized sweater-wearing brainiac. This Velma is definitely grappling with modern problems: She’s East Indian, LGBTQ and has to deal with a dangerous serial killer as well as mean girls like her old pal Daphne (voiced by Constance Wu), as well as Fred (who is now a murder suspect) and Shaggy (who has a crush on her). Got that?

“I think of the characters in Scooby-Doo are iconic but in no way … are they defined by their whiteness,” show creator and voice of the new Velma Mindy Kaling said at Comic-Con last sum-

mer, “Most Indian American [women], when they see a skeptical, hardworking under-appreciated character, they can identify with her. The vast majority are ready for it. This show is for them.”

Parking Lot Chatter

Showrunner and exec producer Charlie Grandy (The Office, The Mindy Project) says whole idea for the show originated from a simple chat in a parking lot. “Mindy came to me and said she’d love to work on a story about Velma. She said she loved the character and thought it would be really funny to have her as a center of the show and maybe a serial killer would be involved, and that just sort of started the conversation.”

Supervising producer Amy Winfrey (BoJack Horseman, Making Fiends) recalls that in the original show, most of the fun animation came from Scooby’s antics. “The human characters were always a bit stiff in comparison,” she notes. “Since we weren’t allowed to use Scooby-Doo in this

prequel, we took some of Scooby’s fun expressiveness and put that in to our main cast. Adam Fay’s final character designs are modern and fun and expressive but still manage to keep our meddling kids’ iconic looks intact.”

Assistant art director Adam Fay adds, “We had to balance between keeping the characters recognizable, while also feeling like completely different versions of themselves. There were a ton of styles and different outfits that were tried out, so we had to reel ourselves in if we felt like we were getting too far away from the core designs. But once we started circling a general style, it became about iterating and making sure the characters all felt good together, keeping some iconic details while peppering in new ones.”

The show’s 2D animation is produced in Korea by Studio IAM. The keyframes are hand drawn, brought into Clip Studio Paint for in-betweens, then cleaned and colored in Stylos, with effects applied in After Effects. “We

“ I love that the animation is hand drawn. It maintains the personality of the original storyboards in a way that rigged animation can’t match.”

— Supervising producer Amy Winfrey

also had an in-house retake animation and compositing team helmed by James Bowman,” says the supervising producer. “Our internal team animated the title cards for each episode and fixed animation using Harmony.”

Winfrey mentions that the original series had the charm of hand-drawn animation paired with some lovely painted backgrounds. “We wanted to maintain that spirit,” she says. “Our art director, Valerio Ventura, melded the painterly look of the original series with his own style and obsessions. Valerio has a great eye for gritty little details that most people overlook. He gave the town of Crystal Cove tons of personality and a whole lot of hazardous electrical wiring. Though the characters are stylized, we try to keep them grounded to the environment — keeping the staging dynamic and more cinematic than the original series.”

The show’s imaginative hallucination sequences proved to be quite challenging. “They were always the most fun and terrifying to tackle because we really wanted to push our default style in both design and color complexity,” says Fay.

Adds Winfrey, “When Adam first showed me his designs for the hallucination sequences I felt terror in my heart. Not just because the designs were scary, but because they looked extremely difficult to animate. Fortunately, our overseas studio is about a million times better at animation than I am.”

To prepare for the job, Grandy said he did a lot of research, including all the first three seasons

of the original Scooby-Doo! show. “I was aware that different productions took a lot of liberties with the original premise,” he says. “That was a real gift because we could do whatever we wanted to do. This wasn’t like Batman where there was an official canon. People had played with these characters before and opened the doors for us. Warner Bros. executive Peter Girardi has an encyclopedic knowledge of everything that has to do with Scooby-Doo, so I could always call him and ask about the characters and the history of the show. He was very helpful.”

When asked about the remarkable durability of the classic show and its evergreen popularity, Grandy says one of the things that he loves about it is the way the main characters get along.

“I think it’s really impressive how much groundwork those first three seasons of the show laid out,” he points out. “There isn’t a lot of character development — they are basically representing classic types, but they really focused on the mystery. What was nice was how well they got along. You enjoyed being in their company. There wasn’t any internal strife, and that’s not easy to write because comedy and drama always come from conflict.”

He adds, “Our four main characters were never nasty to each other. It was a nice world to be in, and that’s why audiences like to go back to them. The message is that it’s always going to be OK in the end. So, they catch a ghost or a ghoul, and it ends up not being a ghost or a ghoul.”

Scoob’s Missing!

One character who audiences will not see on the new series is the famous Great Dane himself. “We couldn’t get a take on it,” Grandy revealed at Comic-Con 2022. “How do we do it in a fun, modern way? What made it a kid show is Scooby-Doo. This coincided with Warners telling us we couldn’t use the dog. So, it’s nice to allude to dogs in the world, and leave it at that.”

Gandry says there were times when the writing team would try to push the jokes and adult content. “We had a system of internal monitoring because the shows tend to have a life their own,” he admits. “What’s great is that you write the jokes and they come up with a rough animatic to see if works. There were lots of times when you try to push it and then you see the animatic and realize it’s too gross or too inappropriate or simply just not right. The trick is to try and find that line and tweak it until you get it right.”

Overall, Winfrey says she absolutely loves the fact that Velma’s animation is lovingly hand drawn. “It maintains the personality of the original storyboards in a way that rigged animation can’t match,” she notes. “I can recognize the quirks and acting of all the directors and board artists in the final show, and I love it!”

The first season (10 episodes) of Velma is currently streaming on HBO Max.

“There were lots of times when you try to push it, and then you see the animatic and realize it’s too gross or too inappropriate. The trick is to try and find that line and tweak it until you get it right.”

— Exec producer Charlie Grandy

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS: Although internet critics were not kind to Velma , the show became one of HBO Max’s most-watched series in January.

Good Laughs with a Trio of Friends

When the three main characters of a show are a serious Square, an intrepid Circle and a tricky Triangle, you know you’re in for lots of fun adventures with, well, shapes! That’s the premise of Shape Island, the clever and addictive new stop-motion series, which premiered on Apple TV+ last month.

The show is based on the best-selling Shapes Trilogy (Triangle, Square, Circle) by the award-winning duo of Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen. Set on a fictional island, the series centers on Square, voiced by Harvey Guillen (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish), with Scott Adsit (Big Hero 6) as Triangle and Gideon Adlon (Blockers) as Circle. Yvette Nicole Brown narrates the series, which will focus on the three friends as they embark on their dayto-day activities. Barnett and Klassen are also the show’s co-creators and exec producers. Close Enough and Regular Show alum Ryan is series head writer and co-executive producer, along with multi-award-winning stop-motion veterans Kelli

- By Ramin Zahed -

Bixler and Drew Hodges (Tumble Leaf).

“Like our books, the show is character-driven,” says Barnett. “There are no heroes or villains—our episodes are driven by our characters different personalities. The stories and humor come from the complications crop up when three people hang out, misunderstand each other, and want different things. So, the first and biggest part of development was writing three scripts, each one focusing on a different member of our trio, but also showing off the versatility possible with this character-driven approach to storytelling.”

Greenlit for Stop-Motion

Barnett says he and Klassen created an extensive show bible that — in addition to delving into characters and visual rules — also contained a lot of their philosophy about making stories for kids. “It was about that time that Jon and I became convinced that the best way to tell these stories would be in stop motion,” he recalls. “We were a little nervous when we first told the team at Apple that we wanted to go stop-motion and were

surprised — beautifully surprised — when everyone nodded, agreed, and said let’s do it!”

The animation was produced at Burbank-based Bix Pix Studios, the acclaimed indie shop best known for producing the multi-Emmy and Annie Award-winning show Tumble Leaf. “The studio came with so much talent that we immediately felt spoiled,” says Barnett. “Drew Hodges was the director, and you can really see his affection for and knowledge of character animation everywhere in the show. The art direction team, the fabricators, the camera crew, everyone was just top, top shelf. We’re very, very lucky!”

“We just think stop-motion suits the characters and the world perfectly,” says Klassen, an award-winning artist who has worked on features such as Coraline and Kung Fu Panda 2. “If handled the wrong way, the characters, physically, might seem too surreal. The viewer would spend time wondering about what they were, exactly, and the rules of how things are designed or presented would be really sensitive because stop motion has the unifying force of the same camera and

We catch up with the talented creators of Apple TV+’ s charming new stop-motion show, Shape Island.

“We hope audiences will laugh and recognize feelings they felt, people they’ve known and questions they’ve wondered about.”

— Exec producer Mac Barnett

light on everything. It forgives and sweeps away a lot of question, and just lets all the pieces breathe at the same time.”

The creators thought of Shape Island as a good combination of simple and complex elements. As Klassen elaborates, “The character designs are outwardly simple, but the puppets themselves are hugely complicated, made and animated by very skilled people. The sets and the elements look simple, but up close they are full of texture and interest and they are hit with light that casts unpredictable shadows. And our characters themselves appear to be simple reductive shapes, but as soon as the stories get going, they are complex personalities who react in messy and relatable ways.”

Barnett believes that kids are the keenest, most thoughtful and attentive audience you can have, so making stories worthy of their attention is always the first and biggest challenge. “Jon and I both have some experience in film and TV—Jon spent years working for LAIKA and DreamWorks—but for years we’ve spent most of our time making books,” he says. “And, at the risk of saying the most obvious thing ever printed in Animation Magazine, making a series is very different to the experience of making a book! When Jon and I are making a book together, most of it is just the two of us on the phone, looking at the pages, trying to tell a good story well. Creating a show, you’re obviously part of a much larger team and are trying to be useful to the larger organization in any way you can.”

Kelli Bixler says Shape Island represents one of the best book-to-series leaps. “It never is or should be an apple-to-apple translation, yet Drew and our Bix Pix crew really brought these books to life,

capturing the essence of Jon’s gorgeous artwork and finding just the right movement for animating Mac’s brilliantly written characters,” she says. “You can see parts of yourself in each of these extremely distinct little Shapes, as well as in all the friendships you’ve ever been lucky enough to have. Also, and maybe more importantly, I love that it’s funny.”

Showrunner, exec producer and director Drew Hodges adds, “The focus on only three distinct characters who are so different and yet so complimentary to each other makes  Shape Island such a special and hilarious show.  The visuals feel fresh and timeless because of their unique blend of texture, detail, and simple forms.”

So, why do the original creators think their books were so popular worldwide?

“I think and hope it’s because the stories are funny and philosophical,” says Barnett. “They’re comic reflections on human behavior, underpinned by some big questions that a lot of kids (and adults) ask. Ultimately the Shapes books are about what it means to be a human in the world, but hopefully done with a light touch.”

Unexpected Forms

Barnett also gives a lot of credit to his partner’s artistic talents. “Of course, a big part of the appeal comes from Jon’s art. His work is beloved worldwide (because it is very good and beautiful). But this time, by putting eyes on basic shapes, Jon deliberately set out to design characters that didn’t come pre-loaded with expectations for an audience. Even animals can mean different things in different cultures. Depending on where you grew

up, a wolf might be a symbol of menace, or freedom, or intelligence—but a triangle with eyes? You have to watch him, to pay attention to the story, to learn who he is!”

