Animation Magazine - November 2022 - #324

FLOATING AWAY

Writer-director Hiroyasu Ishida’s acclaimed feature Drifting Home celebrates the strange magic of everyday life.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

CARETAKERS OF THE LAND 14

Native creator Karissa Valencia shares the magic of her fantastic new series Spirit Rangers

HAPPY, SHINY AND GRATEFUL! 16

Apple TV+ introduces us to the bright, colorful world of Sago Mini Friends

GOTHAM, START YOUR ENGINES! 18

It’s full speed ahead for the showrunners behind Cartoonito’s new DC preschool show Batwheels

MAINFRAME EMBARKS ON NEW ADVENTURES 20

The studio famous for launching the first CG-animated series rediscovers the magic of 2D!

MAGICAL CREATURE RETURNS

THE END IS THE BEGINNING IS THE END!

creator of Victor and Valentino looks back at

and evolution of his popular

SEASON OF WONDER

Adam Yaniv, creator of WildBrain’s charming new series Summer Memories, discusses his creative journey.

EVENT SPOTLIGHT

THE THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE RULES!

Guillermo

ANIMATION BUYERS

HENRY SELICK

COVER:

Guava

LIGHTBOX

Toon Boom’s Storyboard

and Harmony

empower artists to create great stories in amazing animated

Daisuke Tsutsumi discusses the inspiration and artistry of Tonko

Storyboard

Deliciously Demonic

t might be 79 degrees outside in L.A., but we know fall is kicking into high gear as the studios begin to open up their bags of precious award season fare and festival gems. Our cover story this month is none other than the Netflix release Wendell & Wild, Henry Selick’s long-awaited follow-up to his 2009 stop-motion classic Coraline. Selick, who has been working in the toon business since the days of The Fox and the Hound and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, is the rare kind of artist who is loved and respected by both diehard fans and general audiences who discovered him with his stop-motion epics The Night mare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. His latest effort also incorporates the talents of Jordan Peele, who has quickly become one of the most innovative masters of the horror genre after directing three stylish films. What we have is one of the most original ani mated offerings of a year rich with titles that take a chance and push the limits of the genre with gusto.

The talented Mr. Selick is also one of the eight brilliant industry veterans who will receive Animation Magazine’s Hall of Fame honors in November. The 2022 class also in cludes Sony Animation president Kristine Belson, Jorge R. Gutierrez (The Book of Life, Maya and the Three), Nickelode on and Paramount Animation president Ramsey Naito, Pe ter Ramsey (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Lost Ollie), Mark Swift (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish), Genndy Tarta kovsky (Primal, Samurai Jack, Dexter’s Laboratory) and TeamTO (International Studio of the Year). We are thrilled to have these talented folks at the opening night gala event of our World Animation Summit at The Garland in N. Hollywood. Our event director Kim Derevlany is working long hours to make sure this year’s Summit is one of the most star-studded, insightful and jam-packed animation outings ever! (You can find out more by visiting animation magazine.net/summit.)

We also seem to have a rich harvest of new animated shows arriving on streaming and linear outlets this month. Among the many new toons we are spotlighting in this issue are ONI: Thunder God’s Tale (Net flix), Spirit Rangers (Netflix), Sago Mini Friends (Apple TV+) Batwheels (Cartoon Network) and Abominable and The Invisible City (Peacock, Hulu). This issue also includes a lovely look back at three glorious seasons of Victor and Valentino written for us by the show’s passionate creator, Diego Molano. It’s truly a great honor to be able to cast a light on all these talented artists and their highly original visions.

Don’t forget that next month’s issue is our giant tabloid-size edition, which kicks off our annual Award Season coverage. You won’t want to miss this special collector’s issue, so make sure you place your orders and renew your subscriptions if you need to! That’s it for now. We hope you have a super fun and spooky month of October. We know that Henry Selick and the demons of Wendell & Wild will be disappointed if you don’t!

“Lauren Caspian is NPR’s third most popular host. He’s a well-meaning, hypocritical nimrod, just like you and me. He’s also a stop motion puppet. Lauren collaborates with a diverse crew of NPR staff. They are also

Sketches

Wild

Wendell

November Must-Have List

Movie Madness: Revisit summer’s blockbusters with the recent home video releases of Illumination’s Minions: The Rise of Gru [Universal | $20 DVD, 25 BD, $27 4K], the No. 1 animated feature at the box office this year; Pixar’s Lightyear [Disney | $30 DVD, $35 BD, $40 4K], telling the origin story of Toy Story’s famous Space Ranger; the hairy heroics of Warner Bros.’ DC League of Super-Pets [$35 DVD, $40 BD, $50 4K | Oct. 4]; and the furry-ously feudal action-comedy Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank [Paramount | $26 DVD, $35 | Oct. 18] — or, punch things up with the latest animated Earthrealm showdown, Mortal Kombat Legends: Snow Blind [WB | $30 4K | Oct. 11].

Those in the mood for more gentle, imported animation artistry can visit The House of the Lost on the Cape [Shout! Factory | $27 BD] — a beautiful, award-winning feature from Japan’s David Prod. about a teen runaway and a young orphan who find comfort with an elderly lady and her fabled house, which is home to other, more supernatural guests.

On the episodic front, Cartoon Network fans will want to snap up complete series DVD reissues of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends [$80] and Ed, Edd ‘n Eddy [$70] in the wake of The Great HBO Max Toon Purge, both due for release on Oct. 18. The new adventures of CN’s lovable ursine urbanites also roll out in We Baby Bears: The Magical Box [$20 | Oct. 35].

Anime lovers should sprint over to RightStuf to snap up the Demon Slayer -Kimetsu No Yaiba- Mugen Train Arc Limited Edition Blu-ray set [$90], which includes epi sodes 1-7 of the original story of Kyojuro’s journey, plus 70 new scenes, music tracks, previews and theme songs by LiSA, special booklets, OST CD and more!

Binge-Watch Bucket List: This summer, Bloomsbury issued a second, revised edition of 100 Animated Feature Films, penned by filmcraft journo Andrew Osmond for the British Film Institute imprint. Re-ranked with titles released since the first edition (as well as updated entries for return champs), the 230+ page reference offers a balanced selection of blockbusters, artistic indies and local breakthroughs. From cover pick The Red Turtle to Frozen, Akira, Anomalisa, Spider-Verse, Princess Kaguya, Song of the Sea, The Triplets of Belleville and The LEGO Movie, readers can explore in-depth histories and criticism in an illuminating world tour of animated achievement, accompanied by 70 color and black & white illustrations. [bloomsbury.com | $27 PB, $90 HC, $25 EB]

Cartoon Voices of the Golden Age, 1930-70 Vol. 1

The Art of Love, Death + Robots

A treasure trove of production artwork and BTS tales from the first three vol umes of the acclaimed Netflix anthology. [Ramin Zahed | Titan Books | $45]

Explore the earliest days of the craft and meet the uncredited artists that brought iconic characters to life before TV.

[Keith Scott | BearMan or | $48]

Disney Princess: Beyond the Tiara

Concept art, memorabilia and original interviews put you in the glass slip pers of your favorite fairy tale heroines, their histo ries and legacies.

[Emily Zemler | Epic Ink | $40] ◆

Animation Planner August

1Seek out the next breakthrough animated feature at the American Film Market in Santa Monica this week. [americanfilmmarket.com]

4One Piece Film Red, the highly anticipat ed 15th film in Eiichiro Oda’s hit franchise, launches in the U.S. & Canada on Crunchy roll today.

9

Disney+ viewers can return to a modern animal metropolis in Zootopia+, streaming six original shorts featuring characters from the Oscar-winning movie.

13

Britain’s buzz-worthy Manchester Animation Festival is a great way to get out of the autumn weather this week. [manchesteranimationfestival.co.uk]

27

Catch a special preview of Dan Harmon’s NFT-backed Ancient Greece spoof Krapopolis on FOX tonight ahead of its 2023 launch.

Facets presents the 39th Chicago Int’l Children’s Film Festival, offering nearly three whole weeks of diverse shorts and features for ages 2-25 in-person and online. [facets.org/cicff]

6Join us for The World Animation Summit at The Garland in N. Hollywood for four days of inspiration, information and networking, capped by the star-studded Hall of Fame Awards gala! [animationmagazine.net/summit]

17Students, aspiring animators and pros alike can learn tricks of the trade and find artistic inspiration at the CTN Animation eXpo in Burbank. North of the border, indie animation showcase GIRAF begins another wild edition in Calgary. [ctn-events.com | giraffest.ca]

29

CBS premieres its original animated Christmas special Reindeer in Here tonight, directed by Lino DiSalvo and animated by JamFilled.

7Across the pond, Portugal’s esteemed Cinanima festival kicks off a week-long 46th edition in Espinho. [cinanima.pt]

18Dive into the history and legacy of the original cartoon star with the new docu men tary Mickey: The Story of a Mouse, which premieres globally on Disney+ today with a brand-new animated short. Netflix will also launch the Dickens musical Scrooge: A Christmas Carol in select theaters ahead of its global streaming release next month.

Mickey: The Story of a Mouse

TBA

Scrooge: A Christmas Carol

23Oscar winner Don Hall leads us into a Strange World in Disney’s latest original animated feature, voice starring Jake Gyllenhaal.

To get your company’s events and products listed

this monthly

We’ll finally get to see more Cartoon Saloon magic in Nora Twomey’s My Father’s Dragon, which will get a stream ing and select theatrical release from Netflix this month. ◆

Strange World

Reindeer in Here

My Father’s Dragon

Henry Selick Faces His New Demons!

The Oscar-nominated director discusses his inspirations for Wendell & Wild and making a super weird, PG-13 horror movie.

- By Devin Nealy -

Observant fans can easily trace the chains of inspiration linking a contemporary artist to an ac claimed master from the past.

For veteran animator and direc tor Henry Selick, working in stop motion has cre ated a portal to his youth and childhood inspira tions. “[As a kid] my mother liked to show me scary stuff,” says the Oscar-nominated director. “She took me to see a Ray Harryhausen film.”

The impression that Harryhausen and his litany of iconic monsters made on a young Selick cata lyzed his prolific career in the medium of stop-mo tion animation. “For me, at that age, [the mon sters] seemed totally real,” he says. “there was a part of me that knew those things exist.”

With an expansive array of classic movies to his name — including Coraline, The Nightmare Before Christmas and the upcoming Wendell & Wild on Netflix —  Henry Selick has built a body of work comparable to his childhood influence in Harry hausen. So much so that several current filmmak ers, such as the esteemed Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us, Nope), who serves as co-writer and executive producer on Wendell & Wild, have been inspired by Selick’s filmography. “We met up, and it turned

out [Jordan] was a huge fan of stop-motion ani mation,” recounts Selick. “He knew all of my stuff. The logo for his company [Monkeypaw Produc tions], it’s stop-motion animation.”

Through a mutual affinity for their respective creative outputs, Selick and Peele put their heads together to craft the delightfully gothic world of Wendell & Wild. The film follows Kat, a troubled teenage orphan, as she enters a creepy new school. Before she can settle into the environ ment, two demon brothers (the titular Wendell and Wild) drag Kat into their mischievous scheme to create a spooky amusement park. Wendell and Wild’s plan places Kat on a path to confront her past and unravel the trauma that destroyed her life and hometown.

“The studio was based in Milwaukie, Oregon, which is part of greater Portland,” Selick notes. “Portland has always been a stop-motion hub, go ing back to Will Vinton Studios, which was ulti mately acquired by Laika. Will Vinton was a pio neer of claymation techniques and through his studio, a community of talented artists and stop-motion animators blossomed in Portland, which continues to fuel the industry that is still here today.”

The film, which is produced by Selick, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Peele and Win Rosenfeld features an impressive voice cast that includes Keegan-Mi chael Key, Peele, Lyric Ross, Angela Bassett, James Hong, Tamara Smart, Natalie Martinez, Tantoo Cardinal and Ving Rhames.

A Walk on the Wild Side

Prior to Peele’s involvement, Selick had been developing Wendell & Wild — loosely based on a sketch of his two sons — since 2003. After becom ing a fan of Peele’s comedy duo with Keegan-Mi chael Key in 2012, Selick began contemplating the prospect of a future collaboration. “I’m not known for comedy,” says Selick, “but I would love to have some of that in a project.” When Selick reached out to Key and Peele, he got a chance to witness the latter’s now famous creative fire first hand. “ A critical thing is that Jordan wanted to do more,” says Selick. “He wanted to be a producer … and he asked me to pitch him some ideas. And the first one up was Wendell & Wild.”

Although initially lured by Peele’s talents as a comedian, Selick found himself more impressed by his command of narrative. “I think Jordan’s

greatest genius was shaping the story,” insists Se lick. “Early on, it was an even wilder, weirder film,” he says, “and then new executives came on in ani mation, and it was too wild and weird for them.”

Through tailoring the film for the new executives, Selick found Peele’s mind to be an invaluable resource. “Jordan was great,” he says, “he was so great at interacting with these new executives from Dream Works, and they were shocked to find we were doing a PG13, crazy ass movie.” With Peele’s aid, Selick found that trying to retain Wendell & Wild’s playfully chaotic energy wouldn’t be as arduous as he imagined. “[Jordan] was especially good at re shaping and addressing [the execu tive’s] needs and not hurting the movie.”

One of Peele’s primary alter ations to Wendell & Wild was bol stering its diversity and representa

tion. “In talking about our film, [Jordan] said he just would love for a stop-motion film to be made and represent the kind of film he wished he could’ve seen as a kid, with characters like himself on screen,” says Selick. With representa tion in mind, Peele and Selick decided on the vibrant aesthetic of Afro-Punk for their protago nist, Kat.

“[Afro-Punk] is this bridge between late ‘70s, 1980s Black punk music, of which there was quite a lot, and sort of this modern take on that type of music, but with new, amazing fashions,” says Selick. “It’s an outsider group. It’s never been a mainstream thing,” he says, “and that re ally spoke to me and to Jordan.”

In addition to arriving at the aesthetic organ ically, Selick serendipitously discovered a per sonal connection to Afro-Punk through a foun dational band in the scene called Fishbone. “I met them in the 1980s. And I wrote and directed a music video of one of their songs called ‘Party at Ground Zero,’” he says.

Selick’s personal tether to the scene’s early roots also helped inform Kat’s design and charac terization. “The lightning bolt moment was more than about look; it was going to be about how she

connected with her father,” says Selick. “It wasn’t so much that [Kat] was a super rebel. It was her version of loving [her] dad.”

Although Peele (who also voices Wild) and his seemingly inexhaust ible ideas relating to narrative may have caught Selick by surprise, his comedic talents did not. “I went to [Jordan] in the first place because I was just desperate to have some of what he and Kee gan-Michael comedically could do. I wanted that fla vor in a film I worked on,” he says. “[In the recording studio] he’d be with Keegan-Michael, and those guys would just come to life and riff and re write. We have hours of amazing stuff, and we videotaped it all.”

