Animation Magazine - February 2023 -327

FEATURES

THE CAT’S MEOW 20

The creative team behind The Amazing Maurice discusses the making of their Pratchett passion project.

AN ARTISTIC HOMAGE TO A FRENCH FAVORITE 24

Director Benjamin Massoubre talks about the joys and challenges of adapting Little Nicholas to the big screen.

MORE GODS AND MONSTERS 28

Director Ji Zhao tells us everything we wanted to know about his new epic fantasy movie, New Gods: Yang Jian

AWARDS

THE ART

SHORTS

FIGHTING AGAINST ANIMAL CRUELTY 36

Save Ralph’s lovable rabbit puts the spotlight on cosmetic testing on animals.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

A NEW WONDER FROM DOWN UNDER 38

Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit talk about the distinctly Aussie charms of Hulu’s hot new animated show Koala Man

THE ANIMATED MAN FROM OZ 40

It’s time to catch up with Michael Cusack, the brilliant man behind YOLO: Crystal Fantasy Koala Man and Smiling Friends

MISSION: PAWSIBLE! 42

Feisty feline heroes save the day in Disney Junior’s hot new show SuperKitties

RUH-ROH! YOUR MOVIE’S SHELVED! 44

Director Michael Kurinsky talks about how his animated movie Scoob! Holiday Haunt had its plug pulled.

GO. FAST. AGAIN! 46 Sonic is back in action in a glorious new CG-animated Netflix show.

VFX & TECH

DIVING INTO PANDORA’S MAGIC 52

Director James Cameron and his VFX team discuss the stunning visual effects achievements of Avatar: The Way of the Water TECH REVIEWS 55

Higx Point Render, Adobe Creative Cloud 2023 and Adobe Characterizer.

THE CAT’S MEOW

16 AN ARTISTIC HOMAGE TO A FRENCH FAVORITE 24

The creative team behind The Amazing Maurice discusses the making of their Pratchett passion project.

Director Benjamin Massoubre talks about the joys and challenges of adapting Little Nicholas to the big screen.

FROM

Here’s to a Super Animated 2023!

And so a new year has begun! What do you have on your 2023 bingo card? World peace and happiness or global disasters and Armageddon? More animated shows greenlit or shelved by streaming services? Miyazaki’s new movie How Do You Live and Sony’s new Spider-Verse movie blowing our minds? Disney and Warner Bros. throwing huge bashes for their centennials? No matter what this new year has in store for us, your friends here at the magazine hope to bring you all the latest news, behind-the-scenes articles and fun profiles each and every day on our website and every month in this print publication!

Fans of British fantasy master and satirist Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) have a good reason to be happy this year as a charming animated adaptation of his book The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is first premiering at Sundance and then opening in the U.S. and other territories (after debuting in the U.K. in December). We had the chance to chat with The Amazing Maurice director Toby Genkel and producers Andrew Baker, Robert Chandler and Emely Christians about their labor of love, which is certainly not your same old, cookie-cutter, animated family movie. It was fascinating to find out how the teams in Germany and the U.K. joined forces to make this imaginative work come to animated life through the early days of the pandemic, and how they strove to stay true to the spirit of Pratchett’s writings.

Another high-profile animated movie Little Nicholas: Happy As Can Be made its U.S. debut quietly last month. This beautiful, 2D-animated gem pays homage to the enduring art of René  Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempé and also gives us insight into the creative process of the two masters. Although the film didn’t have a wide release and arrived without much fanfare, it was the recipient of the top prize at Annecy and the Animation Is Film festivals in 2022.

FEBRUARY 2023 VOL. 37, ISSUE 2, NO. 327 info@animationmagazine.net

2023’s eagerly anticipated Miyazaki’s How Do You Live (left) and Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Part 1

Our longtime contributor Michael Mallory catches up with some of the top character designers of the past year’s animated favorites in this issue as well. It’s quite interesting to learn about the challenges and rewards of this aspect of the animation business, which seems to attract so many talented artists from around the world. We could fill a whole book with their stories, but due to space limitations, Michael was able to include some of the artists who worked on Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, DreamWorks’ Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and The Bad Guys, Henry Selick’s Wendell & Wild, Pixar’s Turning Red and Disney’s Strange World

Michael Cusack is another big animation star who has been having a terrific year: The charming Australian creator found the time to tell us a little about his three big shows, the new series Koala Man (Hulu), YOLO: Silver Destiny and Smiling Friends (both on Adult Swim). The burning question on everyone’s mind was how does he ever manage to deliver three fascinating toons at the same time? The ever-so-modest artist tells us that he does it all by surrounding himself with other amazingly talented people.

We hope you all enjoy a great beginning of 2023. We know it’s never easy to get back into the swing of things after some time away, but remember: You can always rely on the magic of animation when the real world lets you down!

Ramin Zahed Editor in Chief ramin@animationmagazine.net

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

“I sat behind a four-year-old in the cinema whose mom, anytime it got a little intense, kept leaning into her, to try and catch things in a way that might make it a bit easier. But the girl pushed her mom’s cheek out of the way because she just didn’t want to be managed. Kids don’t forgive you if you try to talk down to them, they really don’t.”