When asked about the show’s visual influences, Klassen responds, “The bulletin board for this show was all over the place. Stylistically we looked at a lot of older stuff — Yuri Norstein, Jiří Trnka, Dick Bruna, Aardman (naturally). Some really beautiful stop-motion work came out during the course of making the show, even This Magnificent Cake! and Robin Robin were amazing to see. There’s so much beautiful CG happening in TV now, too: Go! Go! Cory Carson and The Octonauts series — They offer simple shapes, but such a great feeling to the worlds. In terms of the writing, Adventure Time and The Simpsons, Looney Tunes came up a lot. We had Seinfeld in the pitch deck, just because they had a cast of characters that didn’t almost ever learn much from their mistakes, and that was what fueled so much of that show, and we wanted that, too. “

Barnett says he hopes audiences will laugh and recognize feelings they felt, people they’ve known and questions they’ve wondered about. “Maybe this is because of our background in picture books, which are read by adults to kids — we hope that the show is widely appealing: little kids, older kids, and adults,” he adds. “Jon and I like to make stories that people talk about afterward, and we hope families watch and discuss this show together!”

The first season of Shape Island is currently streaming on Apple TV+.

“Our characters appear to be simple reductive shapes, but as soon as the stories get going, they are complex personalities who react in messy and relatable ways.”

— Exec producer Jon Klassen

STOP-MO MAGIC: The charming new series Shape Island is animated by the talented team at Bix Pix Entertainment, under the direction of Emmy winner Drew Hodges.

These Young Royals Are Multi-Dimensional!

Elise Allen and Monica Davila give us the scoop on their new Netflix show Princess Power.

- By Karen Idelson -

The idea of what it means to be a princess has completely changed over the past 15 years. Princesses are no longer waiting to be awakened or saved. They’re determining their own paths, writing their own stories and definitely not looking for a rescuer. The new Netflix series  Princess Power celebrates the newest vision of what it means to be a princess as it follows the lives of four princesses and their adventures together as they work to solve problems and overcome obstacles.

The preschool show is based on the book series Princesses Wear Pants, which is co-authored by Today show co-anchor, Savannah Guthrie and clinical psychologist, Allison Oppenheim. The book, released in 2017, became a New York Times bestseller and then was followed up with  Princesses Save the World in 2018. The show was developed by veteran animation writer/producer Elise Allen.

Executive producers on the show include Guthrie, as well as Matthew Berkowitz, Kristin Cummings and Jennifer Twiner McCarron from Atomic Cartoons and Drew Barrymore, Ember Truesdell and Nancy Juvonen at Flower Films.

Allen, who has a daughter of her own, loved the idea of a group of girls, who were each very different, learning how to become a team and work together to solve any challenge that life presented them. Each princess comes from one of four major fruit kingdoms – Kiwi, Blueberry, Pineapple, and Raspberry. Allen also loved that the series would focus on the idea that being a princess means helping others and the world around them.

Unforgettable Princesses

“All the princesses have such strong personalities,” says Allen, executive producer and showrunner on the show. “Penny (Pineapple) comes from a very whimsical place, but also she’s scientific-mind-

ed, but she’ll come up with these kinds of wacky scientific ideas. And her mind is always bouncing from one thing to another. She’s utterly positive. Whereas you take somebody like Rita (Raspberry), and she is wildly dramatic and everything is if it’s bad, it’s a disaster of epic proportions.”

She adds, “Then, you have Kira (Kiwi), who’s very involved with animals. She has studied them. It’s important to her. She has a very solid and grounded personality. She just has this breadth of knowledge that the other girls don’t have. I would say with Bea (Blueberry), it’s act first think later. She’s all about kinetic action and she’s the sportiest of the girls. You might try to tell her to do something, but she’s already done it.”

The voice cast includes well-established actors and rising stars. Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, who also appears in  Avatar: The Way of Water, is the voice of Princess Rita Raspberry. Dana Heath stars as Kira Kiwi, Madison Calderon is Princess Bea Blueberry,

Elise Allen

Luna Bella Zamora voices Princess Penny Pineapple, and Ciera Payton is Queen Katia. Rita Moreno will perform as Great Aunt Busyboots.

Allen came onto the project in early 2020 when so much of the development process took place over Zoom. The animation crew was entirely based at Atomic Cartoons in Vancouver, while most of the writers were in Los Angeles and New York. Despite not being able to have the kind of in-person meetings that creatives usually love, they were able to focus on bringing out the personalities of the main characters and give them each a distinct look, which would hopefully resonate with their young audience.

The animation team also did a lot of testing at the beginning of the design process to help troubleshoot and ensure that they wouldn’t run into challenges later. This made it easier to progress without challenges as they moved through production.

“We did a lot of putting characters through different poses and trying to decide how each character would run or walk,” says supervising producer Monica Davila. “We looked at the kind of life each princess lives and what kinds of clothes they like to wear. Rita (Raspberry) was a perfect example. She has these really cute outfits with these really puffy sleeves and her gestures are also so big that you would have sleeves crashing into her face with every shot. So we would flag things like that and then work them out.”

Art director Sarah Marino was behind defining

the visual language of the show, creating an environment for each princess that matched her personality and fruit kingdom. For example, the Blueberry fruit kingdom borrows inspiration from Norway, while the Kiwi kingdom draws from Brazil. The Pineapple kingdom is influenced by Puerto Rico, and Raspberry is inspired by South Korea.

“It was all chosen so very carefully by Sarah (Marino),” says Allen. “We would all sit and spend hours going over the options. She had this incredible art team who would work with her and create mood boards for all the characters and their kingdoms. We wanted everyone who watches these shows to see themselves in the characters. That’s why we had different kingdoms, body types, things that they liked. It was about making these characters very different but showing with empathy they would still be able to work together and have fun together.”

Allen and Marino were both thrilled to work on a show that doesn’t peg characters as one thing or another, but presents them as fully realized individuals with their own strengths. They hope the kids (and adults) who watch will all find something that resonates with them.

Embracing Individuality

“In this show, there’s definitely this sense of there’s no one way to be a little girl,” says Davila. “There’s no one way to be a princess. You can’t just have one character represent everybody. So that was this core idea – that we have these very dif-

ferent girls that are still all friends. They’re still very multifaceted. They still like to dress up and have their tea parties and do all this kind of very traditional princess stuff that we grew up watching in the 1990s. There’s a lot of that still in there. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to have a tea party or pretending to live in a castle or anything like that. But there is this, always inherent, idea in the books, that there are things that are more important than that. It’s a lot less about what you wear and more about what you do, and your personality and who you are. Your personality has so many different factors involved in it. You’re not just one thing and you’re not just one thing that you wear.”

Davila points out that each of the show’s heroines were given a very different way of looking at the world and a very specific personality. “Once the personalities of the girls were set, I started to recognize a lot of my friends or their kids in multiple princesses,” she recalls. “I have a friend who loves clothes and fashion but she’s also a brilliant scientist and I thought she was just like Penny because she really enjoys dressing up. I know she loves makeup, but she’s also in a lab all day. So, I love that there’s more dimensionality in these girls. They’re not all one thing. It makes for more fun storytelling because you can do so much more with the characters and they’re so much more relatable.”

Princess Power premiered on Netflix on January 30.

“In this show, there’s definitely this sense of there’s no one way to be a little girl or a princess. You can’t just have one character represent everybody.”

— Supervising producer Monica Davila

REGAL CAST: Based on Savannah Guthrie and Allison Oppenheim’s book, Princess Power features a stellar guest voice list including Rita Moreno, Andrew Rannells, Tan France, Jenna Ushkowitz and Ciera Playton.

Further Adventures in Exandria

Sam Riegel and Travis Willingham, exec producers/voice stars of The Legend of Vox Machina, share insights into the second season.

Last month, fans of Prime Video’s clever and addictive fantasy series The Legend of Vox Machina were treated to a second 12-episode season of the show. Originally based on Critical Role’s successful real-play series, the new season kicks in to a higher gear with multiple locations, an impressive quest, explorations of the side characters and some very horrifying dragons. We were thrilled when two of the show’s brilliant executive producers and voice actors, Sam Riegel (who voices Scanlan Shorthalt) and Travis Willingham (Grog Strongjaw), were kind enough to answer a few of our questions about their show’s excellent second season:

Congrats on the terrific audience response to your second season, guys! You’ve been pretty much working nonstop, right?

Travis Willingham: Yes, we rolled right from Season One into Two, had good momentum and great writers.

It was really nice to be set up with two seasons in advance because we knew that we could do a lot of establishing for the characters in the world in the first season, and then we knew could use Season Two to introduce the dragons from the Chroma Conclave and also

spend some time with the other characters and tell their individual stories. We were able to flesh out what the group is like and get a better feel for what Exandria is like as a whole. Sam Riegel: As you know, the show was conceived by us the cast doing this role-playing game for many years around the table. That is mostly improvised obviously and the world’s created by our game master Matt Mercer, but the show itself is heavily scripted. Every member of the cast gets to touch the scripts to make sure that they sound like the characters that they created. When we’re recording the stuff in the room with each other or apart (due to the pandemic), we allow ourselves a certain amount of freedom to improvise and improve on dialogue or to come up with new jokes in the moment. I would say it’s still 90 percent scripted.

You have some fun stories about your virtual writers’ room during the pandemic!

Sam: Most of our writers/performers are based in L.A., but it was all done virtually via Zoom. It actually worked out really well. This was the early days of the pandemic, and so we were trying different things to spice up the Zoom room. I was actually able to Zoom in a monkey, be-

cause back then, you could just call zoos and ask them to let us share a camera with one of their monkeys! They actually let us do it, and we were able to brighten our room with a primate!

It was great to learn more about both your characters during this new season.

Travis: It was great for me, because I think everyone loves Grog because he’s like this amazing combination of The Hulk and Joey from Friends. He has a heart of gold, and it was nice to see where he came from, what shapes him and who really knows how to pull at his heartstrings. I think he learns a very valuable lesson this season and understands where he fits into the group. It was fun to see his backstory and all these stories that we’ve had in our heads for so many years put into tangible media. It was like a little dream realized for me.

Sam: The animators at Titmouse, which produces our show’s fantastic animation, love drawing Grog because he gets to be involved in some amazing fight scenes. In Season Two, he got some epic fight scenes and they got to draw some really brutal and bloody, bone-crunching combat which I don’t think animators get to do that much for kids shows! My character Scanlan gets some growth this

season. During the first season, he was a bit of a just one note guy — a Lothario and a player, and some would say a scumbag. This year, he starts to realize that maybe that kind of a life isn’t super fulfilling. He knows that there’s a problem and that he’s missing something in his life, and so he embarks on this new quest to try to figure out if you can find real love!

Can you tell us about the most challenging aspects of the new season?

Travis: I think from a from a technical perspective it was an undertaking to go from one dragon in the first season to four very vastly different and attribute-driven Dragons. Our CG supervisor at Titmouse, Eddie Gonzalez, and Production Reve in Korea are always up to the challenge. We really needed to beef up the CG team so that we could have dragons that were forces of nature. These dragons are intelligent and have incredible dialog, with personalities and dynamics that they’re working through. We were really impressed with what they were able to deliver with these characters in terms of animation.

Of course, the fans of Critical Role — or Critters as they are affectionally called — have been super supportive of the show.

Sam: We have the best fans in the world. They have been just amazing through this whole process, and they are the reason that the show exists. When we write and record these episodes, we’re doing it with them in mind. They are our touchstone and they always tell us when we’re doing great and also remind us when we could be doing better.

Travis: We tried to make sure that the people that know the show from the livestreams are kept on their toes. We didn’t want to just retread old ground. We wanted to sort of change the story a little bit just so that things are kept fresh. We want things to pop up that are new and just keep them guessing like everybody else.

This is the part where we beg you to tell us something about the third season!