The Devil’s in the Details

Wendell & Wild boasts distinctive char acter designs inspired by Selick’s sketches and refined by the immensely talented

“I think Jordan [Peele]’s greatest genius was shaping the story. Early on, it was an even wilder, weirder film, and then new executives came on board, and it was too wild and weird for them. They were shocked to find we were doing a PG-13, crazy ass movie.”

— Writer-director Henry Selick

NIGHTMARE BEFORE HALLOWEEN: Scheming demon brothers Wendell (KeeganMichael Key) and Wild (Jordan Peele) enlist the aid of tough teen Kat to summon them to the Land of the Living.

Paul

NOT AFRAID OF THE DARK: A fan of classic horror movies, Henry Selick makes films for brave children of all ages — “for the child at heart who wants to get scared,” as he has said.

Pablo Lobato. When it came to the process of ani mating the characters, Selick wanted to keep his team lean. “We had a small team on Nightmare Before Christmas, and I wanted to try and get back to that,” says Selick. “The main group was about 120 people.”

“We did a lot of visual effects in post,” recalls Selick, “because we shot a lot of bluescreen back grounds. We had to create a lot of worlds in the backgrounds.” Although the size of Wendell & Wild’s team harkens back to his time on The Night mare Before Christmas, Selick is grateful for the technological leaps within the industry between the ‘90s and today. “We shot on film back then,” says Selick, “but we did bring motion control, com puter control, into Nightmare in a big way.”

As the digital approach he pioneered in Night mare evolved over the decades, so did Selick’s pro verbial bag of tricks. “[During the ’90s] if a charac ter was jumping, or something’s flying through the air, we had to suspend it,” says Selick. “We used this stuff called spider wire — it’s so thin the camera can’t see it — because that’s all we could do. So, you’d have a rig above it and wires down, and you’re winding it up to make them jump and wind ing it down.”

Even though there’s a twinkle in his eye while discussing former filmmaking techniques, Selick can’t suppress his appreciation for the modern method. “[Now] we can have a character jump, and there’s a metal arm that it’s on. [It’s] much easier, “ he says. “We can now digitally paint that out. You

shoot a clean plate with nothing behind it, and then some artists just have to paint out that rig. So that gave a huge boost.”

The benefits of digital filmmaking ex tend beyond post-production for Selick, as he considers the dwindling size of the cameras themselves a tremendous boon. “The film cameras, the 35mm, were big, heavy machines,” he says. “They were these Mitchell cameras, which you could buy cheap because they were obsolete, but really good for animation.”

“We went to digital cameras, [which] are much smaller,” says Selick. “So they can go through windows and doors and things.” The increased mobility of the cameras helped produce several jaw-dropping shots within Wendell & Wild

And while digital filmmaking provides many practical solutions, it’s not without drawbacks. “One of the downsides is that ... you’re capturing every frame,” says Se lick. “So, animators may be on a long shot — we call it navel-gazing — they’ll look at their first 15 frames over and over and over,” he says. “They lose their forward momentum, which we used to have more easily. We sort of have to push them along and say, ‘Stop looking in the rearview mirror; you have the whole shot ahead of you.’“

Even after decades in the industry, Henry Se lick’s excitement for the medium of stop motion is as palpable as the joy he derives from the commu

nal aspect of its creation. “It’s a whole army fo cused on getting one thing done,” says Selick. “We have a whole lot of shots going on at once, all behind these black duvetyne curtains to prevent the light from spilling. And it’s just what I was meant to do, to work with a team like that.” ◆

Wendell & Wild premieres on Netflix on October 28.

Floating Away

Writer-director Hiroyasu Ishida’s acclaimed feature Drifting Home celebrates the strange magic of everyday life.

- By Charles Solomon -

“W

e tear down build ings and construct new ones at a very rapid pace in Ja pan, so there are many children who’ve had to leave the houses in which they were brought up,” says writer-di rector Hiroyasu Ishida. “I have a similar nostal gia for the house in which I was born. I think many people can understand what these char acters are going through.”

Drifting Home, which premiered on Netflix last month, centers on a search for a vanished home and the memories it embodies. Ishida came to international attention in 2018 with Penguin Highway, a charming fantasy-adven ture based on the novel by Tomihiko Morimi. Drifting Home is an original work created by Ishida with co-writer Hayashi Mori. The direc tor discussed his new feature in an interview conducted via email.

Heart of the Tale

Ishida discovered that creating a story was a very different process from adapting an al ready existing property. “The most challeng ing aspect of creating everything from scratch

was trying to figure out the core of the story and the emotional core of the characters,” he explains. “Those elements are already present in a novel, so it’s just a matter of bringing them into the screenplay. But working from zero was really a process of asking myself, ‘What do I want to tell in this story?’”

The idea for the film came from a vision Ishida had of an apartment building floating in the sea. He and Mori began to develop a story through a creative give-and-take. “Morisan would give me a few very interesting ideas that I would mull over and integrate into the story, like having the children use a Ferris wheel to pull the apartment building when it was about to sink or just the names of the secondary characters,” he adds.

Kosuke (voiced by Mutsumi Tamura) and Natsume (Asami Seto), who just completed sixth grade, have been friends since they were small. After her parents’ divorce, Natsume spent almost all her time in Kosuke’s home, rather than stay with her flighty mother. Ko suke and a group of friends sneak into the abandoned apartment complex where he, Natsume and his beloved grandfather Yasuji (Bin Shimada) once lived. Already slated for

demolition, the building is rumored to be haunted. Just who is the mysterious boy Nop po (Ayumu Murase) people see there?

“The kind of a residential complex we call a danchi is particular to a certain era in Japan and might feel very foreign to American audi ences,” he cautions. “But it is only a symbol: You can project things that were very precious to you but no longer exist onto it.”

Despite Ishida’s concern, American anime fans will immediately recognize Kosuke’s danchi as one of the large apartment com plexes built during the ‘60s economic boom. Countless anime adventures have taken place in them: The small rooms, long hallways and metal doors feel as familiar as the suburban houses in live-action sitcoms. Until some thing very strange occurs.

Kosuke and his friends discover the build ing has somehow begun floating through an empty sea with them as unwilling passengers. Natsume and Kosuke display the determina tion and resourcefulness that made them leaders of their class soccer team: They raid passing buildings for food and try to steer the apartment house toward shore. But the stress of their predicament brings out buried emo

tional issues. Natsume blames herself for her parents’ separation; Kosuke’s family provided the only real home she’s ever known. Kosuke quarreled with her when his grandfather was hospitalized — he still feels guilt and anger over the incident.

Aoyama, the hero of Penguin Highway, was an extremely precocious aspiring scientist; Kosuke is a more everyday kid. Smart, but not brilliant; sensible and good-natured, but with a bit of a temper. Ishida comments, “In the novel Penguin Highway, Aoyama is depicted as an exceptional boy. In Drifting Home, I wanted to draw a contrast with Aoyama: I wanted a normal boy who reminds us adults of what it was like to be in grade school. Ko suke is just a regular boy you can empathize with. I really do like the character.”

Like the kids in Penguin Highway, Kosuke, Natsume and their classmates must extricate themselves from a dangerous situation with out adult aid. “It makes the story more dramatic if it’s just the children trying to work together to solve their crisis on their own,” Ishida says. “As an adult looking into the story, you can’t help wanting them to figure this out — and wanting them to grow through that process.”

Although very different in tone, Penguin Highway and Drifting Home both suggest the everyday world may be richer — and stranger — than people realize. “Magic might exist just around the corner, if someone takes the trou ble to seek it.”

Universal Magic

“The world in Drifting Home is a world

grounded in reality, but there is a sense that there might be a magical world very nearby — all we have to do is turn around and look,” Ishida states. “I wanted to bring this sense to the visual design and to the way the story un folds. A sense that there’s something we hav en‘t seen and that if it were there, wouldn’t it be wonderful?”

Penguin Highway was nominated for Best Animation in the 42nd Japan Academy Film Prizes and won The Satoshi Kon Award for Ex cellence in Animation at the Fantasia Interna tional Film Festival in Montreal. When asked about how he hopes international audiences will respond to Drifting Home, Ishida con cludes, “When I was creating this story, I had in mind those who are very close to me and, by extension, a Japanese audience. It was very important to me to create a story that was within my territory, something that was very personal to me. But by telling a very personal story, I thought the film could cross cultural and national boundaries to become some thing universal.”

Drifting Home is currently streaming on Netflix.

“The world in Drifting Home is a world grounded in reality, but there is a sense that there might be a magical world very nearby — all we have to do is turn around and look.”

- Writer-director Hiroyasu Ishida

WASHED AWAY: A group of sixth graders float out to sea in a haunted apartment complex in Hiroyasu Ishida’s imaginative coming-of-age movie.

Oddball Gods and Monsters

Creator Daisuke Tsutsumi discusses the inspiration and artistry of Tonko House’s ONI: Thunder God’s Tale.

-

By Jennifer Wolfe -

ONI: Thunder God’s Tale, the new limited series from Tonko House, the indie studio behind the 2014 Oscar-nominated short The Dam Keeper, is one of the much-antici pated highlights of the fall season. The stop-motion-inspired, CG-animated series fea tures a lush and physically tangible world filled with the oddball gods and monsters of Japa nese mythology, where the free-spirited Onari — a brave young girl caught between two worlds divided — is determined to find her unique power that will allow her to protect her peaceful village from the encroaching threat of the gods’ mysterious enemies, the “Oni.”

The four-episode series was created by showrunner and Tonko House co-founder Dai suke “Dice” Tsutsumi, who grew up on tales of Japanese mythology in his native Japan. It was produced by Sara K. Sampson (Sonder), and executive produced by Tsutsumi alongside Tonko House co-founder Robert Kondo, who also served as production designer, and Tonko’s head of content, Kane Lee (Crow: The Legend, Namoo).

Inspired by a painting Tsutsumi created for an exhibition in Japan, ONI, he says, is his most personal project yet. “The painting I did was of characters from folklore I grew up with in

Japan,” he explains. “At the time, there wasn’t much of a story just yet, but I felt like I would love to share my childhood memories and the things I was excited about growing up — the stories that I loved — through my lens, through my perspective. Of course, it was just a paint ing. Who knew that it would turn into a 150-minute story?”

Fearing the Outsider

While Japanese folklore may have served as inspiration for ONI, the story is completely his own, says Tsutsumi, who was honored in 2021 with the June Foray Award at the 48th Annie Awards. Known as monsters or devils in Japa nese mythology, oni are typically portrayed as villains. But these monsters from ancient Ja pan, he notes, may have actually been outsid ers — either foreigners or indigenous commu nities with people who looked very different from the mainstream Japanese population.

“That concept really inspired me,” he recalls. “I felt like, ‘Yeah, that idea of humans fearing people who are different from themselves, that’s the same today.’ We live in a world where we still are afraid of people who look different or speak different languages or have different cultures.”

Initially conceived as a stop-motion pro

duction using puppets, ONI continued to evolve until it became apparent the studio would never be able to complete the series on time using painstaking stop-motion tech niques, and it would have to be done in CG.

“One of the reasons why it turned into a CG animation is that the story became much big ger and deeper than when I first started the project,” says Tsutsumi, recounting how once he started working with Japanese anime writ er and filmmaker Mari Okada (Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms, Anohana, The An them of the Heart, A Whisker Away), the project “turned into something that I was a lot more excited about and a lot more personally con nected with.”

No stranger to CG pipelines, the Tonko House co-founders originally met at Pixar, where they both worked as art directors on Monsters University. Building a solid founda tion in the studio production system they lat er carried to their new endeavor, Tsutsumi handled lighting design and character shad ing on the 2013 BAFTA-winning feature, while Kondo did set design and shading.

“We knew how CG animation production works, so we felt like, okay, if this is going to be our big stage, we have to execute it in the best way possible,” Tsutsumi says. “But be

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS:

cause we’re very familiar with CG, we also knew how difficult it is to make it look the way we wanted with the limited schedule and budget we had.”

Tonko House had originally partnered with Megalis VFX to handle effects for the stop-mo tion version of ONI, a relationship that ex panded following the decision to move to CG. The Tokyo-based studio, responsible for the overall look of the series, handled the bulk of the CG work, with additional animation pro vided by CG studios Anima and Marza.

With Tsutsumi responsible for character de sign and Kondo handling production design, the duo employed lighting to convey atmo sphere and emotional story beats. “From the beginning, my production designer Robert Kondo’s biggest goal was, can we make it feel warm and touchable, tactile? That’s the key words we used,” Tsutsumi says.

“Stop motion, which I really enjoy, is so much like live action when it comes to light ing, and we applied those ideas to our CG pro duction,” he continues. “We asked, ‘how can we learn from the stop-motion medium and ap ply that to a CG so that we can still make it feel tactile, make it feel believable, and use the light to tell the story?’”

Inspired by the work of classic Japanese

filmmakers such as Yasujirō Ozu, Tsutsumi took a cinematic approach to crafting ONI Ozu’s camerawork and pacing “are not neces sarily welcome in regular Western filmmak ing,” he said, but “Ozu’s sense of quietness, I wanted to bring that in.”

Tonko House also employed a feature film pipeline for ONI. “We had a producer, a direc tor, a production designer,” Tsutsumi points out, noting that he functioned more as direc tor rather than the typical showrunner over seeing a writer’s room.

As a character designer, Tsutsumi feels that stories should be through the perspective of characters’ personalities. “Character design is a little bit strange,” he laughs. “I can’t quite ask somebody else to design characters, but I might ask somebody else to make my design better. We had excellent designers, but they had to be my characters.”

Dare to be Different

Tonko House’s trademark “dot eyes,” as Tsut sumi calls them, are a crucial element of his designs, evoking his Japanese heritage in con trast to the large, rounded eyes of many West ern animated projects.

“I really had to fight for that,” he reveals. “I promised Netflix, ‘Hey, I understand your concern.

I assure you, we can convey emotion.’ I know they’re worried about how the dot eyes can con vey acting and emotions. I’m like, ‘I can guarantee you, we can do it, but you have to trust us.’

“I’m like, let the audience fill in the gaps. You don’t have to make all the characters look the same,” he says. “It’s very similar to, ‘Hey, Japanese people, your eyes are not the same as Caucasian people’s eyes.’ Animated charac ters should have a diversity in design. It doesn’t have to be the same.”

Like many independent animation studios, Tonko House has had its struggles, Tsutsumi acknowledges. “It’s a very difficult world. This industry is not very easy for independent stu dios, but I think our passion of wanting to tell our own stories just kept us going. Despite some of the dark days and difficult times we had, ONI has brought us to the stage we can be most proud of, and hopefully that leads to the next thing. We have many other dreams that we want to pursue, and ONI is the first step towards that. ONI wasn’t easy and we are still struggling to this day, but at least we can share that journey with everybody, hopefully soon, through Netflix.”