— Nora Twomey, director, My Father’s Dragon

Animation Planner February 1

The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder returns to Disney+ for S2! 3

Take a deep breath before asking your friends to hit the theater for Sword Art Online the Movie -Progressive- Scherzo of Deep Night, in U.S. & Canada cinemas today through Crunchyroll and Aniplex. 6

Preschoolers can puzzle out problems with some fluffy friends in PBS KIDS’ Work It Out Wombats! 9

Strap in for an epic space stowaway adventure in the new Netflix original My Dad the Bounty Hunter 10

The unusual heroic duo of Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur are ready for action on Disney+. 11

Five diverse Spanish titles are vying for the animated feature Goya Award tonight in Seville. [premiosgoya.com] 13

Adult Swim brings back space-age faves with King Star King!/!/!/ tonight at midnight and Ballmastrz Rubicon on Feb. 20.

Celebrate the year’s best in VFX, digital characters and movie magic at the VES Awards. [visualeffecssociety.com] 16

Berlin is buzzing with the next big screen hits during the European Film Market, running for eight days in the German capital. [efm-berlinale.de]

17

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is sure to deliver some incredibly creative VFX in the MCU’s latest installment. Brussels teems with inspiring animation during the 10-day Anima festival. [animafestival/be]

and the Wasp: Quantumania

19

Awards season rolls on with the EE BAFTA Film Awards broadcasting from London tonight. [bafta.org]

23

Jet over to the ancient Catalonian city of Lleida for your indie animation fix at Animac this weekend, or visit online March 3-12. [animac.paeria.cat]

25

The prestigious Producers Guild Awards take place tonight, but Toon Town will be cheering on their colleagues and animation idols at the landmark 50th Annie Awards! [annieawards.org | producersguildawards.com]

24

WB is unraveling the time-traveling family comedy Mummies in theaters, from first-time Spanish director Juan Jesús García Galocha and featuring an impressive British voice cast.

TBD

Harlivy heats up in Harley Quinn: A Very Problematic Valentine’s Day Special, which will woo viewers on HBO Max sometime this month.

Sword Art Online the Movie -ProgressiveScherzo of Deep Night,

My Dad the Bounty Hunter

Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur

Ballmastrz Rubicon

Ant-Man

Mummies

Harley Quinn: A Very Problematic Valentine’s Day Special

The Amazing

The Must-Have List

Maurice: The Art of the Film

Curl up with the coolest new cat in town, whose animated exploits are brought to life in this coffee table hardback chock full of exclusive concept designs, character sketches, storyboards and production art. See how the German and U.K. animation teams collaborated to bring this fairytale corner of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld to screens, with unique insights from the artists and animators. (Character supervisor Sophie Vickers’ observation that “the trick with rats is to balance the appeal with the fact that they are actually rats” may go down as the most adaptable, situationally relevant animation quote of the year.) [Titan Books | $50 | Jan. 17]

Shudder’s Creepshow: From Script to Scream

October doesn’t have a monopoly on spooky vibes! Keep the shivers going all winter long and into the new year with this tantalizing glimpse beyond the veil of the critically acclaimed anthology series. Grab a lantern and enter the creative crypt wherein lie the secrets of the show’s origins, inspirations, production and extra-sinister special effects. This 240-page epitaph gets an extra boost of creep cred with a foreword from horror icon Stephen King and afterword by fright fan Kirk Hammett (lead guitarist for Metallica). [Titan Books | $50]

The Art of Avatar: The Way of Water

Dive into the expanded world of James Cameron’s Pandora over a decade in the making in this 256-page hardcover tome, packed to the gills with stunning art and intricately detailed concepts for the sequel’s characters, new marine creatures, costume and vehicle designs and more. Written by NYT bestselling author/ entertainment journalist Tara Bennett in collaboration with the filmmakers, this four pounder is a deep dive into the creative and technical mastery behind the blockbuster, featuring an introduction by

Charles M. Schulz

The Art and Life of the Peanuts Creator in 100 Objects [Insight Editions | $50]

One Piece Color Walk Compendium New World to Wano [VIZ | $40]

Pearl of the Sea

The first graphic novel (middle grade fantasy) from Triggerfish animation studio. [Catalyst Press | $20 | Jan. 31]

Yu Yu Hakusho - 30th Anniversary Box Set

All four seasons (112 eps.) of teenage delinquent turned Spirit Detective Yusuke Urameshi’s anime adventures, plus two never-before-dubbed OVAs with the original cast and over 90 minutes of legacy special features — packaged with special 30th Anniversary artwork sure to keep the demons at bay. [Crunchyroll | $90 | Jan. 31]

Mickey & Minnie Vol. 1

Celebrate 100 magical years of Disney with this collection of 10 classic animated shorts, with new introductions by the marvelous mice themselves! Includes Mickey’s debut Steamboat Willie, Brave Little Tailor, On Ice and more. [Disney Movie Club Exclusive | Jan. 31]

Inu-Oh

Masaaki Yuasa’s show-stopping 14th century glam-rock opera arrives home after wowing festival audiences and animation lovers all year. Watchable in both the original Japanese (starring J-rock icon Avu-chan) and English dub versions, the Bluray set includes an interview with Yuasa, U.S. premiere Q&A, “Yuasa Draws Inu-Oh” and scene breakdown. [GKIDS/Shout! Factory | $27 | Jan. 24] ◆

acclaimed filmmaker Robert Rodriguez. [DK | $50]

Mercedes Milligan

Remembering the Animation & VFX Greats Who Left Us Last Year

In 2022, we lost many talented men and women who enriched and brightened our world by the remarkable contributions they made to the fields of animation and visual effects. We honor their memory, celebrate their accomplishments and are forever grateful to them for making our world a better and brighter place. We are also thankful to the amazing Tom Sito, for producing The Afternoon of Remembrance each and every year to celebrate the achievements of those who left us this past year. The Animation Guild’s annual event is slated for Sunday, February 26 at noon PST via Zoom.