Travis: Well, the scripts have been written and some are already in production. We’re working through storyboards and know that time is of the essence. We want to get through as many of these stories as we possibly can. We also know that we have a really solid team Titmouse and

we got to hold on to those folks and keep them fed and moving through stuff. We don’t take a break and like to keep on rolling.

The interesting thing now is we’re in our third livestream campaign. We’ve been going for almost eight years now and every additional story we tell starts to inform the earlier stories. The universe starts to get bigger and more complicated. We are doing that MCU thing where you whiteboard everything and figure out how things can be more complex and interesting. I think that’s really the part that makes people salivate as they try to figure out when all the mysteries are going to be revealed and how! ◆

The first two seasons of The Legend of Vox Machina are now streaming on Prime Video. We also got word that Amazon Studios has made a multi-year exclusive overall TV and first-look film deal with Critical Role. Their next project together is new animated show titled Mighty Nein, based on CR’s second RPG campaign. The series, which will also be produced by Titmouse, follows the titular band of criminals and misfits — who also happen to be the only hope of saving the kingdom when an arcane artifact capable of reshaping reality falls into the wrong hands.

UNLEASHING THE DRAGONS: The new season of The Legend of Vox Machina features ferocious CG-animated dragons and more explorations of the main character’s backstories.

Travis Willingham and Sam Riegel

Your Oscar Ballot!

Here are the nominees for the 95th animation & VFX Oscars:

Best Animated Feature:

❑ Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Directed by del Toro, Mark Gustafson) Netflix

❑ Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (Dean Fleischer Camp) A24

❑ Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Joel Crawford) DreamWorks/Universal

❑ The Sea Beast (Chris Williams) Netflix

❑ Turning Red (Domee Shi) Disney/Pixar

Best Animated Short:

❑ The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (Peter Baynton, Charlie Mackesy) U.S.

❑ The Flying Sailor (Amanda Forbis, Wendy Tilby) Canada

❑ Ice Merchants (João Gonzalez) Portugal, France, U.K.

❑ My Year of Dicks (Sara Gunnarsdóttir) U.S.

❑ An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It (Lachlan Pendragon) Australia

Best Visual Effects:

❑ All Quiet on the Western Front (Frank Petzold, Viktor Müller, Markus Frank, Kamil Jafar)

❑ Avatar: The Way of Water (Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon, Daniel Barrett)

❑ The Batman (Dan Lemmon, Russell Earl, Anders Langlands, Dominic Tuohy)

❑ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Geoffrey Baumann, Craig Hammack, R. Christopher White, Dan Sudick)

❑ Top Gun: Maverick (Ryan Tudhope, Seth Hill, Bryan Litson, Scott R. Fisher)

The 95th Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, March 12 at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood, and will be televised live on the ABC Television Network. See oscars.org for the complete list of nominees.

Half a Century of Celebrating Toons

This year’s 50th Annie Awards promises to be an unforgettable celebration of animation.

Our world and the animation industry as a whole have changed so much since the first edition of Annie Awards took place at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City back in 1973. The brainchild of talented voice actress and industry champion June Foray, the Annie Awards event has grown and evolved with each passing year. However, the genuine community-minded spirit and passion for the art form remains the same. This year’s 50th edition of the awards, which will take place at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Saturday, Feb. 25th, promises to be quite a special celebration indeed.

“We’re very excited about our big 50th Annie Awards celebration this year,” says ASIFAHollywood president, Sue Shakespeare. “Our slogan is ’50 years of creativity and magic,’ and that’s what we’re celebrating. It has been an innovative year for animation. Look at the nominations, and you see an impressive variety of styles of films, shows, games, and shorts that have been created.  I don’t believe we’ve seen so much innovative creativity ever before in our industry. I believe that animation is taking on a different kind of legitimacy now as an art form.  It is perceived as art in many arenas beyond film.

As ASIFA’s exec director Frank Gladstone points out, “After two years of being virtual, we are looking forward to having a live event at Royce Hall again. Because this is our 50th anniversary year, we are going to have some

special surprises and cameos that will help us look back at all the wonderful memories through the years. We’ll be announcing the names of our hosts pretty soon, so keep checking the daily news as we get confirmations closer to the event date.”

Gladstone also points out that the passionate team at ASIFA-Hollywood works behind the scenes all year long to support the community. “Our animation family is more global than ever before,” he says. “The Annies are no longer a show for people who live in L.A. It’s for everyone who works in the industry worldwide. ASIFA is also increasing our grants for filmmakers, and we’re also involved in more preservation work. In addition, we’re producing an animated short for UNICEF, in conjunction with Seneca College’s animation department (produced by Aubry Mintz) and also increasing our participation in animation events worldwide.”

ASIFA vice president, author and animation historian Jerry Beck says everyone involved with the awards is very proud of this benchmark year. “We’ve had many changes in the awards over the years, but looking back from a 50-year perch, I’d like to think we’ve made animation history - or at least honored that history — in recognizing many great artists and animators, filmmakers and films. I’m also excited that we are back in person for the first time in two years. And it’s been an interesting year of animated production as

former front runners are facing true competition from independent animators and streaming producers.”

Beck points out that animation evolves each year, bringing new sights and sounds. “The Annies showcase what’s happening now — and previews what’s to come,” he notes. “As usual, visual design is king among our nominees. Stylized stop-motion puppets, flat hand-drawn graphics mixing with CGI, more live-action integration— not to mention more sophisticated CGI character animation. And more importantly, the art is used for stories that not only come from a filmmaker’s heart, but touch audiences as relatable entertainment.”

Shakespeare agrees. “The artistry and technology created by our ‘industry magicians’ is flourishing, and they are being united in new and exciting ways. The return to theaters has also been amazing this year! The impressive box office returns rolling in on various films have proved how much we all love a ‘big screen movie experience!’ With all of the needs for and uses of animation today, I don’t think our industry has ever been more exciting and healthy... and the promise of things to come is very exciting! Just dream it, and animation will bring it to life.” ◆

The Annie Awards will take place on Sat., Feb. 25 at 7 p.m. at UCLA’s Royce Hall. For more info, visit annieawards.org.

Frank Gladstone

Sue Shakespeare

Jerry Beck

The Annies: Major Categories at a Glance

Best Feature

Turning Red  (Pixar)

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Netflix)

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (DreamWorks)

The Sea Beast  (Netflix)

Wendell & Wild  (Netflix)

Best Indie Feature

Charlotte (January Films/Balthazar/Walking the Dog)

Inu-Oh (Science SARU/GKIDS)

Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be (ON Classics/Mediawan/Bibidul)

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (A24)

My Father’s Dragon (Cartoon Saloon for Netflix)

Best Special Production

Prehistoric Planet (BBC Studios/Apple)

Superworm (Magic Light Pictures)

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (NoneMore/Bad Robot)

The House (Nexus Studios for Netflix)

The Sandman  (Netflix/Warner Bros. TV)

Best Short Subject

Amok (Dir: Balázs Turai)

Black Slide (Uri Lotan)

Ice Merchants (João Gonzalez)

Love, Dad (Diana Cam Van Nguyen)

The Flying Sailor (Amanda Forbis & Wendy Tilby)

Best TV/Media, Preschool

Elinor Wonders Why (Shoe Link)

Gabby’s Dollhouse (DreamWorks)

Rise Up, Sing Out (Disney TV)

Spirit Rangers (Netflix/Laughing Wild)

The Tiny Chef Show (Tiny Chef/Imagine)

Best TV/Media, Children

Abominable and the Invisible City (DreamWorks)

Big Nate (Nickelodeon)

Moominvalley (Gutsy)

The Owl House (Disney TV)

We Baby Bears (Cartoon Network)

Best TV/Media, Mature

Bob’s Burgers (20th TV, Bento Box)

Harley Quinn (Warner Bros. Animation)

Rick and Morty (Ricky & Morty LLC)

The Simpsons (Gracie Films/20th TV)

Tuca & Bertie (The Tornante Company)

Best TV/Media, Limited Series

BAYMAX! (Disney TV)

El Deafo (Lighthouse/Apple)

HouseBroken (Kapital Ent./FOX)

Oni: Thunder God’s Tale (Netflix/Tonko House)

Undone (Tornante Co./Amazon Studios)

Best Direction, Feature

Domee Shi (Turning Red)

Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio)

Dean Fleischer Camp, Kirsten Lepore, Stephen Chiodo (Marcel the Shell with Shoes On)

Nora Twomey (My Father’s Dragon)

Henry Selick (Wendell & Wild)

Juried Awards

The Winsor McCay Award: Pete Docter, Evelyn Lambert, Craig McCracken

The June Foray Award: Mindy Johnson

The Ub Iwerks Award: Visual Effects Reference Platform, Nick Cannon/Francois Chardavoine

The Certificate of Merit Award: John Omohundro

A Classy European Affair Turns 25

The 2023 edition of Cartoon Movie offers a rich collection of auteur-driven titles and crowd-pleasing family fare.

There are two universal truths about Cartoon Movie, the European animated feature confab which takes place March 7-9 in Bordeaux: There is something for any animation taste, and nobody is able to see everything by the time they go home!

This year’s 25th edition, showcases 58 new titles — 27 of which are produced by French studios and entities. Germany is next in line with seven projects, followed by Spain with five, Italy with four, Belgium with three, Denmark and the Netherlands with two each and single projects from Armenia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine. Of the 58 features, 27 are in development, 20 are in concept, three are in production and eight will be offering sneak previews. Thirteen of this year’s selections are aimed at young adult or adult audiences, with the rest targeted at kids and families.

According to the organizers, since its launch in 1999, 434 movies have found financing at the pitching and co-production event. That’s quite impressive, given the fact that the films represent a total budget of €2.85 billion.

As Cartoon’s general director Annick Maes points out, “Twenty-five editions of Cartoon Movie means a long list of iconic films, and European and international successes, including: Kirikou, Niko and the Way to the Stars, The Triplets of Belleville, Persepolis, The Secret of Kells, Shaun the Sheep, My Life as a Courgette, I Lost My Body, Ernest & Celestine, Loving Vincent and   Another Day of Life, among so many others. We have had the immense pleasure of welcoming directors such as Michel Ocelot, Patrice Leconte, Ari Folman, Fernando Trueba, Anca Damian, Tomm Moore and Ben Stassen. Cartoon movie is also renowned for nurturing new European talent. Now, we are happy to look back and contemplate what has been accomplished in 25 years and to note that so much has been realized to create a European animation industry around feature films.”

This year’s edition also features a special spotlight on Ukrainian animation and talent, including a look at the upcoming project by Animagradt Studio/Film.UA Group, Roxelana, directed by Oleg Malamuzh. “We would like to pay tribute to all the artists, creators, producers who are now living and working against all odds to protect their lives, their art, their industry,” says Maes. “By standing together, we wish to reinforce the bond that unites all members of the animation family and to keep hope in a better future.”

Attendees will be able to feast their eyes on the latest from some acclaimed directors:

Spansish helmer Alberto Vázquez will present this follow-up to this 2022 anti-war movie film  Unicorn Wars  with Decorado, based on his own Goya-awarded short film. Hugo de Faucompret (Mum Is Pouring Rain) will present Round and Round the Wishing Well, Cédric Babouche  (creator of the interactive game Dordogne) will bring Long Time a Girl, Léo Marchand & Anne-Laure Daffis (The Neighbors of My

Neighbors Are Neighbors of Mine) will introduce The Roman of Renart, Coppelia trio Ben Tesseur, Steven De Beul & Jeff Tudor will bring Still Life at the Penguin Café and Jens Møller (Ogglies) will deliver Yap Yap – The Secret Forest Live-action director

Guillaume Gallienne presents his first animated project, Cyrano Among the other highlights are Dragonkeeper, the new Spanish-Chinese co-pro directed by Salvador Simó, (Bunuel In The Labyrinth Of The Turtles) and Li Jianping (Journey to the West), Mette Tange and Benjamin Quabeck’s Richard the Stork 2, Laurent Nicolas’s Lascars 2: Family Business , Xavier Giacometti’s Yakari 2, Guillaume Gallienne’s Cyrano and Roberto Saviano’s I’m Still Alive, TeamTo’s Ninn, and Cartoon Saloon’s upcoming movie Julian.