ONI: Thunder God’s Tale premieres on Netflix on October 21.

“I know they’re worried about how the dot eyes can convey acting and emotions. I’m like, ‘I can guarantee you, we can do it, but you have to trust us.’”

— Creator/EP Daisuke “Dice” Tsutsumi

According to exec producer Dice Tsutsumi, the four-part series

ONI: Thunder God’s Tale tells a story that is personal for him and for the creative team involved.

Caretakers of the Land

Native creator Karissa Valencia shares the magic of her fantastic new series Spirit Rangers.

By Ramin Zahed

When Karissa Valencia, the creator and showrunner of Netflix’s highly anticipated new preschool show Spirit Rangers, was a young girl, she rarely saw any Native American characters in children’s shows or movies. “I loved anima tion when I was a young girl, and I must admit when I saw Disney’s Pocahontas for the first time, I thought that was my everything,” recalls the creative 31-year old. “I still remember be ing so excited to meet [actress] Irene Bedard at one of our pow-wows. It was great to have that representation — but as I got older, I realized that the source material for that story was not so great, and the true story of Pocahontas is truly heartbreaking. That’s when I realized that I had to work to make that change and that true representation happen.”

Valencia praises the show’s producer, kids TV trailblazer Chris Nee, with whom she first worked as a writer’s assistant on Doc McStuff ins and later as a writer on Vampirina. “After Chris left for Netflix, I wrote up a two-page document on my computer, which became the basis for Spirit Rangers,” she recalls “I was real ly nervous because I didn’t know who to pitch it to and it meant a lot to me. Chris was on top of my list, because although she’s not Indige

nous, she does know what it feels to be oth ered and not to be seen on the screen. So, I went to visit her at her new job at Netflix. We were having lunch, and she asked me if I had something to pitch, and so I sent my idea to her, and literally the next morning, she emailed me and said, ‘I’m going to buy this and we’re going to pitch it to Netflix!’”

Authentic Voices

Before long, the streamer greenlit the show and Valencia was able to put together a writ ers room made up entirely of Native writers. The show’s beautifully produced CG anima tion is handled by Paris-based studio Super prod (Paddington, Batwheels). “They all got a Native American history class they’ve never asked for,” jokes Valencia. “We all learned so much, and they all have just gone like above and beyond making sure that the details, ev ery tribal print, every image is correct. They just really put their heart into it.”

She says prior to working on Doc McStuffins, she didn’t quite realize the breadth of stories one could tackle in children’s animation. “I re member it was my first day on the job and I read the script for ‘Hannah the Brave,’ which focuses on cancer,” she remembers. “I just didn’t know that was something you could do

in the preschool space. I loved the way Chris respects her audience and knows that they deserve these kinds of important stories.”

Valencia, who spent her Californian child hood going back and forth between a Chu mash reservation in the Santa Ynez Valley and her home in San Diego, hopes to bring the same kind of depth and authenticity to her new show. Spirit Rangers explores the adven ture and beauty of nature through the eyes of three Chumash/Cowlitz siblings who trans form into special spirit animals to save the national park they work and live in.

Many parts of the show resonate with her and her own upbringing. “I had gone to a bear ceremony for my tribe; we honor the bear ev ery season, our dancers put on their bear skins. The show’s central character Kodi kind of came to life for me, and then I added the other characters,” she remembers. “I also thought that a national park was a perfect setting. My dad and I loved to go hiking in the Santa Anas. I thought it was crazy that we never met an Indigenous park ranger, because we’re the original caretakers of this land.”

For Valencia, one of the most important goals of the show was to have an all-Native writing staff. “I am not ‘Queen Native’ by any means, and I really wanted multiple perspec

tives on our culture,” she explains. “It’s been just such a delight to learn about all the tribes from different corners of the country. Some of our stories are so similar and some of them are really different, but that’s one of the strengths of the show. As a little Chumash girl, I’m also so proud to really show off California tribes. We’ve never been represented like this. At the same time, I am also excited to show Native kids in a modern space. Kodi and her family don’t wear leather and feathers. They’re happy friends, they love to go on adventures and use modern technologies.”

Looking back, the young show creator says she put a lot of pressure on herself. “This is the first animated Native show created by a Native team,” she notes. “But I realized that this will not

be the last. There will be other shows and they’ll get better next time, and we’ll just keep moving forward. Another big step was, although the show is set in a Southern California park, it acts as a magical hub for spirits from all over the world, so we can have a lot of different tribes involved. We went out to consultants and elders and made sure that we were doing jus tice to their colors, designs and symbols. Every thing had to go through the right channels to make sure it was all accurate.”

Being the Change

One thing Valencia has learned is that hold ing her ground and demanding a lot from her team can yield golden results. “Take for exam ple what happened with one of our voice ac

tors,” she says. “I really wanted the young actor [Wačíngyeya Iwáš’aka Yracheta] who voices one of our leads (Kodi) to be on the show,” says Va lencia. “He sounded so cute, just like a bear cub, but he lived in the middle of nowhere in South Dakota, about a two-hour drive in the snow from the closest studio. Netflix could have easi ly said, ‘No, this is too hard,’ and picked some body else. But it was the exact opposite. They built him his own recording studio and then shipped it to him, so he could just walk to work. He’s now a very talented, working actor. So I’m glad I was able to hold my ground, and it was so awesome to see Netflix match that and see my team also go above and beyond.”

When asked about today’s Hollywood, where thoughtful and honest stories about the Native American experience are finally seeing the light of day, Valencia says she is very proud to be part of this new chapter. “Hollywood has been obsessed with Native cultures but they had not invited us to be part of it until recently,” says Valencia. “I am amazed that we went on for so long without seeing this in entertainment and so happy that it’s happening now. And hopefully, it will even be better for the next generation.”

Spirit Rangers premieres on Netflix on October 10.

“It’s been just such a delight to learn about all the tribes from different corners of the country. As a little Chumash girl, I’m also so proud to really show off California tribes. We’ve never been represented like this.”

— Creator & showrunner Karissa Valencia

PROTECTING THE PARKS: Native American siblings Kodi, Summer and Eddy are secret Spirit Rangers who help protect the national park they call home.

Happy, Shiny and Grateful!

Apple TV+ introduces us to the bright, colorful world of Sago Mini Friends.

Last month, young viewers tuning in to Apple TV+ discovered the color ful world of Harvey the dog, Jinja the cat, Jack the rabbit, Robin the bird and many other bright-eyed and bushy-tailed residents of Sago Mini Friends. The show, which is inspired by the hugely popular Sago Mini World app, is execu tive produced by award-winning kids’ toon veterans Jennifer Dodge (PAW Patrol), Ronnen Harary (PAW Patrol), Dustin Ferrer (Esme & Roy) and Tone Thyne (Wonder Pets!, Go! Go! Cory Carson). We caught up with Thyne to find out more about this charming show, which is produced by Spin Master Entertainment and animated by 9 Story Media’s Emmy-winning studio Brown Bag Films in Toronto:

So, first things first. How did you get involved with this show?

Tone Thyne: As VP of Creative at FableVision Studios, I both create original properties and collaborate with best-in-class studios and broadcasters on their existing projects. Two years ago, I had been simultaneously writing scripts on an Apple series while developing a different show with Spin Master. It was com pletely a case of “three great tastes that taste

great together” when Spin Master Entertain ment and Apple decided to bring me on as showrunner on the world’s most delightful series!

What do you love about the original app and the show it inspired?

I love that the beloved Sago Mini app sparks playful exploration, imagination and discov ery with gorgeously simple design, adorable characters and tons of spontaneous whimsy. It evokes pure joy.

In addition to each episode gently showcas ing the importance of gratitude, I love how the series beautifully harnesses the left-field playfulness of the app. I’d always say that it’s not a Sago story unless it features an every day scenario turned on its ear. Among others, a talking milk jug, a problem-solving log and a pair of garden gnomes (who get married ev ery Wednesday) join the lovable Harvey as he builds a hot dog car and parades it through town, sings a lullaby to a sleeping loaf of bread and uses a giant toothbrush to release a piece of broccoli from Jupiter’s teeth!

What was your biggest challenge as you set out to adapt the property?

In the end, the toughest part of the job be came the most rewarding for me. Together with Apple, our team had conceived an over arching curricular goal of showcasing “grati tude” in each episode. What a magnificent quality to inspire young viewers to adopt! The challenge was figuring out how to feature gratitude in ways other than characters sim ply saying the words, “thank you.” I worked re ally hard with the brilliant writing team, amazing songwriter, educational consultants and changemakers at Apple to figure out quite a variety of ways for the simple charac ters to express gratitude. In addition to using words that are relatives of “thank you,” our characters show their thankfulness with fa cial expressions, actions, body language and even tone of voice!

What about the visual influences and style of the show?

I adore how the colorful Sago Mini app show cases such an engaging simplicity bursting with visual charm. I and our extremely talent ed partners at Brown Bag Films were vigilant about paying homage to the app’s signature look and winning visual style. We carefully steered clear of reflections, shadows and

POSITIVE ENERGY:

Based on the popular game, Sago Mini Friends follows the colorful adventures of Harvey the floppy-eared dog, Jinja the cat, Jack the rabbit and Robin the bird.

depths of field that could even hint at a 3D technique. The crisp simplicity of the charac ter and background art emulates a bygone style of flat 2D animation while giving the show a fresh and striking look.

Can you tell us a little bit about who produces the animation?

Spin Master partnered with the wildly talent ed team of artists at Brown Bag Films in To ronto. I was thrilled to work (virtually) sideby-side with the amazing 95-member team led by director Chad Hicks and art director Sladjana Samardzija. Harvey and friends were able to run, jump, roller-skate, sip tea with tur

keys and dance to the tune emitted from a musical shoe thanks to Brown Bag’s expert use of Harmony.

Why do you think the original franchise is so popular?

As I mentioned before, the Sago Mini app sparks playful exploration, imagination and discovery with gorgeously simple design, adorable characters and tons of spontaneous whimsey. All of the games are designed so that young children can confidently explore on their own and really inspire open-ended play.

Which works are your biggest animation in fluences?

Clearly, I’m an enormous fan of simple visual storytelling. My greatest personal influences are the early animated short films featured on Sesame Street in the 1970s, the magnificently musical Schoolhouse Rock segments and just about every drawing and poem that ever fell out of Shel Silverstein’s pen.

What do you hope new audiences will get out of the show?

I know preschool viewers are growing up in a turbulent world, and my sincere hope for Sago Mini Friends is to be a ray of sunshine (or a bright and colorful rainbow spewed out of a singing unicorn’s horn) for them. I sincerely hope the show will playfully instill the impor tance of gratitude in a seamlessly delightful way, and I sincerely hope the show will spark imagination and emulate the five important Cs so beautifully showcased in the Sago Mini app: Curiosity, Creativity, Communication, Col laboration and Creative problem solving. ◆

The first season of Sago Mini Friends is cur rently streaming on Apple TV+.

Tone Thyne

Gotham, Start Your Engines!

It’s full speed ahead for the showrunners behind Cartoonito’s new DC preschool show Batwheels.

- By Karen Idelson

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more iconic comic character than Batman.

Whether in the pages of a graphic novel, animated series or live-action film, he’s a singular force. This fall, a new animated preschool series based in his world will make its debut. Produced by Warner Bros. An imation, Batwheels is actually the second project in the DC Universe to target preschoolers. (The first one was the 2005 show Krypto the Superdog!).

This very young take on everything Batman fo cuses on several young, powered up vehicles who work along with Batman, Robin and Batgirl to de fend the one and only Gotham City. They’re fight ing evil and also working out their conflicts and challenges as they go.

“That was really the key challenge right from the start,” says co-executive producer Michael G. Stern, an animation veteran whose credits include preschool shows as varied as Chuggington, Doc McStuffins and Sofia the First. “Sam Register, the head of the studio, challenged me to create some thing that would work wonderfully for preschool ers but also preserve the integrity — the cool — of Batman. There have been plenty of preschool su perhero shows, but they’ve always used babyish versions of the heroes. I think kids, even young ones, can see through this. They see a big-headed, kiddified version of a familiar superhero and they think, that’s not the character I know. They can see right through it!”

Cool on Wheels

“With  Batwheels, my idea was to keep Bat man the same cool character everyone knows and loves, and to create brand new characters — Batman’s vehicles — that would be the ‘kids’ of the show and allow our young audience to see the stories through their eyes,” he explains.

The creative team also needed to capture the look and feel of Batman’s world while making it appealing to a younger audience. This design challenge put the crew to the test with some fascinating results.

“We knew from the start  Batwheels was meant for a preschool audience and that it would be set at night — a pretty rare setting for this age group,” says the show’s supervising producer Simon J. Smith, who directed Bee Mov ie and Penguins of Madagascar. “With this in mind, we wanted to make sure potential view ers would gravitate to the screen if they saw an image of the show. We kept coming back to the word ‘fun’ as a target. It may sound cliché, but it worked well for every aspect of the show. If it didn’t feel ‘fun’ it shouldn’t be in the show.”

Smith says the team also discovered there was an intensity level they couldn’t go above with either a combination of form of the buildings or backgrounds, frequency of detail or contrast and color palette. “Working with amazing initial designs from art director Flo rent Auguy at Superprod in Paris, and honing

the look with our art director Kilian Plunkett at Warner Bros. Animation, we gradually found our Gotham City and recipe for the show: Ap proach Gotham City as one big theme park. With this central idea, the lighting and de signs started to come easily, because we knew everyone loves theme parks at night.”

The designers and other creatives also ap plied the same ideas to turning cars into char acters. The crew — spread out over Warner Bros. Animation crew in Burbank, with three people in the Bay Area, one person in Dublin, Ireland and the rest at studio Superprod in Paris — had to make the Batwheels real enough to capture the imagination of their viewers.

“Creating the characters was really two challenges, because we not only had to create a superhero team of vehicles that were en gaging to watch on their own, but we also had to create the same vehicles to be badass Bat mobiles, Batcycles, Bat Trucks, Redbird cars and Batwings that Batman, Robin and Batgirl would use on their adventures, too,” says Smith. “We tackled the ‘badass’ part of the de sign first. The two words that guided our de signs were that the vehicles had to feel legit imate and valid.”

The vehicle design process started by cre ating realistic versions of the Batwheels cour tesy of acclaimed vehicle designer John Frye. “To hit the ‘fun’ target, we pulled the designs

back a little into the fun zone with Florent Auguy at Superprod,” says Smith. “We added some fun concepts from Steve Fink (also a producer on the show) at Bang Zoom Design. Steve came up with the idea to put a Bat util ity belt around every vehicle. This was a fan tastic idea because it immediately connects you to Batman, even if he isn’t in the scene.”