Gil Alkabetz. Award-winning Israeli-born indie animator and teacher, best known for directing witty, beautifully observed shorts such as Yankale, Rubicon, Morir de Amor, Swamp and One Stormy Night. He was also animation designer on the German cult fave Run Lola Run. Died Sept. 15, age 64 (suicide).

Ron D. Allen. Assistant director on FernGully: The Last Rainforest and production assistant on The Little Mermaid. Died June 6, age 55.

Louie Anderson. Beloved stand-up comedian, actor (Baskets), author and game show host, who created and voiced Emmy-winning animated series Life with Louie, based on his own childhood, which ran on Fox Kids for three seasons (1994-98). Also voiced Gary/Gory on Pickle and Peanut. Died Jan. 21, age 69 (non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma).

Jered Barclay. Veteran actor, director and acting coach. whose career spanned almost nine decades. Animation credits include The Transformers (Cerebros, Dr. Swofford, Sinnertwin), The Smurfs, Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo,  Trollkins,  The Little Rascals, Richie Rich, Foofur, The Dukes and  Paddington Bear. Died July 23, age 91 (MDS leukemia).

Jules Bass. Acclaimed director, producer, lyricist, composer and author who formed the influential Rankin/Bass Animated Entertainment with his friend Arthur Rankin Jr. and produced beloved stop-motion classics such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Mad Monster Party, Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, Peter Cottontail and 2D-animated shows such as Frosty the Snowman, ThunderCats and The Wind in the Willows. Died Oct. 25, age 87.

Carl Angus Bell. Prolific Canadian animator who worked with the likes of Chuck Jones, Ralph Bakshi and Richard Williams at Filmation, Hanna-Barbera and Disney. Notable credits include Horton Hears a Who!, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Lord of the Rings, Heathcliff, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, She-Ra, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, Mulan and Tarzan. Died March 8, age 91 (heart failure).

Anne D. Bernstein. New York-based comedy animation writer and story editor, who was best known for writing shows such as Daria, Downtown, Liquid Television, Celebrity Deathmatch, KaBlam!, The Backyardigans, Tutenstein, Viva Piñata and Angelo Rules. She was also head writer for Super Wings! at Little Airplane and was one of Baboon Animation’s team of expert writers and script doctors. Died Feb. 28, age 60 (Parkinson’s disease).

Claudio Biern Boyd. Well-regarded Spanish TV writer, director, producer and founder of the Spanish animation studio BRB Internacional who created shows such as The World of David the Gnome, Gladiator Academy, Around the World with Willy Fog, Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds and several other global favorites. Died Oct. 17, age 81.

Robert Blalack. Panamanian-born, American VFX artist and founding member of ILM, who designed the Star Wars VistaVision Composite Optical Production pipeline at age 29 and went on to win an Oscar for his work on the 1977 classic and an Emmy for the ABC movie The Day After. Other notable credits include the Cosmos series and movies such as Altered States, Wolfen, Cat People, RoboCop, Airplane and The Blues Brothers. Died Feb. 2, Age 73.

Nick Bososutow. Animation producer who worked on many acclaimed indie shorts and video projects during the ‘70s and ‘80s, including the Oscar-winning Is It Always Right to Be Right?, The Giving Tree, the Oscar-nominated The Legend of John Henry and The Reluctant Dragon. Died Nov. 19, age 82.

Raymond Briggs. Popular English illustrator, graphic novelist and author who is widely celebrated for his 1978 masterpiece The Snowman, which was adapted into the award-winning Channel 4 animated special directed by Dianne Jackson and produced by John Coates in 1982. His books also inspired animated specials and movies such as When the Wind Blows (1986), Father Christmas (1991), The Bear (1998), Fungus the Bogeyman (2004) and Lupus Films’ 2016 feature Ethel & Ernest. Died August 9, age 88.

Barry Bruce. Portland-based clay animator, director and designer, who worked at Will Vinton Studios. His credits include shorts such as Martin the Cobbler, Rip Van Winkle, The Little Prince, Dinosaur, A Christmas Gift, the Oscar-nominated The Great Cognito and Return to Oz, Sesame Street and A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (animation supervisor). He won an Emmy in for his work on the special Claymation Easter and was nominated for two Emmys for directing the Meet the Raisins! TV special and the  Claymation Comedy of Horror Show. Died Dec. 14, 2021, age 77 (cancer).

Myrna Bushman. Timing director and checker who worked at Warner Bros., Disney TV, Ruby-Spears Productions and Hanna-Barbera on shows such as Inspector Gadget, Muppet Babies, G.I. Joe, Madeline and Sabrina: The Animated Series. Died Jan. 26, age 85.