In short, it will be a 25th anniversary for the books! ◆

For more information about all the titles, visit cartoon-media.eu/movie

Annick Maes

Your Cartoon Movie ‘23 Sampler

Here is a brief overview of some of the projects that grabbed our attention. Visit animationmagazine.net daily during the event for more in-depth coverage.

Butterfly Tale

Life can’t be easy for a teen butterfly who cannot fly. But Patrick, the heroic lead of Butterfly Tale, doesn’t let that dampen his optimistic spirit. The new CGanimated movie from Montreal and Madrid-based Parrot Media, is slated for a fall 2023 release and will be featured at Cartoon Forum in March. Directed by Sophie Roy (Double Dribble) and produced by Marie-Claude Beauchamp of Montreal-based CarpeDiem Film & TV (Snowtime, Racetime) and Emely Christians of Germany’s Ulysses Films (The Amazing Maurice, Ooops! Noah Is Gone), the charming project features the voices of Tatiana Maslany (She-Hulk) and Mena Massoud (Aladdin). Add to all that, the fact that Heidi Foss’s screenplay for the movie won the Animation Screenplay Award from the 2021 Stuttgart International Animation Film Festival — and you have the perfect ingredients for a crowd-pleasing family movie. Spread your wings, Patrick!

Chicken for Linda!

Directed by Chiara Malta (Simple Women) and Sébastien Laudenbach (The Girl Without Hands), Chicken for Linda! is one of the films that will stand out for its clarity of vision and simplicity. Previously showcased at Annecy, the FrenchItalian co-pro centers on a guilt-ridden mother who feels bad after unfairly punishing her daughter, so she sets out to make a chicken meal for her — even though she lacks any cooking skills! Produced by Dolce Vita Films and Miyu Productions and co-produced by Italy’s Palosanto, the movie promises to be a stylish 2D affair. “The film is intended to be sweet and tender, aimed at younger children” the directors told the traders last year. “The story unfolds in an ordinary small town on a day of general strike. There is no super power, no sorcerer, no wizard, no big quest to save the world and the only flying creature is a chicken!

Decorado

It’s always cause for celebration whenever Spanish comic-book and animation auteur Alberto Vázquez (Unicorn Wars) announces a new project. His latest is a feature adaptation of his acclaimed short of the same name, featuring Arnold, a middle-aged mouse who’s facing a midlife crisis and suspecting that the world is all a façade run by A.C.M.E. (A Company that Makes Everything!). The pic is produced by Iván Miñambres (Uniko) and coproduced by Chelo Loureiro (Abano Producións). Sign us up for this beautiful unraveling!

Julián

A young boy dreams of being a mermaid in Julián, the intriguing new project from the brilliant folks at Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon, directed by the Oscar nominee Louise Bagnall (Late Afternoon) and produced by Oscar nominee Paul Young (Wolfwalkers, Song of the Sea). Based on the acclaimed book Julián Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love, the project will be co-produced by Sun Creature (Denmark), Folivari (France), Aircraft Pictures (Canada) and Wychwood Media (U.K.) The creative team behind the movie has opened up Love’s simple, but powerful picture book to follow the gender-fluid young boy on a trip to New York City where he visits his abuela and learns about his history. Go ahead and put your money down that this movie will be a major awards season contender in a few years!

Love Is a Gypsy Child: A Carmen Story

Are you ready to travel back to 19th century Andalusia? Then, get ready for this stylish French-Spanish take on the enduring tale of Carmen, the fiery Romany woman with a dazzling voice who seeks to escape death on the streets of Seville. Based on the graphic novel by Cyril Pedrosa, the classic tale is directed by none other than Sébastien Laudenbach (The Girl Without Hands, Chicken for Linda!) and produced by Damien Brunner (Folivari) and co-produced by Pablo Jordi (Pikkukula) and Pierre-Henri Léon (La Garde Montante).

Merry Christmas, Monsieur Hulot

The clumsy, pipe-smoking character created by French filmmaker, mime, screenwriter and actor Jacques Tati first debuted in the 1953 movie Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday. He is back as an animated character in the new movie directed by Celine Willard, which finds the friendly eccentric growing a giant Christmas tree in the only remaining plot of land in his city. When the tree causes the wrath of the town mayor, Monsieur Hulot’s friendship with the mayor’s son is also threatened. Produced by Aubane Fillon of France’s TNZPV Productions, the project is based on David Merveille’s lovely graphic novel, with a script by Marc Rius. From what we’ve seen from the early art and development package, this is definitely a holiday movie to keep an eye on.

Ninn

You know exciting things are in the works when Emmy-winning producer Corinne Kouper (Yellow Bird, Jade Armor, Angelo Rules) and her excellent team at France’s TeamTO studio are involved with a project. The movie that she’s presenting at Cartoon Forum this year is Ninn, an eagerly anticipated animated adaptation of the graphic novel by JeanMichel Darlot and Johan Pilet, directed by Salomé Chatelian The fantastic tale follows the adventures of a young girl who was found as a baby in the Paris Métro and is protected by a magical origami tiger. Will she solve the enigma of her mysterious past, despite her two father’s many concerns? We’ll have to wait patiently until TeamTO brings the movie to the big screen in the years ahead!

The Roman of Renart

Is the world ready for a brandnew animated adaptation of Romance of Reynard (the fox), the classic medieval collection of animal fables by Bourvil? We hope so, because Léo Marchand and Anne-Laure Daffis (My Neighbors’ Neighbors, Le SaintFestin) are helming a top-notch adaptation based on Daffis’ graphic novel. Christian Pfohl of Lardux Films is producing the great-looking project, which mixes 2D animation and some live-action backgrounds.

Rosa and the Stone Troll

The new Danish movie Rosa and the Stone Troll is based on the popular children’s book series by Josefine Ottesen. The lovingly animated feature follows the adventures of a blue fairy who sets out on a dangerous journey to rescue her butterfly friend, who has been kidnapped by an evil stone troll (are there any other kind?). The fairy tale is directed by first-time helmer Karla Nor Holmbäck and produced by Marie Bro for Dansk Tegnefilm. Some fortunate Scandinavian territories have already released this lovely labor of love.

Yap Yap — The Secret Forest

Sometimes a single image from a movie can really sell it to the viewer. That’s certainly the case with Yap Yap — The Secret Forest, which follows a young girl who stumbles upon the titular forestland. Our heroine must stop the darkness threatening the magical creatures of the natural world in this beautiful adaptation of Kristina Gordon’s picture book. Directed by Jens Møller (The Ogglies, LEGO Star Wars series), this lush, CGanimated family movie is produced by Denmark’s Parka Pictures and co-produced by Swedens’ Milford. Parka Pictures has a great track record at Cartoon Movie, having presented titles such as Ark at 8, Granny Samurai and Latte and the Magic Waterstone in Bordeaux before. We’re sure this new pic will also be a hit with the attendees this year. ◆

FEATURES

Scaling Fantastic Heights

The new animated Spanish-Chinese adaptation of the Dragonkeeper saga is set to soar this summer.

- By Jeff Spry -

Amid the flight patterns of popular entertainment, fans have an insatiable appetite for dragons, whether they’re scaled or feathered, fire-belching or water-spouting, airborne or terrestrial. This summer, a new Spanish-Chinese co-production will bring Dragonkeeper, the award-winning adult novels of Aussie scribe Carole Wilkinson to animated life.

This gorgeous fairy tale project is helmed by director Salvador Simó (Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles) and heralds from executive producer Larry Levene of Madrid’s Guardián de Dragones AIE in partnership with Song Weiwei at China Film Animation.

The film’s storyline centers on an orphaned slave girl in ancient China named Ping who befriends one of the last imperial dragons called Long Danzi. Emboldened with the mysterious powers of Qi, Ping orchestrates the aged dragon’s escape from a remote fortress together with a precious stone which must be defended at all costs. The unlikely pair traverses the Empire to save Long Danzi from extinction while pursued by the emperor’s soldiers, dragon hunters and a shadowy evil force.

The

Pablos Touch

Animation luminary Sergio Pablos, director of the Oscar-nominated film, Klaus, delivers the movie’s lush visual palette. Dragonkeeper’s talented vocal cast features the work of Bill Nighy, Bill Baileyand Anthony Howell, and introduces newbie Mayalinee Griffiths as Ping.

Staying faithful to the hallowed source material was foremost on the minds of Dragonkeeper’s creative team. Striking a harmonious style and tone required dedication, patience and skill. “We, the producers, read Carole Wilkson’s saga to our children years ago,” Levene tells Animation Magazine. “From the very first moment we knew that there was a wonderful film to be develop. Our journey of making Dragonkeeper began in 2016. Since it’s a story that takes place in ancient China, we looked first for a Chinese partner. We succeeded and in 2017 Dragonkeeper became an official co-production between Spain and China, with China Film Animation, a subsidiary of China Film Group, as our co-producer. Development and production of the film have taken about six years to finish.”

Production disruptions caused by the ongoing global pandemic took the animating du-

ties to studios all over the globe, with the core team located in Spain and led by animation director Abraham Lopez.

“The animation itself was done in Maya. There are no secrets in the tools used, but the artistic approach was more simple and realistic than the classical Disney or Pixar animation, which in this case was perfect for the film,” Levene adds. “Our mantra was less is more.”

Conceiving the overall look and feel of Dragonkeeper necessitated a subtle artistic approach utilizing slightly stylized textures and shapes, a technique that doesn’t necessarily distract the viewer’s eyes, yet is something audiences intuitively sense as part of the cinematic wizardry.

“The main element is the story and the experience of the audience so we can immerse them in an adventure, a magical and mystical one, in a world where dragons were part of reality and history,” Levene explains. “Nowadays, most family movies play around with the formula of cute characters full of jokes and silly situations. We´re trying to come back to those adventures from the ‘80s where the core was the characters and their journey. E.T., The Goonies, The Princess Bride, Legend, Willow,

Salvador Simó

etc. were used as a strong reference and are not abundant in the market.”

Filmmaker Sergio Pablos and his SPA Studios in Madrid worked diligently with Levene and Simó in the project’s infancy, bringing that same conceptual expertise in fine tuning Dragonkeeper’s aesthetics that he delivered in other projects such as Despicable Me, Smallfoot and Klaus.

“Sergio was very active in the early stages of Dragonkeeper’s development,” says Levene. “In fact, he was the one who, after meticulously reading the Carole Wilkinson books and having very close contact with the producers, made all the designs in the dossier. That was the first and most important tool used to raise co-producers and funding both in China and in Spain. So, those first concept designs of the film’s main characters and story concept and atmosphere of the environments were all made by Sergio’s studio, and we are very proud of that.”

Director Salvador Simó became attached to Dragonkeeper in the summer of 2019 as a commissioned assignment, with most of the script work already completed by not only the Chinese and Spanish producers, but also Ignacio Ferreras (Wrinkles) who was project director at that time.

“My job then was to take that material and give it a shape that could become an entertaining and engaging family film, while trying to keep as much as possible the essence of the main character from Carole Wilkinson’s books,” Simó explains.