Smith points out that all the human character designs were created by Florent Auguy, who also worked on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. “I loved his previous work and gave him the brief of what we wanted for the show,” he notes. “We wanted Batman to feel like Batman in any other DC universe. We weren’t going to parody him, because Batman provides the umbrella of cool under which we can have lots of fun.”

They also wanted to extend that stylistic um brella over all the villains of the show. “When it came to The Joker and other villains on the show, we wanted to do the same thing,” says Smith. “Keep him feeling like The Joker we love, but someone that fits into our  Batwheels  uni verse. Michael Stern did a brilliant job writing the villains of the show. He basically reduced Gotham City to a school playground, and the vil lains are school kids trying to prank Gotham cit izens with their antics. The Joker is a prankster who likes pranking people. Florent took that and hit the target straight away with The Joker, then applied his recipe to all the human characters in

the show.”

All the main effects were also 2D animated to create a kind of familiar, cohesive feeling. With the tire smoke, flames, water and explosions all in 2D, the creatives were free to also bring in sound design to push the visuals to a new level.

In addition, the series features several wellknown actors amongst the voice cast. Batman and Bam, the Batmobile, are both voiced by notables.

An Essential, Brooding Batman

“Ethan [Hawke] read the scripts and could see what we were trying to accomplish right away,” says Stern. “He understood the balance we were striking in keeping Batman who he is, but yet allowing him to work for a young audience. The dry sense of humor and the in stant gravitas of Ethan’s amazing voice have worked even better than we could possibly imagine. It’s pretty well known that he was once offered the Batman role in one of the feature films, so getting a chance to play it now is probably extra fun for him.”

“We have really been fortunate to assemble such a perfect cast,” adds Stern. “Casting wellknown characters is always a challenge. You need to honor the voices that have come be fore, but you also want to create your own unique spin on them. The actors just dove into this with such enthusiasm and creativity, they

made it relatively easy.  Jacob Bertrand as Bam, the Batmobile, is just such a perfect an chor for the show. His infectious spirit and sense of fun really act as a guideline to every one, including the animators.”

“I wanted to make a show that would be exciting, visceral, and fun for the whole fami ly,” adds Smith, “a show that would really sur prise people and give fans a Batman they hadn’t met before. The execution of the show led by director Antoine Charreyron (Galactik Football) at Superprod is spot on. He and I bonded early on and his eyes lit up when I said I wanted to make a Batman animated show shot like a  Fast and Furious live-action movie. I also have to give out a massive shout out to Sound Rebel’s Rob and Evan, our mixer and sound designer. They have really under stood what our tone and target is and are cre ating exactly what we need to keep the audi ence wow-ing and smiling all the way.”

Smith concludes, “We tried to give  Bat wheels a cinematic quality in cinematography, camera work, editing, and character animation that goes beyond people’s expectations — hopefully we’ve achieved that.” ◆

Cartoonito’s Batwheels premieres Oct. 17 on Cartoon Network, streaming the next day on HBO Max. The special Secret Origin of the Bat wheels premiered on HBO Max Sept. 17.

BATMOBILE’S BUDDIES: In the new Warner Bros. Animation series, Gotham’s hot wheels are thrust into hijinks as they learn lessons about teamwork and friendship while helping Batman, Robin and Batgirl.

Michael G. Stern Simon J. Smith

Mainframe Embarks on New Adventures in Storytelling

The studio famous for launching the first CG-animated series (ReBoot) forms new partnerships and rediscovers the magic of 2D!

Vancouver-based Mainframe Stu dios has had quite a productive period since it rebranded in 2020 (the studio became known as Rainmaker from its acquisition in 2008 through the 2016 merger with Frederator Networks and Erzin-Hirsh to create WOW! Un limited Media.) The studio recently hired for mer Technicolor exec Kristy Scanlan to serve as its first-ever SVP of business development. We recently caught up with the studio’s SVP of con tent and exec producer Gregory Little to find out more about the studio’s hot animation slate, which includes The Guava Juice Show, DreamWorks’ Team Zenko Go and Madagascar: A Little Wild and Octonauts specials.

Can you tell us a bit about what Mainframe plans to bring to the fall markets this month?

Gregory Little: This year we have a great slate of new projects that spans everything from younger preschool to older kids action-ad venture and character-based comedy. Our shows for older kids tend to have a broader age range than we were doing a few years ago — more along the lines of what you would want for a family animated feature film. We

think the audience lines have blurred a lot for older kids during the pandemic and that’s a great opportunity to make shows that are even more interesting and different. We’ll be previewing a number of new shows for buyers and partners this year.

What are Mainframe’s priorities for the next few months and 2023?

We can boil it down to three things: More original content, more 2D production and more premium shows with great partners on the work-for-hire side. We continue to make original content an even bigger part of our overall slate, building on the success of Team Zenko Go (Netfllix) and The Guava Juice Show (YouTube). With three of us focusing on new shows — Tanya Green our head of preschool, me for older kids and families, Michael Hef feron as a creator and EP — the range of proj ects is broad because we each have the cre ative freedom to pursue what we love.

2D is new to Mainframe with The Guava Juice Show, an original series we’re really proud of.

We can now announce that our newest 2D project is a partnership with Coyote Peter

son’s Brave Wilderness YouTube channel, where his 20 million followers journey with him into the wilderness to encounter the world’s most interesting species. Our show, Coyote & The WildAways, follows three kids and a talking dog — inspired by Coyote’s dog Charlie — after they are marooned in a prime val forest with no way home. It’s completely different from the Brave Wilderness YouTube channel but embraces similar themes of ad venture, discovery and care for our natural world.

Tonally it skews a bit younger than Guava Juice, but features the same combination of warm, character-based comedy in a huge, off beat adventure world, which is what makes The Guava Juice Show so much fun. We are working again with Lienne Sawatsky, Dan Wil liams & John Hazlett, our amazing Guava Juice creators and showrunners, who bring a very special combination of heart and comedy. They were my first choice for Guava and we’re excited to work with them again on Coyote & The WildAways

.

Finally, on the work-for-hire side we contin ue to build on our great relationships with the world’s best partners. We’ve worked hard

Gregory Little

to have long term relationships with compa nies like Mattel, Spin Master, Silvergate Media and DreamWorks, and we love that it’s never just one show. Our relationship with Mattel, for example, spans 22 years and counting. We recently added Kristy Scanlan to the company as our SVP Business Development to help us build new relationships that will last for the next 20 years.

The Guava Juice Show has been a big priority for the studio this year. Can you tell us about the future plans for this franchise?

So far we have produced 26 11-minute epi sodes — two 13-episode seasons. The second season launched on September 16 with an awesome two-part episode that takes Guava back to his long-lost home planet. New epi sodes drop weekly until the end of 2022 and we are currently prepping for our next season.

One of our priorities for MIPCOM will be to explore partnerships with worldwide broad casters for The Guava Juice Show. We think there’s a lot of value in a premium show that has the direct fan connection of Roi Fabito’s Guava Juice channel with its 17 million sub scribers. Our fantastic partners at YouTube Originals and Studio71 are enthusiastic about exploring these opportunities and we are hoping to extend the show for many more seasons. There are a lot more stories to tell.

Why do you think The Guava Juice Show has struck such a chord worldwide?

It’s all about character. Our three leads are so much fun and so distinct, and the way they relate to each other feels like another charac ter in itself. I think the best character comedy comes from the heart — characters who love each other reacting in real time to each oth er’s familiar and often infuriating quirks. To make the most of this, the show is purposely dialog heavy. To keep our running time in check, our voice actors were amazing at deal ing with our most frequent note — “act faster!” — and really brought their characters to life.

We shot the show like a sitcom in the dia log-heavy parts — wider shots and cuts that find the comedy in reactions. I think audiences respond to the natural feel this creates: three

best friends reacting to each other like real characters at an age when your best friends are your life. Of course, a lot of heart comes with that, and the show always emphasizes that, while Roi, Jenny and Guava have dif ferences, they have each other’s backs always, through any thing.

The funny thing is, that’s how it feels for us making the show. All of us have said many times that this is the most fun professional experience we’ve ever had, and that feeling comes out on screen.

Lastly, a lot of this starts with Roi Fabito, cre ator of the Guava Juice channel, show EP and voice of Roi. He has a huge heart and infectious positivity that informs everything we do.

2022 has been tough on some animation sectors. What is your take on the industry’s big picture as we enter the fall market season? We’re not alone in seeing that change is in the air, which can make buyers cautious. But we think there’s more opportunity now than in the last few years to see how separated rights can help producers who can bring co-financ ing, as Mainframe can. And a big part of it is leading the creative conversation so that you’re bringing buyers what they want next instead of what’s seen as hot right now.

Of course, getting away from single-finan cier deals often means reducing budgets to make room for more partners. We’ve made huge progress at Mainframe over the last few years to push our quality and creativity even higher while working in a broader range of budgets, from super premium to value-orient ed. We are working better and more efficiently than ever thanks to countless changes under the hood, led by our EVP and head of produc

What are some of the challenges ahead for indie animation producers?

Two immediately come to mind: smaller ini tial orders and competition for audience from short-form platforms like TikTok.

Getting a 10-episode initial order makes it tough to monetize your show beyond fees. You can’t really start a merch program with that order and distribution options are limited until you have more episodes.

And we all have to deal with the attention shift to cheap, short-form content. Kids love it and a lot of it is really funny. The Frederator side of the company has taken a “join ‘em” men tality and is developing great shows out of Tik Tok. Mainframe’s partnership with major You Tube creators looks in a similar direction. These alliances help us pitch to buyers the discover ability and built-in marketing power of our shows, which makes them more attractive.

But the real bottom line — the answer to all of these challenges — is what it’s always been: great shows with great characters that help define kids’ childhoods. The challenges change but that’s what we need to make, and it’s what we love to make.

tion, Kim Dent Wilder.

For more info, visit www.mainframe.ca.

TRIPLE THE FUN: Mainframe’s hot projects include (left) The Guava Juice Show , Team Zenko Go and the upcoming series Coyote & The WildAways , an animated co-venture with YouTube wildlife explorer

Coyote Peterson featuring his dog, Charlie.

A Magical Creature Returns

DreamWorks Animation’s Abominable and The Invisible City spins new tales about the charming yeti and his human friends.

- By Ramin Zahed -

It has been three years since Dream Works Animation introduced audiences to a magical yeti known as Everest and his friends Yi, Ji and Peng. Now, the stu dio hopes to recapture that magic with the new series Abominable and The Invisible City, which premieres this month on Peacock and Hulu. The show, which features the voices of Chloe Bennet (Yi), Tenzing Trainor (Jin) and Alan Cumming (Burnish), continues the ad ventures of Everest in the big city as the kids set out to help all the magical creatures that live amongst them

The show’s exec producer Jim Schumann (Spirit Riding Free, Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness) came on board the project right after DreamWorks’ top brass Peter Gal and Kelly Kulchak told him about the spinoff series back in 2020. “Once I heard the names of some of the other folks involved in it (Kath erine Nolfi, Rebecca Goldberg, Rachel Curet and Jason Caparaz) and knew that we were all on the same page for what the series could be, I was in.” Art director Sei Nakashima (Alvin

and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked) says he was also a big fan of the original film, and after Schumann saw his artwork and asked him to join the team, he was happy to jump on board. Schumann says he loves the fact that the show is about a trio of kids and a lovable yeti who go on some amazing adventures to find and make connections with magical creatures in the city. “They help these creatures not just using Yi’s magic, but by relying on each other and their family and the help of an unexpected new friend,” he explains. “It was the idea of really being able to explore and show those genuine relationships and tell those stories that excited me.”

Building a Vibrant City

It was a top priority for the creative team that the visuals of the show would be as close to the high bar set by the movie as possible. “The city is vibrant and alive and it needs to feel like its own character,” explains Schumann. “We took design and color cues from the film and added our own touches when we explore other areas of the city and surrounding environments in the

series. We also really leaned into traditional 2D explorations for certain elements. Our art direc tor, Sei Nakashima, did an amazing job creating the new, magical creatures for the series. Anima tion-wise, we also used the film as a resource for our animators at CGCG to refer to, which allowed them to then expand on that reference as artists and do some really amazing character work.”

“For the visual inspiration, we had the original feature look as base, then brought in wider visu al keys from authentic Chinese culture and my thologies,” says Nakashima. “We found so many inspirations looking at just normal, daily local pictures sometimes — they gave us many import ant ideas on how we can enrich the world fur ther. As for the creatures, I found it inspirational when we have a very simple old drawing from China, possibly because it is pure and doesn’t have much additional info from the others.”

The production team included about 90 peo ple in Los Angeles and close to 200 people at CGCG studio in Taiwan and about 20 people at DAVE in Australia. “We started production on the show as the pandemic was gaining steam,

MAGICAL FRIENDS:

DreamWorks’ new fall series Abominable and The Invisible City brings back popular characters from the studio’s acclaimed 2019 feature.

so everyone on the team has worked remotely for pretty much the entire pandemic,” notes Schumann. The production relied on Maya and V-Ray to create the CG animation, with a few other tools for the crowd scenes.

For Schumann and his team, dealing with pandemic fatigue was one of the main chal lenges. “Team talent and passion for the show wasn’t going to be an issue, it was the mental well-being of the team that had to be ac counted for,” says the showrunner. “What we do is deadline-based and can be stressful enough, and to throw in a global pandemic, it could get pretty hard. But even with working remotely, we were able to build a team atmo sphere, a place where folks could come to get away from the craziness in the world and do something that they enjoyed doing. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had our speed bumps, but I’m really proud of the fact that we still have a lot of gas left in the tank.”

For Nakashima, achieving the established visual style and complexity within the scope of the show was a top goal. “Also, creating the

authentic Asian feel throughout the show while making sure the things still remain recognizable and welcoming to all audiences was a big challenge,” he notes.

“One thing we set out to do in the series is to really flesh out the characters and their po tential for story, so we discovered that each one has some great personality traits,” adds Schumann. “Having said that, my favorite is Everest, of course, because he really is a play ful, lovable giant with a heart of gold. I’m defi nitely a fan of Yi and how genuinely strong she is in her convictions and how she can go from maternal to ass-kicker when needed. We also gave Mei and Nai Nai room to grow, and they have both turned out to be hilarious.”

Imagination Resource

Nakashima says he hopes that audiences will care more about other living things that share the planet with us. “I also hope the audiences will take away the importance of keeping the imagi nation alive even as we get older,” he notes.

Schumann agrees. “I hope they will feel the

way we did when we made the show and be taken away by adventure, magic, comedy,” he says. “I also hope they will really be touched by emotion by a group of characters that real ly rely on each other to navigate the amazing new world of creatures that they’ve discov ered and the real world around them.”