Mike Camarillo. Animation designer, layout and prop designer and effects animator who worked on shows such as Bebe’s Kids, Rugrats, The Simpsons, The Powerpuff Girls, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends and Sym-Bionic Titan and movies such as Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, The Road to El Dorado and Quest for Camelot. Died Dec. 25, 2021, age 57.

Maryanne “Mickie” Caparilli-McGowan. Voice casting and ADR director who handled the ADR casting/ loop group for numerous animated features from Toy Story and Treasure Planet to Illumination movies such as The Grinch. Died March 12, age 84.

Pat Carroll. Tony-nominated and Emmy- and Grammy-winning stage and screen actress and comedian, best known for voicing Ursula in Disney’s The Little Mermaid Died July 30, age 95 (pneumonia).

Charles Csuri. American artist and computer art pioneer described by Smithsonian Magazine as “the father of digital art and computer animation.” Died Feb. 27, age 99.

Paul Coker. Influential MAD magazine cartoonist and character designer who inspired the look of animated TV characters such as Frosty the Snowman and Peter Cottontail. Died July 23, age 93.

Robbie Coltrane. Acclaimed Scottish character actor and comedian best known for playing the giant Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies. He also voiced animated characters in Brave, Arthur Christmas, The Tale of Despereaux and The Gruffalo. Died Oct. 14, age 72 (multiple organ failure).

Kevin Conroy. Prolific and hugely popular voice of DC’s Batman in the animated universe, who starred as the Caped Crusader in 60 different productions (including 15 films and 15 series), beginning with Batman: The Animated Series (1992-95) and Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993) and ending with the Multiversus game (2022). Died Nov. 10, age 66 (cancer).

Alkabetz

Anderson

Barclay

Bell

Bernstein

Biern Boyd

Blalack

Bososutow

Bruce Carroll

Briggs

Camarillo

Alice Davis. Costume designer and Disney Legend who dressed some of Disney Parks’ most recognizable animatronics and was married to Disney animator and Imagineer Marc Davis. Died Nov. 3, age 93.

Simon Deitch. Cartoonist, designer and layout designer who worked on The Head and Doug. He was the son of animator/cartoonist Gene Deitch. Died June 21, age 75.

Jennifer Dolce. Annie-nominated editor/associate editor who worked on The Simpsons and features such as The Prophet, The Simpsons Movie, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Trolls, Monsters, Inc., Puss in Boots, Penguins of Madagascar, Luck and others throughout three decades. Age 62.

Borivoj Dovniković-Bordo. Well-regarded Croatian director, animator and caricaturist and prominent member of the Zagreb school of animation style behind titles such as The Great Meeting, The Doll (Lutkica), Krek and Curiosity (Znatizlja). Died Feb. 8, age 91.

Ralph Eggleston. Acclaimed Annie Award-winning writer-director of the 2000 Pixar short For the Birds and prominent production designer on Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, WALL•E and the two Incredibles movies. He also contributed to Ratatouille, Up and Soul, and helped craft the original story for Monsters, Inc. and worked on shows such as The Pound Puppies, Garfield: His 9 Lives and  The Simpsons. He was the art director for  FernGully, Disney’s  Aladdin, The Lion King and  Pocahontas and DreamWorks’  The Road to El Dorado. Died August 28, age 56 (cancer).

Steve Fickinger. Tony-winning producer (Dear Evan Hansen) who was also director of creative development at Disney Feature Animation, overseeing projects such as Mulan, Tarzan and Lilo & Stitch and supervising the theatrical adaptation of The Lion King Died June 17, age 62.

Jonathan Finn-Gamiño. Illustrator, character designer and storyboard artist who worked on American Dad! and Big Mouth. Died Jan. 25, age 32.

Bob Fortier. Canadian writer and animator who worked on Rock & Rule, Hippo Tub Co. and Runaway Robots and was the founder of The Animation House studio in Toronto. Died Feb. 4, age 73.

Gérald Forton. French comic-book artist, storyboard artist and model/layout artist who worked on shows such as X-Men: The Animated Series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and BraveStarr. Died Dec. 16, 2021, age 90.

Jonathan Gales. Architect, animator and BAFTA-winning co-founder of British animation and VFX studio Factory Fifteen (BBC’s Tokyo 2020 promo). Died Nov. 19, age 36 (killed by a suspected drunk driver while using a pedestrian crosswalk in L.A.).

Fortier

Dovniković-Bordo

Eggleston

Davis

Finn-Gamino

Forton

Conroy

Coltrane

Coker

Gales

Geurs

Gagnon

Evelyn A. R. Gabai. Writer and producer whose credits included Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Dragon’s Lair, Jem, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, DuckTales, The Smurfs, The Mask, X-Men: Evolution, Spider-Man: The Animated Series and The Penguins of Madagascar. Died April 30.

Lina Gagnon. Montreal-based animator and educator who began her career as assistant animator on NFB’s Lumaaq: An Eskimo Legend and the Oscar-winning short The Man Who Planted Trees and went on to write and direct the Annecy prize-winning short Beginnings, Dessine Moi une Chanson (Draw Me a Song) and A Family For Maria. Died Feb. 4, age 75.

Sari Gennis. Special effects animator and digital artist, who worked on James and the Giant Peach, The Tigger Movie, Happily Ever After, The Chronicles of Riddick, The Avengers, Star Trek Into Darkness and The Librarians. Died March 14, age 67.