The director adds, “We rewrote some sequences and added a few new ones for the narrative. Working with the editor, we gave it the punch and personality we were looking for. It was an intense time and we had to please our co-producers without stopping the film. So, Larry Levene and I had to work on a tight schedule to turn the animatics in the movie we have now and make everyone happy and proud of the amazing movie we have now.”

The lush visual style and period details were developed by the entire animation team led by art director Elisa Castro, CG supervisor Victor Sauco, and Simó to try to craft a striking look that could maintain the film’s sensibility and serve viewers with a remarkable transportive flavor.

Aiming for Authenticity

“We used many 2D approaches to solve textures and effects to achieve the unique de-

FEATURES

signs of Chinese art,” says Simó. “Adding to that, we worked with the Chinese team to retain the cultural accuracy and artwork of the Han dynasty where the film occurs.”

Regarding plans for future Dragonkeeper, Levene is optimistic about expanding the fantasy franchise further since Wilkinson’s literary series consists of six volumes plus a prequel.

“The producers have acquired the rights and options for the entire Dragonkeeper saga of books, so we’re thinking of developing at least two more films to complete a trilogy. In this first film our young heroine helps the last imperial dragon egg to hatch, in the second one she raises the little dragon without any help, and in the third one she gives back the young dragon to the wild,” notes Levene. “We hope the audience will want to see it again and hope they enjoy the journey of the characters and the adventure. We are trying to offer an extraordinary experience during this movie.” ◆

Dragonkeeper is one of the films featured at the Cartoon Movie event in France in March. The film is slated to open in theaters in Europe this August and to premiere on Hulu later in the year.

“We want to immerse the audience in an adventure — a magical and mystical one, in a world where dragons were part of reality and history.”

- Producer Larry Levene

A LEGENDARY TALE: Director Salvador Simó follows up his acclaimed feature Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles with a completely different project, a China-set fantasy penned by Carole Wilkinson and featuring the voices of Bill Nighy, Brendan Coyle and Mayalinee Griffiths.

Celebrating Native American Tales

Award-winning director Áron Gauder details the making of his beautifully crafted and environmentally themed feature Four Souls of Coyote.

- By Ramin Zahed -

The upcoming new Hungarian animated feature Four Souls of Coyote is one of the highly original features debuting at Cartoon Movie this year. Produced by Budapest-based Cinemon Entertainment and written and created by Annecy Cristal Prize-winner Áron Gauder (The District), the 2D-animated project is described as an epic adventure about the creation of the universe based on a Native American myth.

“I have always been inspired by Native American culture since my childhood days,” says Gauder in an exclusive Animation Magazine interview. I made two short animated shorts films based on Native American tales with a similar visual approach. During the Communist era, I participated in Native summer camps and acquired some knowledge about the harmony between humans and the Earth.”

Inspired by Myths and Songs

A big turning point for Gauder was meeting Tamás Cseh, a legendary Hungarian songwriter and the founder of the Hungarian Indian American cultural circle. “When I discovered about six years ago that he had translated Native American folktales and recorded them before he died,”

he tells us. “I couldn’t stop thinking about bringing these stories to life through animation.”

The songwriter had recorded eight tales for an album. As Gauder recalls, “The real journey of the film began when I discovered these records and approached Cinemon Entertainment producer Réka Temple with the idea of co-producing an adaptation of the records as an animated series. I think that just reading and hearing about his stories, I could see how it would make a beautiful and thoughtful film. We made two episodes of the Coyote Tales, which have achieved significant international festival successes. After making the shorts, I felt that there was still plenty to tell and the visuals look good on wide screen. That’s how the idea of the feature story came. “

Temple, who has produced such well-received projects such as Coyote and the Rock, Willy and the Guardians of the Lake, and Volutes des Anges, says, “Making Four Souls of Coyote, and the first two short films has taken ten years of my life!” she notes. “The movie has been a special experience during challenging times. There were many pitches and trips during the first couple of years. Then, finally, when we got the greenlight for production, Covid hit. We needed to build a safe working space (mostly online at the begin-

ning) to be in the mood for such an artistic and meaningful project.”

Pre-production for the film began in 2016, the production commenced in early 2020, and post-production work was completed in January. Gauder says, “The film was produced in Hungary at Cinemon Entertainment studios along with 180-200 artists, some working from abroad. The English cast includes Native American actors and was produced by Verité Entertainment in the USA and Canada.”

The director conceived and drew all the visuals and the characters based on his imagination, he says. “The characters and background are always hand painted. The film combines 2D and 3D. 3D only serves the camera movement in the background in so-called projection.  In order to keep this idea throughout the process, we worked a lot with the animation director, Zsolt Baumgartner. The entire film is actually enriched by the help and instruction of all the animators.”

The visuals of the film are a fascinating mix of real-world influences and the world of visions and reams. “We integrated and imitated different optics, lenses, camera effects and lighting using various experiences,” says Gauder. “The story of creation is told in the visual construc-

- Director Áron Gauder

tion of the film. In the beginning there are no colors, only paper. Step by step, lightly painted watercolors appear in shades of blue water and gray skies. As the creator lifts up the sky, the light appears, introducing a new graphic element. With a combination of 2D and 3D two graphic worlds are combined.”

Gauder mentions that the movie’s characters were initially quite stylized, but eventually the animation became more realistic. “The more stylized solutions, consisting of specifically Indian motifs, appear primarily in dream scenes and on the clothes and decorations of the characters,” he says. He also says he has been inspired by a wide range of features, including the Hungarian feature Marcell Jankovics’ Son of the White Mare, Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, Cartoon Saloon’s Song of the Sea and Wolfwalkers.

Striving for authenticity, the director immersed himself in original Native American cultures and history while seeking advice and feedback from experts in the field. “I have always been interested in this culture because I have been fascinated by their history and genuine experiences,” he says. “When I met Tamás Cseh, 27 years ago, he shared materials about Indian-American culture which captivated me. I also read Karl May’s books, watched Gojko Mitić’s

films, and learned about the ancient Native American experiences and their stories. I also attended a Sun Dance indigenous ceremony, and I understood how close the tribe was to nature, clean and simple.”

Several well-known Native Americans experts including Charles Cambridge and Chris Eyre also participated as consultants on the project. “Members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian Tribes provided me with helpful information about projects against building the Dakota Access Pipeline and also connected with us with Native musicians,” says the director. “In several cases the perspective of the indigenous people is much more modern than ‘more advanced’ Western thinking. Global warming and the rapid destruction of the environment cause common problems. Thousands of documentaries have been produced about this theme, and a great number of scientists have proven the very facts Native Americans have been talking about for centuries.”

Braving the Challenges

Temple mentions that the production faced many challenges over the past few years. “Last year we were hit by the war in our neighborhood, which fortunately had no direct connection to the production itself,” she says. “Still, we strongly

sympathized with what is happening around us and around the world. We tried to find the harmony, which this film is all about. I truly believe that beside the strong visuals Aron has created we can also pass on the feeling of how important and joyful this film was for all of us producing it.”

She adds, “We have a saying in Hungarian that one of my eyes is smiling because the film has come to an end and that we managed to complete it in time. But, my other eye is crying because the film came to an end and we’re not in production on a daily basis anymore. Now, I am looking forward to seeing how the film resonates with the public all around the globe.”

“

Four Souls of Coyote is an alternative and more modest creation myth, in which the human being is neither the top creature of nature nor the king of the world, but only one of all the creatures,” concludes Gauder. “With the help of animation, I would like to draw the attention to this story in an adventurous way and to point out that we should live environmentally responsible lives and respect Mother Nature. I believe that the story gives everyone hope that it’s still not too late to correct the current course. This is our final chance to save our planet.” ◆

Four Souls of Coyote will premiere at Cartoon Movie and in Hungarian theaters in March.

“Four Souls of Coyote is an alternative and more modest creation myth, in which the human being is neither the top creature in nature nor the king of the world, but only one of all the creatures.”

CREATION MYTHS: A lifelong interest in Native American culture and stories led to writer-director Áron Gauder creating the new animated feature Four Souls of Coyote

Réka Temple

FEATURES

Good Friends in Times of Need

Submarine Studio producer Janneke van de Kerkhof offers an exclusive sneak peek at the the upcoming children’s movie Fox and Hare Save the Forest.

Flemish author, Sylvia Vanden Heede’s charming children’s books have been lauded for their memorable forest friends (Fox, Hare and Owl) and the beautiful illustrations by Thé Tjong-Khing. They have already been adapted into a popular animated series, which premiered in Europe in 2018. Animation fans can look forward to a lovely new feature based on Vanden Heede’s characters, thanks to the work of the teams at Submarine Studio (Amsterdam), Doghouse Films (Luxembourg) and Walking the Dog (Belgium). The movie, which is called Fox and Hare Save the Forest, is one of the well-known titles being unveiled at the Cartoon Movie confab in Bordeaux in early March.

Directed by Mascha Halberstad (Oink), the 70-minute pic is produced by Submarine’s Bru-

no Felix (Apollo 10 ½, Undone, The Sandman) and Janneke van de Kerkhof (The Sandman, They Shot the Piano Player). The plot centers on the mysterious disappearance of Owl, which has happened around the same time as a sudden appearance of a new lake in the forest.

Entertaining Animals

According to van de Kerkhof, the team at Submarine was quickly drawn to the film’s exotic mix of characters, the recognizable visual style and the top-notch script by Fabie Hulsebos. “We also loved the humorous tone added to it by our beloved director Mascha Halberstad, who is currently enjoying the success of her first feature Oink, which premiered in Berlin last year,” says the producer. “She has a very specific and original feeling for comedy and that makes our Fox and Hare movie special.

The art direction, by Dutch artist Leo de Wijs, is very quirky. Design conventions from more traditional animated fare are not used because of the film’s more earthy color palette.”

Janneke van de Kerkhof and her team began developing the six million euro film during the last year of the production of the Fox and Hare series in 2018. “We are a big fan of the work of the Dutch illustrator, Thé Tjong-Khing,” she says. “We had already adapted another one of his books into an animated series (Picnic with Cake, 2012), and we feel privileged to again work with the characters that he created combined with the unique story world of Belgium writer, Sylvia Vanden Heede. This group of characters is a very exotic mix of creatures including a fox, a hare, an owl, a mermaid and a penguin! The stories of the books are very original and can’t be compared with any other

FEATURES

“This group of characters is a very exotic mix of creatures, including a fox, a hare, an owl, a mermaid and a penguin! The stories of the books are very original and can’t be compared with any other IP that I know!”

IP that I know. It is quite unique!”

To create the movie’s animation, first the characters and some of the props and environments were sculpted in clay and then scanned into CG, and then the characters are rigged an animated. The production used Maya for modeling and animation, and Unreal for lighting and rending, while the compositing was handled by Nuke. “It’s a 3D animated movie, but it has a stop-motion feel,” says van de Kerkhof. “Even very experienced animation people can’t tell whether it is CG or stop motion!

Since the lake plays a key part in the plotline, one of the challenging aspects of the producing the animation was the depiction of water. “Water plays a very big role in the story,” explains the producer. “And of course, in CG it can be a challenge to get it right within the budget that we have. There is so much water, everywhere

and all the time. We did a lot of R&D in Unreal to make sure we would achieve the look of the series and then make it even better, and we are very happy with where we are going. So, I think the biggest challenge is all the water effects and water animation, combined with the level of animation that we would like to achieve and the budget that we have.”