He also says he’s creatively dazzled by the high quality of animation produced all over the world over the past few years. “But after what could be called another ‘Golden Age,’ the last eight or so years with so much content being made, I think we’re starting to see a bit of a con traction start to happen as studios and parent companies navigate coming out of the last cou ple years,” Schumann points out. “My hope is that those larger entities will take into account that when everything else was shut down in Holly wood during the pandemic, animation thrived and helped keep the lights on for everyone. ◆

DreamWorks Animation’s Abominable and The Invisible City premieres on Peacock and Hulu on October 5.

“We took design and color cues from the film and added our own touches when we explore other areas of the city and surrounding environments in the series. We also really leaned into traditional 2D explorations for certain elements.”

— Exec producer Jim Schumann

The End Is the Beginning Is the End!

The creator of Victor and Valentino looks back at the birth and evolution of his popular show.

- By Diego Molano

Victor and Valentino has been almost a 20-year labor of love. It all started when I was studying at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore in 2002. I created the story and charac ters inside of the Unreal Engine as a video game, which ended up being my senior thesis. Back then, the story had three brothers: Victor, Valentino and Vicente. The third brother, Vicente, was supposed to be their leader even though he was the youngest, because he already had a slight mustache. It would have played like a 3D Lost Vikings

After I graduated in 2005, there was a long stretch of odd jobs I took before I ended up in ani mation. I worked at a scale model shop building miniature models for architecture firms (which end ed up helping my perspective drawing a lot!) Then I worked at a bakery designing their menus, interiors and marketing materials. I continued taking any job I could get until my childhood best friend told me to come to Los Angeles, take some CG classes and join him doing special effects for movies. I took his offer and stayed with him for a while, but I quickly found myself running out of cash. The only work I could find was cleaning Mexican restaurants and doing catering for Warner Bros. events.

When I finally saved up enough to take the class es, one of my teachers said, “Your drawings are way better than what you can do in this 3D CG class, why

don’t you check out the place down the street called ‘Titmouse’ and tell them I sent you.” I did just that. Thankfully, I was hired as an intern at the age of 31, which made me self-conscious — but it just goes to show age doesn’t matter if the drive is strong enough. Titmouse was an amazing place to work and still is. I have many great memories of working on many different shows there.

A Dream Realized

Chris and Shannon Prynoski cultivate and en courage a very creative atmosphere with like-mind ed artists at Titmouse. I was there long enough to hear that different animation companies were com ing around to take “pitch ideas” for new shows. I fig ured I’d dust off the old Victor and Valentino idea from college, give it a new coat of paint and show it off. I first showed it to Nickelodeon and they were very interested in it. I also pitched it to Cartoon Net work, who were also interested in it. I decided to go with the latter and we quickly went into creating a short which served as the pilot. Since the pilot did well, they put me in a development “pod” which was eight weeks of planning what would be the entire show out, so that when the show starts, it’s a smoother take off.

As I was new to showrunning, they paired me with a very talented and experienced artist named Casey Alexander, who I worked with extremely well.

Together with him and some writers, we plotted out what we wanted the story to be, what we wanted the show to look like and what we wanted to say. Thankfully, Cartoon Network liked what they saw enough to greenlight two seasons from the start, which translated into 80 episodes of 11 minutes each. Looking back, that was a lot compared to the animation episode orders happening now.

Throughout the development process, the origi nal idea I had for Victor and Valentino had to change a bit. When I first presented the idea, I wanted to create something a bit more serialized that people could really sink their teeth into, but CN had a differ ent idea. We were confined to making self-contained episodic stories, and since I wanted to tell mytho logically epic stories, I started to weave in secondary story threads, add hidden characters and secret plot points, but in a very surreptitious way. Yes, it ended up being a comedy, but if you pay attention, its theme is that there is more beyond our experience — that search for meaning that we all feel.

Around the midpoint of our second season, we were surprisingly allowed and actually encouraged to tell more serialized stories with overarching plots with episodes that connected together as “specials” which they called “event-izing”. I assumed it was be cause of the direction TV and animation was going more towards serialization overall. I was so happy when I heard this! We were finally able to do the

LOST CHARACTERS: Diego Molano was planning to create a spin-off series based on the character Charlene, set in a “halfway house for ghosts.”

Right: Molano’s never-before-seen sketch of the third brother, Vicente.

original thing we set out to do. Better late than nev er! But since we had already written most of Season Two, we started the actual serialization on the very last four episodes of Season Two with a story called “Through the Nine Realms of Mictlan,” which was a mini movie about the Aztec underworld.

Season Three of Victor and Valentino still had some self-contained episodes, but most of it was serialized. We wrote it considering we would get another season, so it all ended in a giant cliffhanger. If we were to have gotten a Season Four, the story itself would have ex panded to the cosmic scale of the last episode of Gur ren Lagann, “The Lights in the Sky are Stars”. My writers, Casey and I were excited to dig into Season Four be cause it’s when Victor, Valentino and the whole town would have woken up to their god-hood

Aztec Awakening

Essentially, everyone in Monte Macabre are the actual gods of the Aztec pantheon, except they for got who they were because of a curse put on the town. We would’ve seen Vic and Val comedically struggle to harness their grandfather Tlaloc’s spe cial powers of lighting and rain. We would’ve seen Victor and Valentino’s parents show up and we’d learn where they were all this time. We would’ve also seen the entire town of gods rise up (including Huitzilopochtli) against Coyolxauqui and her Tzitzimimes in a cosmic scale war between light and

dark with the earth hanging in the balance. It’s so clear in my head that I hope one day I can finish the story in whatever format presents itself.

Something else we’re extremely proud of is get ting the honor to work with Peter Chung on the show. It was surreal to work with him because I idolized him so much I used to put tracing paper on TV when Liquid Television came on MTV, and I would pause and trace his animations. He served as our animation su pervisor, but we were taken aback when he asked if he could write and direct his own episode (“Oneric Vic”). Of course, we jumped at the opportunity and gave him complete carte blanche to do whatever he wanted with the show. He ended up literally doing everything. He wrote it, designed every single back ground, every single character, every layout, drew and directed the entire storyboard, created and timed out the whole animatic and personally worked with over seas studio Sunmin and director Sung-hoon Kim, who did an incredible job animating it. I think it turned out to be the best episode of the series.

We learned a lot working with Peter Chung, be cause his standards are so high. One of the import ant lessons Casey and I learned from him was, “Don’t make it easy on the audience, don’t spell everything out ... make the audience work to understand so that they feel some type of accomplishment when they figure things out.”

When I knew Season Three was going to be the

end, I started to develop a spin-off based on the character Charlene from my show. It was going to be a sort of “halfway house for ghosts,” where Charlene and her friends would go ghost hunting and befriend the ghosts to come live with her at her Haunted House. It was going to be called The Lonely Haunts Club. Sadly, it did not move forward, but I wasn’t sur prised. The state of animation is shaky right now, but I’m confident it will bounce back. Probably in a differ ent shape and form, but its spirit will live on.

As I write this piece, it has only been three weeks now since my show ended airing on Cartoon Network: I’m both extremely grateful, but also sad I couldn’t finish the project. As I’m preparing my next set of ideas to present, I am now creating them in a way where if I only get one season, it would still be enough to create an interesting story with a satisfying ending.

Diego Molano is the creator and executive producer of the Annie Award and Imagen-nominated series Victor and Valentino, which ran on Cartoon Network for three seasons from March 2019 to August 2022. In August, the show was one of 40 titles abruptly re moved from HBO Max due to Warner Bros.’ merger with Discovery.

Season of Wonder

Adam Yaniv, creator of WildBrain’s charming new series Summer Memories, discusses his creative journey.

When Adam Yaniv, the talent ed creator of the new ani mated series Summer Mem ories, was a young boy growing up in Israel, he and his best friend used to make movies with the other kids in their neighborhood, publish their own comics and perform songs together. “We had a creative language, a humor and an outlook that made my childhood happier and formed the basis for who I am,” Yaniv tells us in a recent interview. “I wanted to capture that essence in the show and deliver on the prom ises my best friend and I made to each other — right down to our company producing this show!”

Yaniv’s memories were the basis for a well-received 2015 short for Nickelodeon An imated Shorts Program. “I was intrigued by the idea of doing a diary show with an unreli able narrator at the center of it, and playing with people’s points of view,” says the anima tion veteran, whose credits include Alvinnnn!!! and the Chipmunks series (as supervising pro ducer) and four Alvin and the Chipmunks mov ies, Hop and Night at the Museum (as anima tion supervisor). “We acquired the rights back from Nickelodeon, and my company, A&N Pro ductions, teamed up with exec producers Irene Weibel and Paul B. Cummings, Aircraft Pictures’ Anthony Leo and Andrew Rosen and Yeti Farm Creative. We then made a pilot ani matic from my living room, and WildBrain picked up the international distribution rights for the series.”

Over 200 people worked on the show global

ly. “In Israel we had our background design, ink and paint at The Hive Studio in Jerusalem,” says Yaniv. “Design, animation and our board director Mike West were in Kelowna at Yeti Farm Cre ative, while the writers and actors were based in Toronto, and I was showrunning and recording voices and music from my closet!”

The show was animated in Toon Boom Har mony with help from After Effects and Photo shop. “The lion’s share of character animation was produced in Kelowna at Yeti Farm Cre ative, while additional animation, ink and paint were done in Israel, where we also edit ed our initial animatics,” according to the show creator.

Preserving That Handmade Feel

One of the biggest challenges for Yaniv was maintaining a visual and verbal style all the way from the series bible to the animatics and preserving a handmade feel in the design and animation approach. “We also have a spe cific arc with tentpole moments, supported by the songs which act like a character growing and changing alongside our main character,” he notes. “Given the tight budget and sched ule, we had to be precise with where we put our resources.”

Summer Memories explores the many ways Jason’s summer was so pivotal and what makes the friendship of these kids unique. “There is a soulfulness and a grandiosity to the story and how it bounces through time and space that I think people will really get into and be touched by on an emotional level,” says Yaniv.

Back to the Old Neighborhood

One of the remarkable aspects of the show is how it switches effortlessly between the real and the surreal. “Starting with the characters, the focus was on capturing the more flat and whimsical elements of my aesthetic and mak ing them three-dimensional,” explains Yaniv. “To further establish a reality and diary feel, we kept camera lenses truer to life, scale a bit more filmic, while staying cartoony and playing with the medium. The world also switches be tween points–of-view, so setting it in a distinct neighborhood was important. We actually used the neighborhood that I grew up in as a refer ence point for shapes, colors and design ele ments. It was also personally important to keep it universal as opposed to the standard North American look of animated shows.”

Yaniv believes the beauty of the show is that it inspires multiple points-of-view. “We like to joke that no matter which character you love, they will disappoint you at some point,” he says. “We obviously love our characters, but it’s pre cisely because they get stuff wrong, like judge each other and jump to conclusions, as we all do — and that’s such a big part of the show’s DNA that a lot of the fun of watching comes from never quite knowing if you’ve seen the whole story. The biggest takeaway is something important in my culture — that ultimately we are all a little silly, all one big family and we need each other to survive!”

Summer Memories premiered on Canada’s Family Channel in August. For more info, visit wildbrain.com.

MAKING ART: The time-bending show features two best friends as they look back at the most important Adam Yaniv

Where the Theatrical Experience Rules!

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is only one of the many must-see attractions of the stellar ‘22 edition of L.A.’s Animation Is Film Festival in October.

Guillermo del Toro’s eagerly anticipated take on Pinocchio is the festival’s closing night gift to audiences.

Those who have attended L.A.’s ex citing Animation Is Film festival in previous years already know that it’s one of the animation cal endar’s most anticipated events of the year. Founded by GKIDS president Eric Beckman in 2017, the Hollywood-based festi val offers lovers of the art form a perfect op portunity to catch up with the latest animated offerings from major studios and indie helm ers from around the world. Neither as over whelming as Annecy nor as esoteric as some of the smaller global festivals, for many, AIF is just about the perfect size and offers just the right mix of panels, screenings, premieres and auteur appearances.

“Our goal is to cram a year’s worth of the best animated films from around the globe into a single Los Angeles weekend, in order to show how animation continues to push the boundaries of what is possible in filmmaking,” says Beckman. “This year’s program is particu larly strong, a really unparalleled lineup of shorts and features from six continents — stu dio films and indies, hand drawn, stop motion, CG and experimental — from both new and established filmmakers.

Beckman points out that the festival, which takes place October 21-23, is not just for ani

mation lovers. “It is for film lovers,” he empha sizes. “We are in L.A. to make it easy for people in the industry to expand their horizons about what kinds of films are possible within the medium of animation. Collectively, the lineup is aspirational toward that goal.”

Attracting the Auteurs

Beckman points out that the 2022 edition offers an amazing lineup! “We have new films from headline names like Henry Selick, Nora Twomey, Guillermo del Toro, Jordan Peele and Dice Tsutsumi. We have Annecy Cristal win ner  Petit Nicolas [Little Nicholas Happy as Can Be]; New Gods: Yang Jian, which is China’s big gest animated film of the year; the latest films from Oscar-nominated Brazilian director Alê Abreu (Perlimps) and Spanish director Alberto Vázquez (Unicorn Wars),” he notes. “We have shorts, features, panels, special events, film maker Q&As, audience voting, lots of par ties! So, it’s not so much about this title or that title, but about the experience of binging on lots and lots of films and really immersing yourself in this world.”

Festival director Matt Kaszanek also mentions that fest-goers will be treated to work-in-prog ress sneak previews of Disney’s Strange World and DreamWorks’ Puss in Boots: The Last Wish He

adds, “We are  super  excited that Guillermo del Toro will be presenting a special screening of Pi nocchio  in its entirety at Animation Is Film, the first time the film will unspool for American au diences. We are once again teaming up with An necy and Women in Animation for a mesmerizing collection of shorts directed by women. And we expect most of the aforementioned headliners and directors to be in attendance for Q&As and audience discussion.”

In an uncertain time when theaters are hav ing a hard time drawing audiences away from their streaming habits at home, AIF offers a wonderful opportunity to enjoy movies on the big screen, the way they were intended to be seen. “It’s just fun to see movies on a huge screen, with huge theatrical sound and in a shared audience experience, where everyone is gasping and laughing and crying and react ing at the same time,” says Beckman. “And where you are not distracted by your phone and other stuff going on. Most films are made for that experience, that’s the defining differ ence between film and television. And yes, you can enjoy movies at home, but it’s a little like ordering sushi to be delivered: It’s just a com pletely different experience in the restaurant. And of course the theatrical experience cre ates excitement. That’s why there are all these

THE WOODEN BOY REVISITED:

film festivals in the first place!”

Beckman, who exec produced Cartoon Sa loon’s Oscar-nominated feature Wolfwalkers, says It feels like the industry has evolved around the festival. “The whole concept that animation equals film, which was kind of in tentionally provocative five years ago, is more and more a mainstream concept,” says the in dustry veteran. “So, compared to early on, when we had to make the rounds pitching participation, now we are seeing people really wanting to be a part of it, and the industry as a whole has really started to embrace this po sition that Animation Is Film.”