Karl Geurs. Emmy-winning writer, producer and editor whose credits include TaleSpin, Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too, Goof Troop, Dungeons & Dragons, Barney & Friends, The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Curious George, Tumble Leaf and Pooh’s Grand Adventure. Died May 25, age 74.

Gilbert Gottfried. Instantly recognizable voice actor and comedian who was best known for playing the wisecracking parrot Iago in Disney’s Aladdin (1992). He lent his distinctive voice to numerous characters in series such as The Ren & Stimpy Show, Beavis and Butt-Head, Bobby’s World, The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat, Duckman, Dr. Katz, Superman, Hercules, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, The Emperor’s New School, Fairly OddParents, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012),  The Tom and Jerry Show, Justice League Action, Family Guy, Teen Titans Go!, SpongeBob SquarePants, Cyberchase, Kamp Koral, Smiling Friends, Bear in the Big Blue House, Crank Yankers and all the  Aladdin sequels, spin-offs and games. Died April 12, age 67 (myotonic muscular dystrophy).

Lori Jo Hanson Garcia. Ink and paint artist, painter and final checker at Hyperion, Hanna-Barbera, Bakshi Productions and Universal who worked on shows such as Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and A Flintstones Christmas Carol. Died Aug. 2, age 66.

Dylan Hoffman. Technical director and rigging artist (Canvas, Kamp Koral). Died Feb. 6, age 33 (motorbike accident).

Jeff Howard. Animator and effects designer whose credits include The Princess and the Frog, The Simpsons Movie, King of the Hill, Dora the Explorer and BraveStarr. Died Aug. 25, age 69.

Blake James. Canadian cinematographer, animator, layout and background artist who worked on many NFB projects as well as films and TV shows such as Heavy Metal, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, Dennis the Menace, The Teddy Bears’ Picnic and The Raccoons. Died Nov. 20, age 93.

Kim Jung Gi. South Korean illustrator, cartoonist and manhwa artist who was famous for his large, highly detailed illustrations and drawing from memory at Comic-Con and similar events. Died Oct. 3, age 47 (heart attack).

Angelika Katz. Painter who worked on numerous Hyperion and Disney animated features, including Aladdin, The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mulan, The Emperor’s New Groove and Lilo & Stitch. Died Jan. 3, age 77.

Lansbury

Laverde

Gennis

Howard

Kim

Korty

Knowlton

Kobayashi

James

Hoffman

Gottfried

Melvin “Mel” Keefer. A layout and design artist who worked for Filmation and Hanna-Barbera on shows such as Jonny Quest, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Groovie Goolies and Sabrina the Teenage Witch Died Feb. 11, age 95.

Ken Knowlton. Artist and influential computer animation pioneer who developed some of the earliest CG pictures, portraits and films during the two decades he spent at the computing techniques research department at Bell Lab. He was the inventor of BEFLIX, one of the earliest programming languages created for computer graphics. Died June 16, age 91.

Shichirô Kobayashi. Japanese animation director and founder of Kobayashi Production, best known for his work on Ashita no Joe 2, Blood+, Detroit Metal City, Magical Angel Creamy Mami and Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro. Died August 25, age 89 (congestive heart failure).

John Korty. American film director and animator who directed the Emmy-winning live-action TV movie The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and the animated feature Twice Upon a Time, the first animated movie produced by George Lucas. He also directed several animated shorts for The Electric Company and Sesame Street (including an adaptation of Aesop’s Fables) and Vegetable Soup. Died March 9, age 85.

Angela Lansbury. One of the true stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood whose career spanned eight decades on stage, screen and TV. The London-born Irish-British and American actress was loved by animation fans for voicing Mrs. Potts in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991) as well as Miss Price in Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) and the Dowager Empress Maria in Don Bluth’s Anastasia (1997). Winner of an Oscar, eight Tonys, 18 Emmys and a Grammy Award. Died Oct. 11, age 96.

Fernando Laverde. Influential Colombian stop-motion pioneer who wrote, directed and shot a trio of animated features: La Pobre Viejecita (1977), Cristóbal Colón (1983) and  Martín Fierro (1989). Died May 18, age 88.

Mary Locatell. Background artist and model designer who worked on Lilo & Stitch: The Series, The Prince of Egypt, Shrek and Kronk’s New Groove. Died Feb. 12, age 62.

Anastasia “Staci” Maniskas. Painter at Filmation and Hanna-Barbera whose credits ranged from Bugs Bunny specials to She-Ra: Princess of Power and BraveStarr. Died Feb. 1, age 87.

Burton “Burt” Medall. Animator, animation supervisor and timing director at Disney TV, Warner Bros., Filmation, Bill Melendez and Hanna-Barbera who worked on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Ghostbusters, She-Ra: Princess of Power and BraveStarr. Died May 24, age 76.

Tony Mines. Creative British animator who, along with co-director Tim Drage, was a pioneering force in the DIY LEGO filmmaking movement. His early viral shorts ONE: A Space Odyssey and All of the Dead became hugely popular online and led to The LEGO Group reaching out to work with them. His brick-toy oeuvre includes Spider-Man: The Peril of Doc Ock, The Han Solo Affair, Monty Python and the Holy Grail in LEGO and Scary Thriller. Died July 9, age 44 (melanoma cancer).