Sharing the Work

The production work was divided between Submarine Studio, which handled the design, storyboard, environments, modeling and half of the animation, and Doghouse which tackled the other half of the animation, character rigging, prop modeling and the 3D layout. Walking the Dog oversaw lighting, rendering and compositing.

As they get ready for the final stretch of the

film’s production, the creative team has high hopes for this younger-skewing movie, which is eyeing a holiday 2023 release. “I think in the first place we want children and adults to enjoy this film and its humor, funny characters and songs,” says van de Kerkhof. “The main theme of the film is friendship and loyalty, which is a very universal and relatable. Besides that, the film addresses the issue of a forest being flooded. In our story, this is caused by a beaver who built a big lodge and who created a great lake around it, but it touches upon the subject of climate change and the thread of rising water levels. This is of course, a very relevant theme for the Netherlands, which is partly below sea level.” ◆

Fox and Hare Save the Forest is slated for a December 2023 release in Europe.

- Producer Janneke van der Kerkhof

A MISSING FRIEND: Fox and Hare Save the Forest is based on Sylvia Vanden Heede’s popular book series and is produced by Submarine, Doghouse Films and Walking The Dog.

Adventures in a Retro Future World

Warner Bros. Animation dips into a nostalgic well with the new Legion of Super-Heroes film.

- By Jeff Spry -

Back in the waning years of the 1950s when the Soviet Union’s Sputnik satellite ominously orbited Earth, a colorful team of teen superheroes emerged from the fertile minds of DC Comics’ Otto Binder and Al Plastino. Set in the limitless landscape of the 30th century and based on the science fiction lore of Superboy, Krypton and the Superman mythos, the Legion of Super-Heroes was virgin territory for a rotating roster of DC writers and artists to explore.

This diverse intergalactic force featured an

imaginative gathering of characters from various home-worlds. The Legion of Super-Heroes has millions of ardent supporters of all ages and their outer space adventures remain fondly fixed in comics fans’ imaginations. It is in this endearing spirit that Warner Bros. Animation is presenting a new Legion of Super-Heroes animated film being released on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray combo pack and digital this month.

Directed by veteran animator Jeff Wamester (Justice Society: World War II, Green Lantern: Beware My Power) from a screenplay by Josie

Campbell (She-Ra and the Princess of Power), this new feature-length offering showcases a potent vocal cast that includes Supernatural’s Jensen Ackles (Batman), Darren Criss (Superman), Meg Donnelly (Supergirl), Harry Shum Jr. (Brainiac 5), Robbie Daymond (Timber Wolf and Brainiac 4) and Matt Bomer (The Flash). The pic is exec produced by Sam Register, with producers Jim Krieg (Batman: Gotham by Gaslight) and Kimberly S. Moreau (Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). Butch Lukic (Batman: The Long Halloween, Superman: Man of Tomorrow) is supervising producer.

“It helps to know the overall mythology and tone with which a lot of these comic-book stories are told. Storytelling in comics is a close cousin or sister to storyboarding, especially the aesthetics that you hit when you’re doing these animated features, so it really helps a lot.”

— Director Jeff Wamester

Supergirl Revisited

The plotline in this latest DC Universe Movie finds young Krypton refugee Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl, enlisting as a cadet at the Legion’s 31st century Earthly headquarters on the suggestion of her legendary cousin Superman after having difficulty fitting in with modern day Metropolis. When a powerful device that lets users bend reality becomes the object of nefarious intent, Supergirl/Kara teams up with Brainiac-5 to stop the Dark Circle terrorist cult from stealing the dangerous contraption from an impenetrable vault at the Legion Academy.

“I think it’s a different world than we’re seeing in the current superhero setting, and there’s that appeal of having it all set in a different location and a different time,” Wamester tells Animation Magazine regarding the team’s enduring popularity. “I remember reading a few of the Legion of Super-Hero comics as a kid and I really enjoyed being pulled into another interpretation. It’s always fun to go to a completely other time and place when you explain a story like this.”

In a Herculean feat that necessitated sifting through more than a half-century of material, the creative crew formulated a manageable storyline to teleport the Legion from page to screen.

“The first trick was narrowing down the best story from the 60+ years of Legion of Super-Heroes comic book stories that would work as a vehicle for Supergirl to hone her powers and teamwork skills, and to fit within our continuity,” Lukic explains. “Josie found the Dark Circle storyline, and then married it with the other parts of the Legion that we thought would help the story as far as Supergirl needing to be trained. As for essentials, we knew we wanted most of the main characters that the true Legion fans would appreciate.”

Legion of Super-Heroes’ animation style has a classic, retro vibe akin to vintage Hanna-Barbera and Filmation shows, and the finished product

should please newcomers and longtime readers.

“We set out to do more of the comic book traditional look that we set up in Superman: Man of Tomorrow and Batman: The Long Halloween, and have utilized throughout this continuity,” Lukic adds. “We’ve used a more anatomically correct look with some unique styling dependent upon the story and characters.”

For Wamester, the biggest challenge was taking the narrative from the very beginnings of Supergirl and have her interpretation and reaction to a whole new cultural environment, coming fresh off losing her home planet of Krypton and her parents and suddenly having to adapt.

“She’s a little wild and the only thing she has left is her cousin, so it’s a bit of a struggle to pull that off without making her seem whiney,” he notes. “I think we pulled that off with this movie and it was really fun to make that work.”

A comics industry background (Top Cow’s The Darkness: Four Horsemen) and experience as a character design on Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy animated TV series helped the director forge an intuitive approach to superhero tales.

“I grew up on comics, so I know a lot about the history and have read quite a few issues in the past 30 years or so,” says Wamester. “It helps to know the overall mythology and tone with which a lot of these comic book stories are told and why people love them so much. Storytelling in comics is a close cousin or sister to storyboarding, especially the aesthetics that you hit when you’re doing these animated features, so it really helps a lot.”

“Warner Animation wanted characters that are pretty easy to see their powers right off the bat. Some are a little more nuanced and take a bit more time to understand, but the ones we have, it’s fairly simple to make it clear what they’re capable of. Many of the superheroes in the comic book world can be pretty gritty and sad, so it’s nice to have a mix with new problems and situations,

but also with hope tacked onto the end of it.”

The vocal cast for Legion of Super-Heroes is an eclectic blend of talent that Wamester truly loved interacting with, especially Meg’s Donnelly’s dramatic turn as Supergirl/Kara Zor-El.

“The performance for Supergirl was so good. That was one of my most enjoyable recording sessions in a long time. That speech at the end with her mother was a bit of a tear-jerker. It affected everybody in the recording booth and really got the ball rolling on the movie.”

What is the evergreen appeal of the Legion of Super-Heroes and what lures fans back into their futuristic realm time and again? Lukic believes it’s the cornucopia of optimistic crimefighters.

“I think it’s ultimately the variety of the characters that are presented – there’s something for everyone – and it’s very much a Justice Leaguetype of group, except that they’re teenagers,” he says. “That probably helped a lot with the comics’ popularity, considering the readership was teens and pre-teens. They could see themselves in these characters. And, of course, many of those kids are now in their 40s and 50s and still appreciate those characters.”

Having confidence in the film’s enthusiastic director and screenwriter always makes for a harmonious production, which made Lukic’s job as Supervising Producer much smoother.

“Jeff and I have been working together on these films for the past three years, and it’s a very complementary relationship. He has a great sense for storytelling, acting and solid imagery and angles/shots. His directing vision is in line with our approach to this continuity. Josie really understands the attitude and nuances of these characters, and she’s a great writer. She knows how to get the most out of the story. It’s a very good team to have alongside me on this journey.” ◆

Legion of Super-Heroes lands on 4K Ultra HD Bluray, Blu-ray + Digital and Digital on Feb. 7.

TRIUMPH OF TEAMWORK: Brainiac 5 (Harry Shum Jr.) is among the many superheroes that join forces with Supergirl (Meg Donnelly) to fight the criminal org known as The Dark Circle in the new movie.

Visualizing a Magnificent Nervous Breakdown

Take a peek inside the stunning VFX of Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths

.

- By Trevor Hogg -

AMexican-born, Los Angeles-based journalist and documentarian Silverio Gama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) goes through a visually arresting existential crisis in Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, who is best known of his Oscar-winning features The Revenant and, and this well-received mix of memories, reality and dreams is currently streaming on Netflix.

Although the movie had a few false starts along the way due to the Covid pandemic, VFX supervisor Guillaume Rocheron (1917) was a constant presence through the project. He was later joined in postproduction by Olaf Wendt (Snake Eyes) to supervise the visual effects which needed to be photorealistic and seamless so that the audience could feel the same emotional turmoil experienced by the protagonist.

“You take your audience into a scene that seems to be straightforward, but suddenly that transitions into something fairly surrealistic, and then it goes back down,” says Rocheron. “It’s

completely interwoven. To be able to find that language, you have to understand somehow where Alejandro wants to go with it.”

Father and Son Reunion

One of the film’s pivotal scenes takes place in a bathroom scene in which Silverio is talking to his father and literally shrinks down to the size of a child again. The sequence was shot first with Daniel Giménez Cacho and then a second time with an adolescent body double. “We tried to find ways to digitally transition the fairly large adult head onto the neck in 2D,” recalls Rocheron. “Sometimes when the kid is moving, we had to do a full CG body so that the two motions would marry well. Other times we did a CG head on the real body or a full CG character. It’s a constant mix of different techniques. We wanted it to be photographically driven, so we shot all of the elements that we could.”

Another labor-intensive visual effects sequence takes place when Silverio is visiting downtown and suddenly he comes across all

these bodies falling on the ground around him. “It looks like a normal shot, but then you suddenly realize that the sun is going really fast, and it transitions from day to night in a single shot,” explains Rocheron. “That was a shot that required a lot of planning because obviously we couldn’t shoot it for real: We couldn’t move the sun outside the streets of Mexico City.”

He continues, “We shot a time-lapse background in the location that we picked and put it into a LED volume so we could light our actor moving into a set piece of the streets. Then, we had a light on a Technocrane to simulate the sun that was synchronized with the footage. In post-production we extracted the actor, put in the streets, added in the CG bodies on the ground, and a cloud that creates shadows. We were always mixing elements of reality and surrealism.”

Silverio travels on the Metro with a bag of salamander-like axolotls in another memorable sequence. “Suddenly we enter a moment of surrealism where the train is flooded and Silverio realizes that the bag is open and the axolotls are swim-

ming away; as he tries to catch them the camera tilts up, you realize that he’s in a flooded apartment in the desert and then we cut back to reality where Silverio is in the subway station,” explains Rocheron. “The way that we did it was interesting. We couldn’t flood a real train car and get it to move across Los Angeles. Tile plates were shot with a system of 20 cameras mounted on the real Metro in Los Angeles so we could capture background plates that could be stitched together. Then, we built our train car and put that in a LED volume. All of the footage was projected and reflected in the water. When Silverio pursues the animals, it’s a combination of CG axolotls because we wanted to choreograph them. The apartment is also combination of two things. Some plates that we shot of him in the flooded apartment are on a soundstage. In the desert, we shot matching plates of a replica apartment that just had the exterior walls. Then, we combined the two and created some water simulations to go into the other rooms mixed with the sand. We matte painted the whole thing to create this weird surrealistic image.”

Another remarkable visual were the film’s digital babies, which had to be created as a newborn, three-months-old and a six-months-old. This was approximately the size of a baby turtle and starts off in the hand of his mother, crawls onto the beach and swims into the ocean. “There were two things we were trying to do. Alejandro wanted specific features for the baby, and it was

important that we were able to portray the same character at different ages,” remarks Rocheron. “That informed a lot of our decisions to make it a digital character instead of trying to shoot a real baby at any given point. The face of newborn is puffy and often in three months the face has evolved so much that they look very different but at the same time somehow, we had to make them recognizable for the audience.”