So, what is the best way to enjoy the festi val? “Just come see lots of movies,” offers

Beckman. “For every film you think you want to see, choose another that you know nothing about. Bring friends. Bring your parents. See three or four films in a day. Just come and camp out at the festival — there is food and alcohol and a well-maintained bathroom on site, so all your needs are taken care of!”

For Beckman, directing the festival contin ues to be a wild labor of love. “Running a fes tival is like childbirth,” he admits. “You work like crazy, it feels like it will never come to

Opening Night

Closing Night

gether, it just seems impossible — and there is always a point where you look at your partner and swear you will never do it again. But then you get amnesia. You forget all the pain. By some miracle, the event actually happens, and there is so much joy and excitement and good feelings from the filmmakers and love from the audiences, that before the festival is even over you begin thinking about next year!” ◆

For the up-to-the-minute festival schedule, visit animationisfilm.com.

In Competition

Special Events

Women

“We are in L.A. to make it easy for people in the industry to expand their horizons about what kinds of films are possible within the medium of animation. Collectively the lineup is aspirational toward that goal.”

— Animation Is Film founder Eric Beckman

Oink

Perlimps

Puss In Boots: The

Little

MIPCOM Animation Buyers Reveal All!

Here’s your chance to get inside the magical minds of some of our favorite animation content buyers. Make sure you keep an eye out for them at MIPCOM and the fall’s other big markets.

Adina Pitt VP, Content Acquisitions & Co-Pros, Cartoon Network

Best way to approach me with pitches: An email is best and always welcome.

Best pitch I ever got: That’s like saying, “Who’s your favorite kid?!”

The animated movie/show that changed my life: There are truly so many. However, I have to say Finding Nemo is the first movie that comes to mind. Watching it with my kids was very powerful. I re member sitting with them and laughing and then, I cried my eyes out. It’s such a beautiful story/movie that spoke to me both as a parent and an animation fan.

Best advice for animated content creators: Be kind, patient and bold. Believe in your idea. Have fun and know that we are so excited to hear about your projects.

Most annoying catch phrase or trend of the year: “Kids love poop!”

It’s not exactly a catch phrase or trend, but I did hear that one in a pitch. While I’m assuming this person did their research, I’m going to say that I don’t believe this should be a basis for a show!

Guilty pleasure: Eating 40 Carrots frozen yogurt at Bloomingdales with my kids!

Finding Nemo

Virve Vicky Schroderus

Exec in Charge of Intl. Co-Pros & Acquisitions, YLE Children

What I’ll be looking for at the fall markets: Enchanting and fun con tent that will speak to YLE’s  different target groups within pre schoolers and school kids.

The best thing I watched in 22:  There are so many great ideas and programs, so it is very difficult to point out a single one.  Best way to approach me with your pitches: Attend the speed pitching session organized at different markets and prepare to deliver your well thought out and structured pitch with a couple visuals in a short time. Alternatively, you could send me a short email about the idea. Visuals are also vital to communicate your artistic perception. Best pitch I ever got: I had a very well thought idea to the spot on the target group, intriguing visuals and delivered in a fun way.

The animated show/movie that changed my life: Toy Story, the first CG-animated feature.

Best advice I can give animated content creators: Understand your target group and the market inside out, not only the hit shows. Do proper research about the shows that might be similar to yours and make sure your idea is not overlapping something existing on the market. I also give extra points to people who have done research of the Finnish market and YLE’s kids’ offerings.

Most annoying catch phrase or trend of the year: I cannot think of any as I am just happy to be back to the live markets, meetings, encounters.

Guilty pleasure: The Blacklist, although I do feel that the show has started to repeat itself.

Hugues Dufour

What I’ll be looking for at the fall markets: Adult animation driven by a personal creative vision geared at the domestic and interna tional markets.

Favorite thing I watched in 2022: Top Gun, the reboot. As much as I wanted to dislike it, I got caught up in the emotion, sincerity, and surprising twists of the story.

Best way to approach me with your pitches: Start with the concept, get into the characters, and then tell me why this project matters to you.

Best pitch I ever got: Red Ketchup, the animation series. Martin Villeneuve, the creative lead on this, was so committed and pas

sionate that I could not turn away. The movie that changed my life: That’s a hard question. I’d have to say Blue Velvet, because it scared me so much I was convinced David Lynch was some sort of magical wizard.

Best advice for animation creators: Connect the content with what matters to you and then find the right niche for you.

Most annoying catch phrase or trend of the year:  “This is a game changer.” Or was that last year?

Guilty pleasure: Listening to Air Supply songs and watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island

Red Ketchup

Toy Story

Sarah Muller

Head of Commissioning & Acquisitions, 7+, BBC

What I’ll be looking for at the fall markets: Character-driven comedy that will make the audience laugh out loud and more sophisticated storytelling, potentially with a strong story arc.

The best thing I watched in 2022: Arcane Best way to approach me with your pitches: Just send them to me via childrenssubmissions@bbc.co.uk

Best pitch I ever got: I can’t say exactly what it is, but it was with a stand-up comedian who has written a great kids’ book about his community. We were ready to commission on the spot!

The animated show/movie  that changed my life: It’s a tossup between Howl’s Moving Castle and The Wrong Trousers

They are very different, but both totally raised the bar for me in terms of the kind of stories that you can tell in animation. Best advice for animated content creators: Do your develop ment properly and the world’s your oyster.

Most annoying catch phrase or trend of the year: You’re on mute!

Guilty pleasure: Kiri & Lou – I have a thing for Jermaine Clement!

VP of Int’l Production & Development, Paramount Global Kids & Family Group

What I’ll be looking for in the fall markets: Comedy animation for 6-12s that will appeal to boys and girls, with strong relatable char acters and scope for longevity. Ideas should be smart in humor and concept and complement our existing portfolio.

The best thing I watched in 2022: Outside of kids animation, it’s the Channel 4 series Big Boys, a heartfelt comedy about the strong friendship between two university friends. In our Paramount world, there has been so many terrific animation produced across film and series — but I have to single out Sharkdog, which I’ve absolutely fall en in love with both as a producer and viewer. It’s such a pleasure working with everyone on the production of the show and hearing how much the audience loves it. They watch it again and again!

Best way to approach me with your pitches: You can pitch at any time, but we are at all key markets. Please talk to us at an early stage — for us in our team, that is before you have any scripts or bible, as

we really love to collaborate on the development.

Best pitch I ever got: Well, that would be telling! But I’ve been for tunate to be part of some terrific pitches that have become hugely successful series. Each one of those pitches was delivered with pas sion and integrity, and the concept fit the brand values.

The animated show that changed my life: As a child, I loved so many classic British stop-frame series. In fact, I watched so many cartoons after school, before school, during the weekend. It’s hard to single one out, but if I had to choose one it would be Postman Pat, because not only is he a relatable character set in a friendly northern town, but as a grown up I got to work on the new series!

Best advice for animated content creators: Believe in yourself, believe in your project and make sure to partner with the right people for the right reasons.

Most annoying catchphrase of the year: Thank you so much.

Guilty pleasure: Classic Doctor Who!

Chris Rose

Sharkdog

Kiri & Lou

Rick K. Clodfelter

Lead, Content Acquisitions & Partnerships, Disney Branded TV

What I’ll be looking for in the fall markets: Diverse content focusing on animated comedies and holiday features, spe cials, series and shorts.

The best thing I watched in 2022: Bluey is a consistent stand out, but I also enjoyed We Baby Bears

Best way to approach me with pitches: I always appreciate an introduction at industry markets/events to hear how creators speak about their creative and experience their passion be hind it.

Best pitch I ever got: Although not an animation pitch, the most memorable was done by Marty Krofft. I’ll never forget

his generosity as I geeked out. The animated show that changed my life: Adventure Time — smart and soulful storytelling.

Best advice for animated content creators: Timing is critical in this fluid market which creates wide-ranging platform needs. If your creative has an authentic voice for an audience to relate, the chances of syncing to a platform’s needs is greater.

Most annoying trend of the year: Not annoying, but there seems to be a bumper crop of farm-based preschool content.

Guilty pleasure: Over the Garden Wall … it takes me back.

Adriano Schmid VP of Content, PBS KIDS

What I’ll be looking for in the fall markets: A creator-led, funny preschool project untethered to trends, with an authentic voice and a deep sensibility.

The best thing I watched this year: Rosie’s Rules, coming to PBS KIDS in October. Honest. I can say it without seeming to be patting myself on the back because I barely had anything to do with it.  Best way to approach me with pitches:  Show me that you know what PBS KIDS is all about. Tell me your favorite current series or game on our plat forms and why. That way I know that the pitch you have for us was tailored to our mission and audience. Perhaps it won’t be the right fit this particular time but I can promise you that the conversation will be engaging, and we’ll both leave it interested in the next one. Best pitch I ever got:  A video pitch (for a different network and be fore video pitches were ubiquitous) where the creator used LEGOs to talk about this ‘Circus Planet,’ almost exactly like a seven-year-old

would. We didn’t go for that particular project, but the next time I was looking for something in particular, I went immediately to that creator and asked for their take.

The animated show/movie that changed my life: Mad Monster Party, The Simpsons, The Wrong Trousers, Samurai Jack.

Best advice for content creators: Take a deep breath, look around you, think about what will really make a difference. You’ll know it. And don’t take it (or me) too seriously.

Most annoying catch phrase or trend of the year: “Metaverse for preschool ers” as the next big thing. Scary!

Guilty pleasure:  Not animation, nor puppets, but good old-fashioned kaiju content… During the last couple of years, we’ve rewatched all the early Ul traman series (from Tsuburaya Productions) on Blu-ray. And for more recent, snackable and adorable animation, Mr. Carton (from Tant Mieux).

Bluey

Rosie’s Rules

Sebastian Debertin

Head of Int’l Content, Acquisitions & Co-Pros, ARD/ZDF KiKA

What I’ll be looking for at the fall markets: The shopping list is really long, I wish I had a pot of gold to buy it all! Animated fulllength feature films and animated specials for bank holidays, Eas ter, etc., as well as live-action features for a family audience; fam ily co-viewing is an advantage, but only if kids are the focus of the storytelling. Animated series for six- to nine-year olds are in de mand as well. We’ll go on cherry picking the best animations in preschool for our Kikaninchen preschool slots, too! For the socalled bridge audience, we actively search for strong new addi tions to go along with successful series like Fireman Sam. As you can see, after all: Great animated storytelling always was and will be a motor for KiKA! KiKA turns 25 this year. (Yes, we happily cel ebrate this remarkable anniversary in 2022 together with our au dience!) and what surely also did not change over the last 25 years of KiKA is that we are looking for high quality content only, pre mieres preferred! The programs, whether animated or not, need to deliver a positive view of the world and offer the kids orientation while delivering strong positive values, too!

The best thing I watched in 2022: In total, we received a record 1,284 program proposals last year. This trend seems to be continu ing in 2022 as we have already received 500 new programs and program concepts. So, we really saw a lot of great new stuff. One of the many outcomes was that we now will be co-producing Goat Girl, a very cartoony show from Daily Madness (Ireland) and Miam! (France) together with our friends at Cartoon Network. I also need to mention our lovely co-pro Odo, with Letko and Sixteen South, which is so heartwarming, smart and charming that I really had

Some Helpful Pitching Tips from Sebastian:

tears in my eyes when we screened the original production, which we are now dubbing into German.

Best way to approach me with your pitches: Easy, just send your pitch! But first ensure that your idea is a good fit for the world of KiKA. Look at www.kika.de (It’s in German, but pictures and pro grams will tell enough). If your idea fits into this world, you’re more than welcome to send it to sebastian.debertin@kika.de

The animated show/movie that changed my life: Well, too many to list them all here! After all, I guess animation does not change our lives, but makes it more colorful and much brighter! That’s why I so much enjoy working with creatives on making great concepts for animation come to life and influencing the kids and family audiences worldwide with positive thinking and values worth sharing!

Best advice for content creators: Keep being passionate about what you do! And keep on dreaming! But while dreaming, stay fo cused to make your dream come true! The best ideas come from people who are passionate about making their dreams come true. Most annoying catch phrase or trend of the year: Honestly, there is very little nowadays that can annoy me. Perhaps what’s a bit an noying is when people use keywords in a pitch that their concept doesn’t deliver at all. So, please, avoid just ticking boxes!   Guilty pleasure:  Working for the best audience — kids! Doing what I love most — my job, with many talented and wonderful people in our industry, getting inspired always in a new and refreshing way, that is truly a pleasure and rewarding! Besides that, good book stores and books are another passion!

• Pitching comes close to being an art, so it is no wonder that not everybody is good at that. If you recognize that you’re not the best pitcher, then find someone who is more capable to handle that very special and sensitive job for you! That’s a smart and helpful way to bring your concept-baby to life!

• Before you pitch, do research to ensure your idea or concept really is innovative and does not exist already anywhere in the world market! This way you avoid wasting your money and your time as well as the time of the partner you want to pitch to.

• Also, avoid reading your pitch from paper. That’s another killer.

• Prove that you know your project inside out by being able to deliver the concept’s USPs in a smart way, name the reasons why it fits your targeted partner and age group.

• Do your homework beforehand! You need to show that you know the partner and the platform you are pitching to. (In our case, know the world of KiKA, its programming and philosophy.)

• Finally, be prepared to convince your prospective partners with three individual arguments why you feel your project could be a great fit!

New Toons at the Market

MIPCOM 2022 News Bytes

MIPCOM, the global content market, returns to the Palais des Festivals in Cannes this month (Oct. 17-22). This annual event attracts many animation executives, buyers, producers and creatives as they seek the latest trends, toons and talents for their businesses. We’ll have daily news from the event on our website. Here are some of the pre-event announcements that caught our interest just before our deadline:

City of the Future

French animation studio Millimages, home of global hits such as Molang and Pirata & Capitano, is introducing a new show titled Welcome to Permacity. The 52 x 11’ show follows the daily life and adventures of a seven-year-old girl named Camille and her talking cat in an incredible eco-city. “The city is almost a character in itself,” says Marina Narishkin, Millimages’ general manager. “In Permacity, you won’t find pollution, whether it’s noise, visual or atmospheric! Everything is designed to respect biodiversity and its inhabitants.”

She adds, “This project was ‘love at first read’ for our producer Bonnie Lener. At the 2021 Paris Book Fair, her team came across the documentary comic book by Olivier Dain-Belmont, an architect, and illustrated by Fachri Maulana and published in 2021 by French [publisher] Sarbacane, and were immediately convinced of its potential for TV. Welcome to Permacity will of course entertain, but while raising children’s (and parents!) awareness, it will also help them discover how an ecologically sound city functions. We also love the show’s original graphic style, which is dynamic, very colorful, complex and detailed. All the backgrounds naturally encourage adventure and exploration.”