Morse

Medall

Ōhashi

Pospíšilová

Newall

Nichols

Potterton

Rabson

Reitmen

Mines

Robbins

Robert Morse. Acclaimed character actor best known for his roles in How to Success in Business without Really Trying, The Loved One and Mad Men, who also lent his voice to animated characters in Rankin/Bass’s Jack Frost (voice of Jack), Teen Titans Go!, Animals, Sofia the First, The Legend of Korra, Superman: The Animated Series, The Wild Thornberrys, Rugrats, Tiny Toon Adventures and Pound Puppies Died April 20, age 90.

George Newall. Co-creator of the iconic educational cartoon series Schoolhouse Rock (19731984), along with fellow ad exec David McCall. Newall and Tom Yohe exec produced and creative directed every episode of the show, which informed young viewers about a range of topics using catchy tunes like “I’m Just a Bill” and “Conjunction Junction.” Died Nov. 30, age 88 (cardiopulmonary arrest).

Nichelle Nichols. Trailblazing actress and singer who became one of the first Black women to be featured on TV in a leading role, playing communications officer Lt. Nyota Uhura in the original Star Trek series (1966-69) and later voicing the character in Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-74). Nichols also guest starred in shows such as Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Gargoyles, Batman: The Animated Series, The Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy. Died July 30, age 89.

Manabu Ōhashi. Prolific Japanese director and animator who began his career at Toei Animation at age 15 with Shōnen Ninja Kaze no Fujimaru. After leaving Toei in 1968, he worked at Tatsunoko and Mushi Production and joined Madhouse in 1972. He was famous for his distinctive cloud drawings and for directing the Cloud short for the 1987 Robot Carnival anthology. Died Feb. 12, age 73.

Everett Peck. Illustrator, cartoonist, animator, writer and teacher who was best known for his popular USA Network adult animated series Duckman  (1994-1997) and Cartoon Network’s  Squirrel Boy (2006-2007). He also worked as visual designer on  The Critic, character designer/design consultant on  Dragon Tales, Men in Black: The Series, Godzilla: The Series and the  Jumanji cartoon and as an animator for Sesame Street. Died June 14, age 71 (cancer).

Vlasta Pospíšilová. Known as the “first dame of Czech animation,” Pospisilova was a well-regarded writer, animator and director who

began her career as an assistant animator at Jiří Trnka Studio. Her notable film and TV projects included Fimfárum, Broucci, Pat & Mat, Lady Poverty, Greedy Barka and Three Sisters and One Ring. She received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Anifilm Festival in 2015. Died April 15, age 87.

Gerald Potterton. British-Canadian director, writer, producer and animator who is best known as the director of the cult classic anthology Heavy Metal and his animation work on Yellow Submarine He was nominated three times for the Best Animated Short Oscar for his work on NFB’s My Financial Career, Christmas Cracker and The Selfish Giant He also served as animator and sequence director on Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure and story director for Rubik the Amazing Cube. Died Aug. 23, age 91.

Janet Quen. VFX artist who worked on Monkeybone, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, Mission Impossible 2, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, The Mummy Returns and The Twilight Saga.

Jan Rabson. Prolific actor who voiced Tetsuo in the Streamline dub of Akira and also lent his voice to wide range of supporting characters in Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., Cars, Ponyo, Gatchaman, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Movie Trilogy and Street Fighter II V Died Oct. 13, age 68 (heart attack).

Ivan Reitman. Czechoslovak-born Canadian filmmaker who will be remembered for popular comedies such as Meatballs, Stripes, Ghostbusters, National Lampoon’s Animal House and Kindergarten Cop. His animation work included the influential adult animated anthology Heavy Metal, the Michael Jordan-Bugs Bunny collaboration Space Jam, Beethoven and Mummies Alive! Died Feb. 12, age 75.

Peter Robbins. Former child actor and voice for Charlie Brown (A Charlie Brown Christmas, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, A Boy Named Charlie Brown). Died on Jan. 18, age 65 (suicide).

Jan Rogowski. Co-founder of U.K. animation studio Red Star 3D (with Ben Smith) and producer of the 2019 animated feature StarDog and TurboCat as well as the studio’s 4D ride projects The Lost World and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the upcoming animated feature The Amazing Maurice Died April 6, age 41.

Takahashi

Takarada

Schwartz

Sempé

Rogowski

Troubetzkoy

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

“BREATHTAKING .

The world of ‘The Sea Beast’ is so realistically rendered, so detailed and physical, that much of the time it feels like a live- action adventure. It’s so thoroughly immersive it might make you believe in sea monsters.”

FROM THE ACADEMY AWARD WINNING FILMMAKER OF MOANA

David Schwartz. Storyboard artist and writer whose credits include The New Looney Tunes, The Spectacular Spider-Man, Johnny Bravo and numerous Scooby-Doo! shows. Died Dec. 30, 2021, age 67.

Jean-Jacques Sempé. French cartoonist/illustrator (known as Sempé) who created the Petit Nicolas book series with René Goscinny and drew over 100 whimsical covers for The New Yorker. His work inspired several animated and live-action TV series and movies, including the recent Annecy Prize-winning feature Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be (Le Petit Nicolas: Qu’est-ce qu’on attend pour être heureux?) Died Aug. 11, age 89.