The VFX team started with the three-monthold baby and created a full blend shape back to the newborn form. They shot lot of real babies as references for the digital baby’s movements and skin. “Little puppets were made so the actors could manipulate them,” says Rocheron. “It was a tricky exercise because there were a lot of closeups and long shots. A baby is desynchronized. It doesn’t control its movements very well but at the same time you want to make it compelling and relaxed. This was a tremendous exercise in performance.”

Olaf Wendt says one of the reasons the job is always interesting is because every director has their own style of filmmaking. “Alejandro will always ask you to go further which is great, as it pushes you to do the best work and to find the right solution for him,” he says.

Mix & Match Reflections

Wendt also brings up a scene where Silverio interacts with a reflection of himself. “That was

a complicated thing to pull off,” he remembers. “They built a huge mirror in the desert to shoot the two images of Silverio but when you put them together, they were different takes because the reflection of Silverio did not perform the same actions. Then, we were left with all the stuff that needed to be cleaned up. We had a giant camera and whole crew in there. We had to rebuild and replace most of the ground. There was also a row of migrants in the distance walking across which also had to be rebuilt.”

He adds, “We had to piece together the action that Alejandro wanted out of four or five different performance bits to make it seamless. There were a lot of storyboards for those kinds of things and because Alejandro is a visual person, he plans ahead and knows what he is trying to get. But then in the process of execution, it becomes its own journey. You have to find the right balance. It’s incredibly challenging from a visual effects point of view.”

Looking back at the Bardo experience, Wendt says he relished the opportunity of collaborating with Iñárritu. “I loved working on this film, as there are not many projects like this where you have a chance to do the work that helps tell the story of the film, but is also large scale and visually ambitious,” he concludes. ◆

Bardo, a False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths is currently streaming on Netflix worldwide.

“You take your audience into a scene that seems to be straightforward, but suddenly that transitions into something fairly surrealistic, and then it goes back down…To be able to find that language, you have to understand somehow where Alejandro wants to go with it.”

— VFX supervisor Guillaume Rocheron

SURREAL LANDSCAPES: The film’s protagonist comes face to face with his mirror image and witnesses a street full of falling bodies in two of the several stunning VFX sequences of Bardo .

Tech Reviews

- By Todd Sheridan Perry -

Foundry’s Mari 6.0

Foundry has been busy working on all of its products, which all had hefty releases at the end of 2022. The company continued its implementation of Universal Scene Description (USD) into the ecosystem by expanding the support in Mari 6.0. (USD was first introduced in Mari 5.0, but 6.0 focuses on improving it by exporting of shader and material information.) Mari can now export Arnold and RenderMan shaders in a one look file that contains all the pertinent data to make the development look the same when it gets to the vendor render engines. Additionally, tools have been developed (using Mari’s selection tools) to assign materials to correct USD face set-based locations. You no longer need to manually bring your USC look file into the look development DCC. Artists can now use Mari’s intuitive selection group tools to assign materials to specific areas of their models during USD export to ensure that the transfer goes appropriately to the target DCC.

Mari now has a shelf for storing and launching custom Python script, eliminating the need to place the script into a path on your system and then launching the program. To make script utilization more accessible and seamless, Foundry is encouraging artists to share useful tools between artists and studios. Removing the barrier of “working with code” will allow less code-centric artists to be more open and less intimidated by the process.

To clean up Maro scripts in the node graph, a Teleport Node breaks up the noodle connectors that

contribute to the spaghetti plates of scripts, which these systems can quickly become. By having a broadcast node (which transmits the data at the end of a flow) and a receiver (which receives and continues the data somewhere else), you effectively remove those intermediate highways and byways. This, however, can make things confusing because you can’t trace your data flow. To remedy that confusion, there are buttons in each node that help find focus between the broadcasters and receiver. But managing shader and material export, running Python, and making clean node scripts aren’t really what Mari is about. Mari is created for painting and look development, and to providing artists with the right tools for doing these things. Therefore, Foundry

has introduced the Roller Brush. Previously, tiling images was a relatively painful process of manually rotating your brunch pattern around. The roller brush orients itself to the artist’s brush direction and tiles based on parameters like direction and mirroring the image. This is a supreme timesaver when you’re painting complex, repetitive connected patterns like seams, stitches, or zippers, or carved patterns in wood, or filigree in rugs or curtains.

So overall, we have some powerful advantages for the Mari workflow in general, with an immeasurably useful tool for the artists and the artwork.

Website: foundry.com/products/mari

Price: $1,119 (buy); $829 (to rent per quarter)

tus

Made with Mari by Gnomon artist Valentin Erbuke

Foundry’s Nuke 14.0

Foundry has also brought the Nuke Family up to 14.0 with some cool new features in their 3D system, machine learning tools, and ties to Unreal Engine. It also brings a future promise of incorporating Peregrine’s Bokeh and a price structure change that will probably be the topic of debate.

As USD is becoming more and more ubiquitous (in not just our industry), Foundry has made a smart move and implemented a brand new 3D system with USD as its foundation. Nuke uses a scene graph window which will be familiar to anyone who has been using USD in other software, but also parallels workflows in 3D programs in general. Its key to organizing, navigating and manipulating the USD scenes. Additionally, the tools include a path and masking system to aid in selecting objects or groups of objects in the scene that you wish to modify. This is critical because one of the primary strengths of USD is the efficient display of numerous objects in a scene.

Along with the USD objects, the materials and lights are also supported with a new USD Preview Surface. These are focused on making sure the representation in Nuke is close to what was being developed in Mari or Katana, or other DCC tools.

The USD 3D system is in beta in 14.0, and the

original 3D system has been retained. Thus, they can work in parallel (but not together). Users can still fall back on their traditional way of using 3D in Nuke, and by being separate, Foundry can deprecate the older system (at some point) without disrupting the whole system.

Foundry also has given attention to AIR – its machine-learning framework that drives nodes like CopyCat – which, in 14.0 is 20% faster with NVidia’s Ampere GPUs. CopyCat now has tools specific to human matting and has accelerated the training process of separating a character from BG.

To supplement its AIR system, Foundry has launched Cattery, which is an online library of opensource learning modules such as depth estimation, denoising, style transfers, upscaling, and optical flow calculations, allowing artists access to pre-taught modules to quickly get up and running. You will need NukeX to train a network, but these Cattery prefabs

can be loaded into any edition of Nuke.

Unreal Reader is now out of beta with improvements in its Live Link capabilities, tying Nuke and Unreal Engine together. This allows compositors access to render passes from the 3D generated from the engine including custom passes. Color support incorporates OpenColorIO to ensure that the look between Nuke and Unreal is the same.

After the initial release, Foundry made two more announcements: They acquired Peregrine Labs’ Bokeh which simulates lens looks and characteristics, and presumably will be implemented in both the defocus tools and the Deep Compositing workflow. Foundry also made a price change that will make half of the users happy, and the other half – not so much. They’re getting rid of the perpetual licenses and moving over to an annual or quarterly subscription model. Your feelings may vary!

Website: foundry.com/products/nuke-family

Annual Subscription Prices: $3,299 (Nuke); $4,499 (NukeX); $5,499 (Nuke Studio); $399 (Nuke Render)

Todd Sheridan Perry is an award-winning VFX supervisor and digital artist whose credits include  Black Panther,  Avengers: Age of Ultron,  The Christmas Chronicles and  For all Mankind. You can reach him at todd@teaspoonvfx.com.

Pressing the Reset Button

China’s DeZerlin Media bounces back from the COVID years, launching exciting initiatives for animated features and TV projects.

It has been five years since China’s DeZerlin Media made a big splash at AFM announcing an ambitious co-pro deal with London-based Zycon Media to produce and finance a slate of animated features and TV series for the global market, valued at $159 million. The first project in the pact was  Watch the Skies, an action fantasy, written and directed by Mark Byers (Criminal Act, Dragon Twins) about a marooned alien boy and the Earth kids who rescue him. The animated pic featured the voices of Sean Bean, Gemma Arterton, Sam Claflin and Asa Butterfield.

Since then, the pioneering Chinese boutique studio has had its share of ups and downs, mostly due to the slowdown caused in the region by the COVID pandemic. Founded in 2010 in Qingdao by industry veteran Lin Zhang, DeZerlin is considered one of the top IP and content houses in Asia, with strong relationships

in animation, live action, games, publishing and merchandising across Europe, Asia and North America. It has a wide range of interests and genres, from high-concept family fantasies such as Hawkins and Silver (loosely based on Treasure Island) to Dragon Resurrection, which is based on Dark Horse’s popular graphic novel. We recently had the chance to catch up with studio CEO Lin Zhang to find out about DeZerlin’s plans for 2023 and beyond.

Making New Plans

“There is quite a different DeZerlin after Covid,” says Zhang. “This year, we’ll be celebrating our 13th anniversary. Our goal was to be a pioneer in the international market. When we started our business with the Dark Horse co-venture, Dragon Resurrection [the pitch described it as Jurassic Park meets Mission Impossible — was action-adventure with a

sci-fi twist]. That’s how I began working with Mark Byers and it was very encouraging. It inspired me that we can enter the global market. The success of Monkey King proved to capital investors that an international movie can make money worldwide. So, Mark and I worked together and created a slate of ideas for animated movies and TV shows.”

Zhang points out that although animation is still considered in its early days in China, DeZerlin felt like it was a rocket ready to be launched. “We have a lot of local talent, ready for the global market. Our banks had a lot of confidence in us,” he says. “But when the epidemic hit, we were forced to downsize three times. We had to tell our staff that they had to leave the company or hang in with us until we got more funding. These past couple of years, only a few companies survived in our industry. But we’re ready to bounce back with new opti-

mism and strong plans for the future.”

As Byers tells us, “We were in production on our animated feature Watch the Skies. We also signed Dean Semler (Oscar-winning cinematographer of Dances with Wolves, Maleficent and The Road Warrior) to direct Hawkins and Silver, which is a retelling of Treasure Island set in a steampunk world. That’s when the bottom dropped out. So now, we have made some changes and adapted our plans for a new post-pandemic era.”

According to Zhang and Byers, instead of producing Watch the Skies in CG animation, the producers are opting for a stylized 2D-animated feature. “When you are producing an animated movie in CG, you’re coming up against movies from Pixar, Disney and DreamWorks,” says Byers. “We were happy to be a 3D B-movie, but when all the money went away during the pandemic, we made this great decision to follow the Cartoon Saloon model: Let’s go back to the animatic and build a 2D movie from there. We had already recorded the voices with an A-list cast, so now the goal was to create an A-level 2D movie instead of a B-level 3D picture.”

“This is our first big animated movie, so we had a tough decision to make,” says Zhang.

“We changed it from 3D to 2D, but we didn’t want to downgrade it. The movie (which is now renamed St’aar Runner) was written and in production for many years, and the market changes. The audience is hungry for a new look, and we are hoping to deliver a visually impressive entertainment.”

Another top priority for DeZerlin is an intriguing sci-fi fantasy series Phoenix Rising (working title). Described as a high-concept project where heroic forces fight kaiju monsters (StarCraft meets Pacific Rim!), this series has strong support from the Chinese government. “We have lots of support from the city of Zibo, which is famous for its ceramic industry,” explains Zhang. “Our heroes use ceramic weapons to fight the alien monsters, so we were very pleased when we got support from the city and they gave DeZerlin the opportunity to promote their culture and famous ceramic products.”