Where in the World?

Since its debut on Netflix, WildBrain’s Emmy-winning animated take on Carmen Sandiego has been a big hit for the steamer. The first four seasons of the 2D-animated show, which was produced by WildBrain and Harper Collins Productions and features the voices of Gina Rodriguez and Finn Wolfhard, will be available at the MIPCOM market. As any child of the ‘90s will tell you, the show follows the adventures of the red fedora-wearing master thief who uses her skills for good. As she pulls off a string of international capers, the show uncovers Sandiego’s backstory and why she became a thief.

Caroline Tyre, WildBrain’s VP of global sales and rights strategy, tells us, “It’s been a thrill for our talented teams to be part of the reinvention of this beloved and iconic property, and with new consumer products licensing opportunities in the pipeline, Carmen Sandiego is proving to be more popular now than ever before. We’ve already secured deals for the Carmen Sandiego series with Disney for its linear channels in Japan and France, and we see significant potential for the series in all markets.”

Ewe Will Love This!

After exploring the world of kitchen-dwelling insects (Oggy and the Cockroaches), a loppedoff hand (I Lost My Body) and UPA’s blind old man (Mr. Magoo), French animation powerhouse Xilam turns its attention to an enthusiastic farm animal with chops. The Karate Sheep is a 78 x 7’, CG-animated new series targeting kids ages six to nine. Created by Xilam’s own Hugo Gittard (Zig & Sharko, Mr. Magoo), the show is described as a non-verbal slapstick series about Trico, an optimistic sheep who loves to share new objects and ideas with the rest of the flock. This always causes a ruckus in the mountain pastures, which inevitably ends up disturbing a tough ewe whose job is to keep the sheep safe.

“Slapstick comedies are a core part of our company’s legacy and DNA, so we’re excited to be launching another series in this genre for the international market at MIPCOM 2022,” says Morgann Favennec, exec VP of distribution at Xilam. “Karate Sheep is filled with endearing characters and original humor, and we’re sure Trico’s adventures will charm and entertain audiences across the globe.”

Spinning Yarns

U.K.-based Beyond Rights has picked up BBC and Maramedia’s 13 x 11’ preschool series Olga Da Polga.

Based on the popular books by Michael Bond (Paddington) about a chatty guinea pig, the series will feature a blend of live action with CG effects for the animals’ mouths, as well as colorful animation for Olga’s imaginative tales.

First introduced in 1971, Olga was named after the Bond family’s real pet guinea pig. The fictitious Olga is a charming animal who loves to tell tall tales. In each story, something ordinary happens to Olga, and she gives her animal friends a wildly exaggerated version of events, subsequently revealed to be untrue by what the humans say. Olga’s stories are designed to encourage imaginative storytelling as well as raise awareness of the world around them.

Woodland Magic

Cookbook Media will serve up Great Wolf Entertain ment’s animated special The Great Wolf Pack: A Call to Adventure to buyers this fall. The 45-minute outing introduces young viewers to five charming woodland friends who discover the mystical Great Wolf Geyser — an ancient force with the power to whisk them to whimsical new worlds in order to help those in need. The project, which premiered on YouTube and at Great Wolf Lodge resorts last month, was executive produced by Julia Pistor (The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, The Rugrats Movie) and Kent Redeker (Doc McStuffins, Spirit Rangers). The film was directed by Chris Bailey (Alvin and the Chipmunks, Kim Possible), who led an award-winning team of artists from L.A.-based animation studio Six Point Harness. It’s definitely a fun adventure worth howling about.

He’s Just a Bit Different!

London-based kids entertainment distributor Cake is bringing My Brother the Monster from Canada’s Arcana Studios and Mexico’s Gasolina Studios to market. The 26 x 11’ series targets six- to eight-old audiences and centers on Mombou, a nine-foot-tall furry monster who crash lands on Earth and becomes part of Petunia’s family. Petunia and her ‘little big brother’ make the perfect team, but when Mombou becomes worried, anxious or overwhelmed he reverts back to his original small size, which happens a lot … particularly at school. As Cake CEO Ed Galton tells us, “My Brother the Mon ster is a tale of friendship and inclusion. We are excited to be working with Arcana Studios and Gasolina and are looking forward to introducing our partners and broadcasters to Petunia, Mombou and all their friends!”

A Happy Hippo

Among many other colorful and entertaining animated shows, Irish distributor Monster Entertainment is bringing the new South African show Zizi and Hannibal to the markets this fall. The 26 x 11’ preschool show centers on a clever and curious girl and her happy-go-lucky hippo friend, Hannibal. In each episode, Zizi uses her imagination to enter a magical world, where she learns all about animals in Africa. The entertaining 2D toon is produced by Pixcomm with assistance from South Africa’s Department of Trade, Indus try & Competition and public broadcaster SABC. “Zizi and Hannibal is a proudly South African animated series that features an African girl as the protagonist. It is important that all children, regardless of their background and economic status, have free access to quality content that reflects, celebrates, and affirms who they are,” says the show’s production manager Nandipha Tatoba.

Science Leads the Way

London-based children’s entertainment distributor Serious Lunch has acquired worldwide sales rights to Doodle Produc tions’ preschool show Messy Goes to Okido ahead of its season three launch. The CG-animated series (104 x 11’) centers on a curious monster and his friends as they try to answer science and art questions, like why the sky is blue and how images get on TV. Messy Goes to Okido is based on Doodle’s children’s science magazine show and publication OKIDO, which is well-known in the U.K. The spinoff’s third season will premiere in November on CBeebies and on HBO Max in the U.S. According to the distributor, the show has sold to broadcasters in over 50 territories, including iQIYI (China), Piwi+ (France), RTVE Clan (Spain), ABC4 Kids (Austra lia), Family Jr. (Canada), Télémagino (Canada), E-Junior (the Middle East), Carousel (Russia) and EBS (South Korea).

That’s Amore!

Mondo TV has love on its mind! The Italian toon house is launching its new series One Love at MIPCOM this fall. The 26 x 7’ 2D preschool series is co-produced by Mondo TV and T-Rex Digimation and is expected to be completed by spring 2023. The colorful show takes place on a planet with a beating heart, where best friends Amo and Ama, together with the rest of the Ba by-Hugs, jump from one adventure to the next by using the strongest power they have: Love! According to the produc ers, emotions, colors and sustainability are central to each episode. There’s also a focus on executive function skills in kids as well as offering young viewers a way to express emotions through music. Mondo TV Studios is in charge of pre-production at its new studio in Tenerife, while Mondo TV S.p.A will manage the animation and the international distribution of the series for all territories except Italy and the Indian sub-continent.

Classically Entertaining

Singapore-based Powerkids Ent. delivers popular animated family titles to the world.

We recently had the chance to catch up with Manoj Mishra, CEO of Sin gapore-based children’s entertain ment Company Powerkids Entertainment, to find out about the company’s activities at MIPCOM and other fall markets. “We focus on children’s animation through IP develop ment, animation Investment, management and monetization of kids entertainment con tent,” notes Mishra. “Powerkids champions the exciting portfolio of intellectual property owned and managed by Powerkids Enter tainment (Singapore), an animation compa ny based in Singapore. We are sponsored and managed by established investment manager OCP Asia (Singapore) Pte. Limited (“OCP Asia”).

Powerkids owns and distributes Akira and Mowgli , Jane and Jerry ,The Jungle Book , Peter Pan, The Psammy show and The New Adventures of Lassie. These beautiful ly produced series are broadcast and co-produced with some of the major Euro pean (French, German, Italian) broadcast ers and distributed in more than 160 coun tries across the globe.

In October, the company will introduce three big titles in various stages of develop ments and production at MIP Junior in Cannes:

• Akira and Mowgli (52 x 11 mins.). Brings a new perspective to the stories of the legendary Mowgli who is joined by Akira. She lives the day with equal strength and bravery alongside Mowgli and her new jungle friends.

• Puppet Poppet (38 x 7.5 mins.). A com pletely new idea of fun learning for kids using puppets.

• Dragonero (26 x 22 mins.). The Pow erkids partnership kicks off with one of Sergio Bonneli Editore’s best-selling comics, Dragonero, which was created by Luca Enoch and Stefano Vietti. SBE, Powerkids, Rai S.p.A. through Rai Rag azzi and Nexus TV are currently co-pro ducing the first season of the animated Dragonero series. Powerkids will be re sponsible for global distribution, licens ing, and merchandising. The series pre mieres at MIPCOM.

“Our shows celebrate and reflect diversity in all its forms,” notes Mishra, who was for merly the COO of DQ Entertainment. “They are perfect for family co-viewing. They’re absolutely safe for children and offer age-ap propriate stories and characters that pro vide high family-friendly environment for ages between 2 and 16. To top that, our li brary of animated content envisions values, beliefs, avenues, technologies, strategies, intent, and new levels of safe entertainment

content in the animation industry. Our indepth market research and analysis, en sures that the content we produce resonate with latest trends in the Global Kids content market.”

When asked about his take on the state of global animation in 2022, Mishra responds, “Animation is now at the center of any enter tainment production, be it movies, TV and streaming, web series or games, etc. With the introduction of AR/VR and XR, anima tion is taking viewers to new and exciting realms. Content consumption is at its peak, post pandemic. Currently, the new age OTT and app-based content market co-exist on par traditional broadcast which is a great news for both content creators and viewers. It’s an exciting time for everyone in the in dustry, and we’d like your readers to think of Powerkids as a power bank of entertain ment content for kids.”

For more info, visit www.powerkids.net.

Manoj Mishra

Faster, Smoother, Simpler!

Toon Boom introduces the 22 editions of Harmony and Storyboard Pro.

Just in time for the busy fall season, Montreal-based software powerhouse Toon Boom has released the 22 ver sion of its standard-setting Harmony and Storyboard Pro tools which prom ise to expand the possibilities of visual story telling while giving artists more control and freedom of ease.

Harmony 22: Creating Worlds of 2D Animation Industry artists rely on Harmony Premium’s tools and workflows at every step of the production process, from roughs to inkand-paint as well as 2D rigged characters and compositing. A benefit of using a consistent set of tools throughout the production pro cess is that revisions can be made at any point, without needing to import and export scenes or compromise in quality along the way. Industry artists recognize that Harmo ny’s industry-leading drawing engine and workflow tools provide the flexibility to pro duce animation in any style; with organic bit map brushes, precise vector lines, a robust color management system, an easy-to-use 3D stage and multiplane camera system, as well as tools for both traditional animation and rigged characters — while always offering art ists the freedom to seamlessly draw special poses when needed for a scene.

Harmony 22 Premium introduces new fea tures for artists and studios alike, including

full support for HDR pipelines, improved sup port for Python scripting, as well as new ef fects for animators and compositing artists. Rendering operations are now performed us ing 32-bit floating point values, which not only enable native support for HDR color and brightness values but also improve precision and performance on heavy scenes.

Python scripts can now run from Harmony’s own Python Console to access and manipulate scene data, which provide technical directors with more flexibility when developing work flows tailored to their production’s needs.

The animate pencil texture effect node al lows artists to quickly add line boil to tex tured vector lines, and the new bokeh blur effect allows independent artists, as well as compositing teams of all sizes, to bring cine matic effects to their projects.

Storyboard Pro 22: Where Every Great Story Begins

From seamless integration with screenwrit ing tools, to drawing thumbnails, revising sto ryboards or timing an animatic with camera movement and sound, Storyboard Pro allows creatives to get content off the ground quick ly and easily.

With the same industry-leading drawing tools found in Harmony, Storyboard Pro pro vides artists with the flexibility to sketch scenes quickly and efficiently using shorthand

or draw precise, on-model poses when need ed. With a built-in multiplane camera and support for 3D assets, Storyboard Pro can be used on any production, whether 2D, 3D, hy brid or live-action.

Meanwhile, updates in Storyboard Pro 22 bring improvements to conformation with non-linear editing software, native Apple Pro Res support and new quality-of-life features, such as an audio levels monitor for creating an imatics with sound. Improvements to conforma tion allow editors and directors to more accu rately track scenes in their editing software and bring changes, including to camera movements and timeline markers, back into Storyboard Pro.

Native support for Apple ProRes codecs al lows for consistency across macOS and Win dows, and allows for rendering in high resolu tion without memory limitations. The new audio levels monitor is essential for working with both scratch audio and final sound, to prevent audio clipping and more easily en sure consistent levels across a project.

The Duke’s Game

To mark the release of both Harmony 22 and Storyboard Pro 22, Toon Boom Animation commissioned the team at trailblazing studio Mercury Filmworks (Hilda, Kid Cosmic, Centaur world) to produce an original animated short. The new film, titled The Duke’s Game, was di rected by Shane Plante and will be used to

develop demo scenes that users can down load to learn how to use features in Harmony 22 Premium and Storyboard Pro 22. The team at Mercury Filmworks was given full creative freedom on the project.

“The projects that I do on my own tend to be a little darker,” notes Plante, a senior ani mator at Mercury Filmworks. “There are lines that we don’t get to cross at the studio regu larly, and I was a little hesitant to pitch them.”

“The only thing that we were told was a re quirement was that this short needed to be about skateboarding in some form,” adds Col lin Tsandilis, a director at Mercury Filmworks who collaborated with Plante on the project. “We didn’t want to just have the short set at a skatepark. We wanted it to be set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.”

The short film makes use of 2D character rigs for the Duke, Nitro and Mouse; Master Controllers on both characters and the hov erboards; a 3D environment inside Storyboard Pro and Harmony Pre mium; as well as scenes com posited using Harmony Premium’s new bo keh effect node. In addition to story boarding and directing the short, Plante also voiced the Duke and provided the guitar track that accom panies the film, making use of the new

audio monitoring tools in Storyboard Pro 22.

With help from artists at Mercury Filmworks, this new short sets a benchmark for what can be accomplished in Storyboard Pro 22 and Harmony 22, and demonstrates tools that art ists have at their disposal to produce stun ning animated sequences of their own.

What’s New in Harmony 22:

● HDR rendering with 32-bits per channel. Ren der operations in Harmony can now be per formed using 32-bit floating point values. This means more precision, better accuracy and sup port for color values below 0 and above 1 for high dynamic range (HDR) rendering.

● Python scripting. Python scripting can now run natively from Harmony’s own Python Con sole to access and manipulate scene data. If you need to leverage JavaScript API function alities, the new Python Console also interacts with the existing JavaScript/Python bridge.

Bokeh Blur effect. The Bokeh Blur effect added to Harmony Premium’s Effects Library simulates how a camera lens blurs elements out of focus based on the shape of its iris. An alpha depth matte can be add ed to this new blur effect to de termine the amount of blur a desired area of the image will re ceive and, in so doing, simulate

Animate Pencil Texture Effect.