Norma Swank-Haviland. Disney painter, animation final checker and uncredited voice actor for Chip in Disney’s Chip ‘n’ Dale shorts of the 1940s and ‘50s. Died April, age 97.

Kazuki Takahashi. Hugely popular Japanese manga artist and creator of YuGi-Oh!, published in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1996 to 2004. The manga inspired the popular trading card game (the best-selling one to date) and global hit anime franchise. Died July 4, age 60 (drowned while trying to rescue three others who were caught in a rip current off the shore of Nago, Okinawa).

Akira Takarada. Japanese film actor best known for his roles in the Godzilla film series and who also voiced Jafar in the Japanese dub of Aladdin movies. Died March 14, age 87.

Eugene Serge Troubetzkoy. French-born nuclear physicist, pioneer of ray-tracing and co-founder of Blue Sky Studios. Died Sept. 26, age 91.

David Warner. Veteran British actor who voiced characters in Batman: The Animated Series, Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Men in Black: The Series, Gargoyles and Freakazoid! Died July 24, age 80.

Wendell Washer. Storyboard and layout artist on shows such as Tweety’s High-Flying Adventure, Flash Gordon and The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Puppy Hour. He was also storyboard director on The Muppet Babies, My Little Pony: The Movie and Dungeons & Dragons. Died July 8, age 75.

Betty White. Dearly loved American actress and comedian, whose career spanned seven decades and seven Emmy Award wins. Best known for her memorable roles on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Golden Girls and Hot in Cleveland and the movie The Proposal. She lent her voices to numerous animated features and TV shows, including Ponyo, Prep & Landing, The Lorax, Toy Story 4, The Lionhearts, Pound Puppies, King of the Hill, The Simpsons and SpongeBob SquarePants. Died Dec. 31, 2021, age 99.

Ian Wilcox. Background layout artist and designer for Film Roman and Fox Animation whose credits include The Simpsons, Family Guy and King of the Hill. Died April 30, age 66.

Steve Wilzbach. Associate producer of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and Eight Crazy Nights, who also worked as scene planner for The Iron Giant, Osmosis Jones and Space Jam. Won a Daytime Emmy for line producing on Tutenstein. Died June 23, age 69.

Sandra “Sandy” Wogatzke. Painter and final checker who worked for Filmation and Hanna-Barbara. Died Jan. 23, age 95.

Derek J. Wyatt. American artist and character designer who worked as designer on Mucha Lucha!, Teen Titans, Legion of Super-Heroes, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated and Ben 10: Omniverse. He was the art director, lead character designer and color stylist on Transformers: Animated. Died Dec. 16, 2021, age 49. ◆

The list includes names of animation and VFX luminaries who died Dec. 2021 thru Dec. 15, 2022. We will update this list online to reflect all of those who passed away in 2022 after the print deadline.

Warner

Wilcox

Wilzbach

Washer

White

Wyatt

THE CAT’S MEOW

The creative team behind The Amazing Maurice discusses the making of their Pratchett passion project.

- By Ramin Zahed -

When you set out to adapt an animated feature based on the work of Terry Pratchett, you know that millions of the fantasy author and satirist’s fans will be watching the results very closely. That’s a fact that wasn’t taken lightly by the creative team behind the new CG-animated feature The Amazing Maurice, which began its U.K. run in December and will premiere in the U.S. on February 3, through Viva Kids.

The clever film, which is produced by Emely Christians at Ulysses Filmproduktion (Germany) and Andrew Baker and Robert Chandler at Cantilever Media (U.K.), offers a fresh spin on the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The central character is a scheming ginger cat (voiced by Hugh Laurie) who manipulates a group of talking rats and a naïve piper boy (Himesh Patel) to con villagers out of their money. Things take a surprising turn when they meet a clever, book-loving girl called Malicia (Emilia Clarke) who has her own ideas about how this story should turn out. The film is directed by

Faithful to the Master

“The greatest challenge of all was doing justice to Terry Pratchett and his incredible work,” says Christians, an acclaimed producer whose many credits include A Stork’s Journey,

The Flight Before Christmas, Luis and the Aliens and the two Ooops! Noah Is Gone movies. “We set out to create loving characters that our viewers will fall in love with, and we want to make people think without educating them.”

Christians also mentions that her studio wanted to have a team from the U.K. as production partners, because this was a Terry Pratchett adaptation after all. She adds, “We

Toby Genkel (Little Bird’s Big Adventure, All Creatures Big and Small) from a script by Terry Rossio (Aladdin, Shrek).

also felt that it made great sense for Robert’s Sheffield-based Red Star 3D to split the work with Studio Rakete in Hamburg. It’s not always easy to split the work for an animated movie between two countries, but I have to say it all went very smoothly in this case.”

Chandler says that the toughest challenge with adapting the work of Pratchett is doing justice to his words. “Terry’s books are literary works and this doesn’t always equate to great cinema.,” he notes. “The work we did with the screenwriter and directors, and the art director and all the artists and animators, to refine the novel and turn it into a three-act animated movie that’s simultaneously fun and visually-driven, and carries the depth and themes of Pratchett, was the greatest challenge. We took this challenge really seriously and I hope it paid off.”