Zhang points out that because investments in TV and movie projects are considered highrisk in China these days, a good script and support from the government can really increase the value and popularity of a project. “We are lucky in many ways as the government has given us a lot of support without

The Feature Slate at a Glance

St’aar Runner. A coming-of-age sci-fi adventure about an alien boy who crashes on Earth, and along with his plucky young human companions, must find the parts to reassemble his ship. (In production.)

Utopia by the Sea. Inspired by 400-year-old classic tales from Pu Songling, a young half-human half-fairy boy defies his father and makes a perilous journey to the legendary Utopia to bring his mother back to life. (In pre-production.)

Hawkins and Silver An adventurous young boy torn between a dull stepfather and a charismatic scoundrel discovers a map to buried pirate treasure. (Active development.)

Codename: Furball. London, 1940: As WWII rages, an unlikely group of former pets are trained as secret agents, and one young cat rises to the challenge. (Active development.)

watering down the creative and artistic aspects of our projects,” he notes.

“The Chinese government’s policies have changed over the past few years and have become much more supportive of the animation industry,” adds Byers. “In the west, we are used to cobbling up financing from presales, tax rebates, outside investors, etc., but in China, government support on a municipal, province or state level gives more comfort to private investors. Once the government gives its seal of approval with money, then other investors are encouraged to jump in.”

On the TV side, DeZerlin is developing a fun retro 2D series titled Spider vs. Fly. “It’s our attempt to be very commercial,” says Byers. “It follows a spider and a fly as they battle each other in a mad scientist’s secret lab, so they are fighting each other with all kinds of weapons. They can build fantastic weapons, time travel, etc. It’s a dialog-free comedy and is a throwback to everyone’s favorite Tom & Jerry and Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons!”

Another interesting venture is DeZerlin’s local talent incubator Hot Pot! Cartoon, an innovative collaboration with animation veteran Fred Seibert and his FredFilms production shingle. Zhang, Byers and Seibert will supervise a select group of creators as they develop 10 animated shorts, which will be distributed globally as an anthology series.

For now, the studio is casting a wide net hoping to attract international interest in their rich collection of animated projects. “We are looking at partnerships in the Canary Islands, Canada and Europe,” says Zhang. “When someone from outside of China says they are interested in our projects, it can act as a catalyst for more interest. It can also change the dynamics locally. We are ready to form mutually beneficial partnerships that will help us bring new and exciting animated content to the world. We want everyone to get to know the new post-COVID DeZerlin.” ◆

For more info, visit dezerlin.com.

“We are lucky in many ways as the government has given us a lot of support without watering down the creative and artistic aspects of our projects.”

- Lin Zhang, Founder & CEO, DeZerlin Media

Remembering Three Fathers of the CG Revolution

- By Tom Sito -

As we embark on the first quarter of 2023, we must note the passing of three pivotal figures in the CGI Revolution over the past year. At a time when most of the public thought of a computer as something only Dr. Strangelove or a James Bond villain used, they blazed a trail for future CGI development. Each one has been referred to as a Father of Computer Animation:

Ken Knowlton (1931-2022). Back when everyone’s phone was made by one company, Ken Knowlton was a director of the research design dept. at Bell Labs. He became interested in computers at Cornell and joined Bell Labs research unit to explore creating sound and image digitally. Knowlton realized he could create detailed images by stringing together dots, letters and numbers. Its brightness and closeness to each other affected the look of the final image, like dots of ink on newsprint.

In the mid 1960s Ken wrote an early computer graphics program called BEFLIX, for Bell Flicks. In 1967, Dr. Knowlton and another scientist named Harmon created a portrait of a nude made up of thousands of tiny electronic symbols. The Harmon-Knowlton Nude appeared in the NY Times as a portent of things to come. Dr. Knowlton advised and aided several experimental filmmakers Bell Labs brought in to expand the borders of digital art and sound. Artists like Mary Ellen Bute, Lillian Schwartz and Stan Vanderbeek.

Charles Csuri (1922-2022) was a decorated hero of the Battle of the Bulge in WW2 and a college football star. He became an abstract-expressionist artist who associated with Jackson Pollock and Roy Lichtenstein. In George Segal’s seminal 1966 scuarlpture The Diner, Chuck Csuri was the model for the man at the counter.

Csuri was already a full professor in the Fine Art school of Ohio State University, when he began a dialogue with a colleague in the Engineering school about the possibilities of computers. “I was intrigued with the idea of using devices and strategies to create art,” he noted. In 1968, he created Hummingbird, the first film of an organic creature -- not an abstract or a geometric shape. “We had one computer for the entire school … as output for the graphics, you received boxes of punch cards,” he said.

Hummingbird looks crude today, but it was a breakthrough in its time. Csuri did some of the earliest digital abstract sculpture using equipment normally used in automobile design (CADAM). However, many of the university’s art faculty felt threatened by computers, so Chuck Csuri resigned his tenured position to start the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design at Ohio State. (ACCAD). Pupils of his include Wayne Carlson, Joan Stately, Tom DeFanti and Chris Wedge (Ice Age, Bunny). In the 1980s, Chuck Csuri also headed a CGI commercial house, Cranston/Csuri.

Eugene Troubetzkoy (1931-2022). Descended from an ancient Russian family, he was entitled to be called Prince Troubetzkoy. He studied at Columbia University and the Sorbonne to be a nuclear physicist. He became fascinated with exploring the physics of

light which had him soon creating simulations on film of nuclear particle behavior. “In nuclear physics you follow neutrons,” he said. “With 3D, you follow the light.”

Troubetzkoy joined the NY based computer company MAGI/SynthaVision. He was the director of advanced projects when MAGI/SynthaVision created the early digital effect for Walt Disney’s Tron (1982); however, MAGI closed soon after Disney withdrew their funding after the weak initial performance of Tron Troubetzkoy joined with MAGI vets Chris Wedge, Michael Ferraro, Alison Brown, David Brown and Carl Ludwig to form Blue Sky. At Blue Sky, Troubetzkoy created the game changing ray-tracing program they used in the Oscar winning short Bunny, and later the hit Ice Age. In 2017, Troubetzkoy, Ludwig, and Maurice van Swaaij received an Academy’s Sci-Tech Award for their groundbreaking work. Each from very different backgrounds, the achievements of these three people helped to create the way we all experience media today. They were true digital pathfinders and so deserve to be remembered. ◆

Tom Sito is an animator and professor at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Moving Innovation, A History of Computer Animation (MIT Press, 2013) which is still considered the best overall view of the history of computer animation.

Ken Knowlton

Charles Csuri

Eugene Troubetzkoy

Autonomous Animator Double-Up Your 2023

- by Martin Grebing -

Now that the New Year has been ushered in and the dust from the holiday frenzy has settled, it’s time to re-focus on your career and set firm goals for the upcoming year.

Instead of just eking by, scrambling to pay the bills and accepting any and every toxic client that comes your way just to try and make ends meet, why not set your goals this year to increase your income and profits by 20%? Or 50%? What about actually doubling your income this year?

Sound too lofty? Well, truth be told, once you break down the apparent enormity of doubling your income into simple, recipe-like concepts, you may realize it’s much more feasible than you might have initially thought. The process involves somewhat obvious strategies (once realized) and the simplest of math equations. Believe it or not, in some cases, doubling your income may not even require additional work. This being the case, what’s holding you back? Here are three simple approaches that you can start immediately which could make 2023 your best year ever:

Option 1: Double Your Rates. This may sound obvious if not impractical, but you may be surprised how much more money quality clients are willing to pay above and beyond what you think they are willing to pay. Most independent professionals undercharge their services because they think it increases the chance of landing more projects. What this does, in actuality, is overload you with small projects and cheap clients that will try to nickel and dime you to death, thereby keeping you overwhelmed with producing work at cut-rate prices.

On the other hand, doubling your rates overnight for existing long-time clients will

certainly generate some blowback, so the best approach for this option is to send advance notice to your existing clients of a future rate increase (test the waters, but I suggest keeping the increase milder, somewhere around 25%), while doubling your advertised rates for all new clients.

This may sound too easy, but simplicity is the hallmark of genius. For example, one of my clients who had been running a moderately successful business for over 10 years made absolutely no changes other than doubling his prices and he achieved record sales that very same year and more importantly — record

than you can handle alone, subtract the amount of money you will need to pay independent contractors to produce the additional work and increase the target number of additional projects you will need to land to compensate for this expense.

Again, this approach may seem fairly obvious when seeing it in print, but so few people ever come to the realization that it is even possible, much less commit to achieving this particular goal. Without the awareness or commitment necessary to doubling your projects, it will never happen.

Option 3: Double Your Efficiency. The last and all-too-often overlooked way to double your earnings is to work smarter, faster and more cost-effectively. Analyze your entire workflow from top to bottom and see what can be replaced with better performing, more cost-effective solutions.

profits. He offered the exact same product and the exact same service, doubled his prices, doubled his earnings and ultimately even gained more new clients than he lost.

Option 2: Double Your Projects. If you produce twice the number of projects of similar scope and budget without raising your rates a penny, you will subsequently double your income. To achieve this, you can either pitch and land twice as many projects with your current client list or you can land twice as many new clients. In reality, this option will probably end up being a blend of the two: more projects with existing clients, plus acquiring new projects from new clients.

If you choose to double your projects, keep in mind that you will also need to double your labor to cover the new projects. If this is more

For example, if it costs $3 to make $4 (resulting in a profit of $1 for every $4 earned) and you can find a way to reduce your costs, i.e. be more efficient by 33%, suddenly your costs to make $4 drops to $2, resulting in a profit of $2 for every $4 earned, thereby doubling your profits without raising your rates, landing more clients, or working on more projects.

If you are serious about doubling your earnings this year, choose an option listed above (or for exponential results, implement all 3), plug in your own numbers, commit to this goal and don’t look back. You may find that doubling your income is easier and more attainable than you ever imagined, and you might need to set your goals even higher in 2024.

Martin Grebing is the president of Funnybone Animation Studios. He can be reached at funnyboneanimation.com.

Tweedlee and Tweedledum know the value of doubling up efforts. (Alice in Wonderland, courtesy of Walt Disney Animation Studios)

This month, we had the great pleasure of checking in with Bradley Zweig, the talented exec producer/story editor of the Nickelodeon’s new PAW Patrol spinoff series Rubble & Crew. He was happy to share some of the highlights of his ultimutt day at the pawffice. 2 1

Majoomdar (coordinator), Kim Hurdon (voice director), Pamela Torbey (audio engineer) and Shazdeh Kapadia (voice of Mix) — makes every day a great adventure.

Our talented voice actor Luxton Handspiker does a grrrrreat job of delivering Rubble’s lines with that special English Bulldog panache.

We never miss the chance to catch our favorite hockey team in action! (With Dave Watson, Vaishni Majoombar and supervising director Joey So.)

4

Since we’re a construction show, I start my day with coffee while wearing a hard hat. Safety first!

I try to staff the writers’ room with writers that really understand the characters.

This terrific pack — (top, from left) Vaishni

The dynamic actor Alessandro Pugiotto brings the character Charger to life in the recording booth.

3 Sometimes I get into heated conversations with the writers about stories.

Voice actor Liam McKenna gives us some top-notch readings for his character (Wheeler).

9 Time for a snack break with some of our talented Spin Master team — producer Gill Pike, Vaishni Majoombar and Joey So.

Photos by Vaishni Majoomdar and Gillian Pike