Want to make vector lines look hand-drawn by simulating a line boil? Harmony 22 Premi um has a new node for that, with controls for adjusting the random offset and stretching applied to your pencil line’s texture.

What’s new in Storyboard Pro 22:

● Apple ProRes codec support. With increasingly demanding high quality video requirements Storyboard Pro brings consistency across plat forms and allows rendering in high resolution without running into memory limitations.

● Improved conformation with NLE software. Bring camera movements to your NLE soft ware, allowing for non-destructive changes on your timeline.

● Audio levels monitor. Visually monitor audio output levels in order to prevent audio clip ping as well as ensure consistent audio levels throughout the production pipeline. ◆

Licenses for Harmony 22 and Storyboard Pro 22 are available for purchase on Toon Boom Animation’s website. Users with existing annu al or monthly licenses can find the latest up dates in their accounts under Downloads. Har mony 22 and Storyboard Pro 22 are compatible with Windows and macOS, with support for Intel as well as Apple Silicon devices. Artists can download a free 21-day trial and find free training resources on the Toon Boom Learn portal. For more info, visit toonboom.com.

A STYLISH JOURNEY: To mark the release of Harmony 22 and Storyboard Pro 22, Toon Boom commissioned Mercury Filmworks to produce the short The Duke’s Game by Shane Plante. Left, Harmony 22 Premium’s new bokeh effect adds to the film’s cinematic style.

Tech Reviews

- By Todd Sheridan Perry -

Chaos Phoenix 5

Along with V-Ray 6, this summer saw the re lease of Phoenix 5, which is the update to the Chaos fluid simulator (which includes water, fire, smoke, etc.). Phoenix already has established it self as an easy-to-use fluid simulator, with com paratively straightforward controls. This means you are up and running quickly and have time to tweak and adjust settings. In 5.0, things have been made easier by adding in four new presets: Stormy Sea, Jet Engine, Ice Cubes and Speedboat. What you need to know is that with a click, you have the voxel volume and pertinent control tools to get you going. I know I’ve needed each of these setup multiple times in my career. So, having these pre sets at your fingertips is really handy.

A few of these setups utilize some new tools in Phoenix 5. Speed Boat, for instance, uses both the Thruster and Axis Lock forces. In days of yore, we would animate a boat moving through

the water and then simulate the wake, splashes and foam and such. The downside of that was that while the boat pushes the water, the water pushes the boat — and you don’t get that inter action via animation. The Thruster Force “push es” the boat (or whatever object you are using) through the water and the boat will gain nu ance in its motion based on the structure of the water beneath it. But you don’t want the boat bouncing all over the place, so the Axis Lock limits the amount of rotation and translation the boat can move in any particular direction.

This interaction between objects and fluid is a common theme. More controls have been added to the active bodies (the objects) to dictate how the bodies will behave. Do they emit foam, retain fluids, can they attract each other or react to the side of the fluid volume, etc?

Phoenix 5 also brings command line standalone simulations, essentially removing the

overhead of running Max or Maya. You can export a Phoenix scene — which is an ASCII file, so it can be edited after the fact, and then run the simulation. As of mid-August, there were some limitations with object animations and a few other things in standalone mode. But, it sounds like the big brains at Chaos are hard at work expanding the functionality.

Additional features include better foam genera tion for ocean sims, a voxel shader that allow ren dering of solids, smoke and fire within the same shader, cryptomatte and multimatte support, ex porting simulations to PRT files, and a node-based interface for SimScenes.

Website: chaos.com

Price: $70/month, $380/year

Chaos V-Ray 6

Chaos also released V-Ray 6 for both Max and Maya this past summer. Usually at this point in a

V-Ray 6 demo based on a concept by Encho Enchev, created by the Chaos 3D team.

software’s development cycle we are seeing incre mental steps forward, often to make things faster and more efficient under the hood, which is defi nitely important. But V-Ray 6 has some additions that while seemingly simple at first blush, are real ly potentially powerful.

The finite dome light is pretty sweet, and solves problems that many of us just didn’t see as a prob lem — until they became one! Dome light is a way to get image-based lighting and reflections into your 3D scene using an HDR. But originally this light would be infinitely huge — and the world, in fact, is not. For stills, it seems to work fine — espe cially if you are incorporating that HDR as the back ground itself. Yet, when you start moving the cam era around the scene, the perspective will break. By setting the position and scale of your dome light, your scene has a better relationship to your CG. The ground is the ground, your background is closer and everything works together.

Clouds have been added to work with the Sky/ Sun systems. So, now, when you change your sun

position on the horizon and those atmosphere algorithms kick in, your clouds behave appropri ately. There are lots of parameters to fiddle with to get the cloud cover you want.

Chaos Scatter, which used to be a separate thing, is now built into V-Ray. All of the goodness of scattering objects of proxies, with controls of vari ation in scale, rotation, transformation to give a sense of chaos (no pun). There’s control over scat tering on the surface on sloped terrain, or eleva tion differences or driven by maps. It’s incredibly powerful — and now part of V-Ray itself.

EnMesh is a cool tool with which you can proce durally replace a simpler surface with incredibly complex, repeatable geo that calculates at render time. I guess you could think of it as a variant of Scatter — taking a source mesh and propagating over a surface. There is a great example creating chainmail using a mesh of five chain links and then spreading them across a piece of simulated cloth.

Another really clever tool is Decal Displace ment. The idea of a decal is placing an image

onto a surface, like a sticker. A clearer example would be crawling ivy on a building. Without dis placement, the “decal” would look like a painting of ivy on the building, but with displacement, the image would cast shadows on the surface below — providing depth without the cost of adding geometry of ivy vines and leaves.

These are the primary cool features, but there are more benefits in sub-surface scatter ing and energy conservation. And in Maya, there are some added tools and benefits for those who are migrating to using USD (which you should). Overall, there is quite a bit to take advantage of in this latest release!

Website: vray.com

Price: Commercial - $77.90/month, $466.80/year; Educational - $149/year

Todd Sheridan Perry is a VFX supervisor and digi tal artist whose credits include The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers and Avengers: Age of Ultron. You can reach him at todd@teaspoonvfx.com.

the Global Animation Community

Animating with a Smile!

-

By Virginie Lavallée & Louis-Philippe Vermette -

The animation industry is known for creating fun and innovative content while implementing new state-of-the-art technologies. Our productions make worldwide au diences laugh, dream and have the time of their lives. We have been blessed throughout our careers to work on some of our favorite shows and films, winning awards, and enjoy ing just how cool our jobs are.

But over the past few years, we have real ized that the behind-the-scenes of production does not always match the level of fun and happiness we see on the screen. Quite the contrary. Work conditions have been deterio rating, and more people are quitting the in dustry, searching for better life-work integra tion and a better environment for their mental health.

While content is king and creativity is re vered, a third axis of production has been put aside: the well-being of the human behind the computers. And if we think about it, how much animation would be produced without the artists’ and managers’ daily work and in spiration? None.

Yet burnout, harassment and toxicity are more present than ever — and even normal ized to a certain extent. The human issues are becoming more apparent, and resource reten tion and building trust within our teams is more challenging than ever. It can be hard knowing where to start to create the change we want to see.

That’s why we founded The Happy Produc ers: to help our peers turn animation indus try-specific challenges into innovative solu tions and processes to prioritize well-being and lower stress. We believe it starts with cul tivating a leadership and management mind set that creates psychologically safe work en vironments and builds a positive, long-lasting company culture.

Happy Producer: Not an Oxymoron

While the industry has mastered the artistic intentions and technical tools to create limit less content, it is time to integrate that it is

not only what we do that matters but who we are while creating that content. Remember your passion and enthusiasm when you first started in the animation industry? What if we could have that level of love for our work all throughout our career?

Creating psychologically safe work environ ments means having healthy social dynamics within our teams. It means that you can make a mistake without fear of getting shamed or fired for it. It means that our differences make us stronger, and that it is okay to ask for help and support.

In our many years as producers in the ani mation industry, we have been told to smile less, to scream more, to make our team stay at the studio all night and to lock the front door so that no one could get out before the shot was delivered.

But, we refused to conform. And as a result, we have delivered hundreds of thousands of shots on time and on budget to happy clients with happier teams!

What we do is important, but it’s entertain ment. We are not putting our lives on the line! But by changing our attitudes towards each other and making well-being our number one priority, we can save the lives of our col leagues. Let’s never lose another member of the animation family to suicide because of the bullying we all witness and tolerate

Where to Start?

Can you change your supervisor’s mindset or your client’s attitude? No. But you can prac tice self-awareness, embody the work culture you want to see and lead by example. By culti vating a growth mindset, expressing grati tude, putting in place boundaries and strengthening our active listening skills, we can create the change we want to see. Priori tizing these human skills is contagious, and you would be surprised how much our col leagues are yearning for them and want to implement them, too!

So, the next time someone screams at you at work, the choice is yours. You can scream back and be part of the problem. Or you can show a better way to lead and create true change. It all starts with you.

Character, compassion, consistency and commitment compound into well-being and safety at work. And the ripple effect can truly change our industry culture for the better.

If you’d like to be a happy producer, we are here to coach, teach and support you. Togeth er, we can build the animation industry of our dreams.

Virginie Lavallée and Louis-Philippe Vermette are animation industry veterans who founded the online community The Happy Producers. For more info, visit thehappyproducers.com.

The Happy Producers are on a mission to make well-being the talk of Toon Town.

Fear of the Dark

Director Uri Lotan takes us behind the scenes of his award-winning short Black Slide.

Ayoung boy learns to face life’s dark est moments in Uri Lotan’s Black Slide, a memorable short that has received a lot of acclaim worldwide, including an Annecy Cristal nomi nation, a Cinekid honor, a British Animation Award and the top prize at Anima in Brussels. As Lotan tells us, the short was inspired by a sad chapter in the young director’s own life. “Black Slide was in spired by a formative moment from my childhood, the passing of my mother,” he says. “It was an expe rience that shaped me and has been ingrained in my consciousness ever since. There was something unique to how it happened, and it felt like it was time to get it out of my head and onto the screen.”

Lotan began thinking of the short four years ago when he was living in Vancouver. It was only after returning to Israel in 2017 when he teamed up with producer Amit Gicelter. “We initially fo cused on the script and art style, before moving onto storyboarding and editing,” he recalls. “We went into full CG production towards the end of 2019, which lasted around 14 months.”

The production predominantly involved creat ing 3D CG assets and animation in Maya. “The an imation is inspired by a mix of stop-motion anima tion and children’s book illustrations,” says Lotan. “The tactile, palpable aesthetic of stop motion, juxtaposed with the naive, childlike charm of chil dren’s book illustrations creates a striking con trast. The visual style feels mature and childish simultaneously, as if seeing the world from the perspective of a child who has a more adult un derstanding of life much like our protagonist,

Eviah, whose loss forces him to confront his fears and undergo an emotional transformation.”

According to the director, around 30 artists from all over the world worked on the project. “This di versity helped to shape the film and to add texture and a certain uniqueness,” he says. “For example, our supervising animator, Charles Larrieu, is French, and yet he had an unbelievable grasp of Israeli behavior and cultural mannerisms that re ally helped to shape our animation style.”

A Cathartic Cartoon

When asked about his animation heroes, Lotan mentions his good friend, animator Eran Hilleli. “He creates thought-provoking, emotionally engaging, vi sual films that are so beautiful and poetic. It’s a plea sure to know such a modest and unbelievably prolific artist who is so original,” he notes. “I also love Alan Holly’s work, his films are mesmerizing and transfor mative. His short film Coda was a huge inspiration for me, and really opened up the possibilities of what an animated short film could look like.”

As Black Slide makes its way around the world through various animation festivals, the Tel Avivbased director says he has been very pleased with its impact. “Sometimes I hear viewers describe what the film is about in a way that’s much clearer and more impactful than how I’ve explained it through four years of production,” he admits. “That’s always extremely pleasing — and a little ironic, too. The most touching reactions are from viewers who have a personal connection to the story, particularly those who have lost a loved one, too. I could feel how much this film meant to them,

the emotion they get from reliving their experi ence through Eviah’s is powerful and cathartic.”

A graduate of Ringling College of Art and Design who has directed episodes of Go! Go! Cory Carson! and worked on the movie The Nut Job, Lotan was intro duced to CG animation by his older cousin. “He showed me 3ds Max at the age of 15,” he notes. “He took five long boxes, put them next to a big bulky box and smoothed it all out. It looked like a really horribly shaped human hand. I was blown away but not quite hooked yet! Then, a couple of years later, I really got into Pixar films. They were full of heart, spectacle and humor, and I loved that balance. I think that was when I knew I wanted to make animated films myself.”

As he looks back at the experience, Lotan says he is particularly pleased with how the vocal perfor mances of Eviah and his friend Tsuf turned out. “Finding the right voice actors was a huge chal lenge,” he explains. “You’d be surprised with how many 50-year-old women auditioned for the role of a 12- year-old boy. Finding children who aren’t pro fessional actors and yet can still deliver an appeal ing and credible performance was really tough, but once we found Ivri Shai and Rom Shemesh it was clear that they were our leads. These voice perfor mances gave a really natural and believable base for our animators to build on. They took it to the next level, with micro-expressions, gestures and lit tle details that make these two Israeli boys kids we all remember from our childhood.”

Uri Lotan

This month,

THE

get a peek into

8 a.m. Our day starts with the team arriving at our new Burleigh Studio on the Gold Coast. Sometimes we need a little VR/AR to hide our true images on mornings when the coffee hasn’t quite kicked in!

8:05 a.m. Dee and I jump straight into video calls and review the day’s schedule. No two days are ever the same, but what’s not to love in a world where you have the power to create anything!

10 a.m.  Not sure if I should call Dee and I puppet masters, wizards or sorcerers, but I definitely feel like all of the above.

a.m. The perform ers arrive and are dressed in their superhero attire … I mean, motion-cap ture suits.

8:30 a.m.  The team is already hard at work on today’s daily shoot and run schedules, as well as all rigging and equipment set up.

and

with our

tech solutions, this is far less tedious and time consuming than

9:30 a.m. Test and adjust time, to ensure all the mo-cap action is interfacing correctly with the animated worlds we’ve created, using our Alchemy pipeline and virtual production techniques.

p.m. That’s a wrap as they say! Let the cast and crew’s pack up begin.

4:30 p.m. A wrap for Dee and I just means that now we can return to the office and prep for the next day of filming and production.

Divers (Head of VFX) & Deanne Czarnecki (Head of Studio),

of

virtual production studio Fika Entertainment.

“As I grew up, I found there was one type of story I loved most of all – the rollicking adventure. I loved King Kong, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Treasure Island and Lawrence of Arabia.

Big sweeping films, where characters venture off into the unknown, were irresistible to me.

I wanted to make movies, and one day I wanted to make a movie like that.”

CHRIS WILLIAMS