“My first reaction was one of, ‘Oh my God, Terry Pratchett!,’” recalls Genkel. “I felt a bit of weight on my shoulders. When I read the book, I knew that there was nobody quite like Pratchett. A fantastic story, all those wacky characters and effortless humor, paired with very strong commentary — it’s so impressive how he always

manages to reflect the truth about human behavior with such great humor. His writing has such great rhythms to it and the imagery is so strong. Apparently, he loved Germany and the Black Forest and the Grimm fairy tales, so it truly resonated with me.”

When the director first read the novel, he started to mark the lines that he thought must be included in the film because they were so brilliant. “Of course, then I found myself marking entire pages, because every line is brilliant,” says Genkel. “So, the challenge was which lines not to take. Those were very difficult decisions to make and all I can say is that I hope we picked the right ones! But here is the comforting thing: No matter which line from the novel we chose, it’s always great!”

Making Medieval Magic

The artistic team was also aiming to make the movie as visually arresting as possible as well as straying from what is seen as the typical modern CG look for family animated movies.

As producer Andrew Baker (Robozuna), who is also a long-time Pratchett fan, points out, “We

FEATURES

knew that our story is set against a fictional medieval German town, so our artists did a lot of research on actual locations in Germany to get the right look for the buildings, the cobblestone streets, the forest. There are actual buildings in the country that date back to the Middle Ages, so we had all these great real-life references.”

The movie had a secret weapon in the artwork created by production designer Heiko Hentschel (The Congress, Luis and the Aliens). “He brought something extra special to the film,” says Baker. “The movie’s characters have such a distinct look. They are neither Disney nor arthouse. Maurice, Malicia, Keith, all our rats — they look quite unique and show so much personality. We were staying away from anything that looked generic or bland.”

“We were very aiming high, something that could rival a big CG-animated feature from Pixar or Disney,” says Hentschel. “I always aim for visual simplicity in my designs. We opted for simple, recognizable shapes for the characters, which stands in good contrast with the elaborate sets. The main goal is to deliver a quick read. The audience should

get what the image is trying to convey.”

“The greatest challenge of all was doing justice to Terry Pratchett and his incredible work. We set out to create loving characters that our viewers will fall in love with, and we want to make people think without educating them.”

— Producer Emely Christians

instantly

SILVER -TONGUED TABBY: Based on one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, The Amazing Maurice is directed by Toby Genkel from a script by Terry Rossio and produced by Emely Christians (Ulysses), Andrew Baker and Robert Chandler (Cantilever Media), with animation by Studio Rakete (Germany) and Red Star 3D (U.K.)

FEATURES

The producers also bring up the fact that the simple mention of Pratchett’s name opened many doors to them. “That’s how we ended up with our original character designer, Carter Goodrich,” recalls Baker. “We did some research and decided that we would love him to take an early shot at designing the characters. Of course, we had big ambitions for the way we wanted the movie to look like but we knew we wouldn’t have a budget like a Disney feature. So when we reached out to Carter or any of the actors, we told them that we don’t have a lot of money to play with. But, as soon as we told them it was a Pratchett project, they’d tell us that they love him and it opened so many doors for us.”

Goodrich says he was immediately intrigued by the story’s mixture of a cat, rats and a period costumed pied piper and a smart, female protagonist. “The fact that the rats were in their own costumes as well is always a bonus,” he mentions. “When animals are clothed it allows for more opportunities to find good shapes and clues regarding who the character is or could be.”

“I was allowed to simply make a pass on the

characters without too much input as to details,” he recalls. “The inspiration comes from how I might see or imagine them; who they might be in addition to their assigned role in the story. If the characters don’t come with a whole lot of specific details, then they’re usually more fun and easier to explore. When you don’t have all the voices in your head, then it’s a looser, freer process. So you might be able to bring something to the table that hadn’t been considered, which gives the character something unexpected. Not that I necessarily did that with these characters, but I hope I did!”

Catnip for the Young at Heart

After many years of hard work, the filmmakers can’t wait to see how general audiences will respond to the film, which is also being showcased at this month’s Sundance Festival.

“What I love and admire about Terry Pratchett is what I would call the ‘Pratchett melody,’ or even better, symphony,” says Genkel. “He makes us laugh effortlessly, but always has something to say. There’s a message of tolerance and mutual respect, something that really resonates with me.

What I would hope is that we managed to capture that symphony and the audience will hum the music of the story with a smile on their faces after seeing the film.”

“I hope that the film will do one thing above all: entertain our viewers and let them leave the cinemas with a good feeling,” notes Christians. “And if The Amazing Maurice also makes you think about things differently — in one way or another — I would be completely satisfied!”

Baker concludes, “As well as being entertained and amused I’d hope that audiences are intrigued about the world of Terry Pratchett and not only read this novel, but also his other Discworld books! We feel very happy with the film and believe that we have something the fans will love as much as those who have never read the book. Everyone worked so hard to make this happen, so that the final result is something we are all immensely proud of! There is nothing I would change even if we had double the budget!” ◆

Amazing Maurice opens in U.S. theaters on February 3.

The

“When I read the book, I knew that there was nobody quite like Pratchett — a fantastic story, all those wacky characters and effortless humor, paired with very strong commentary.”

— Director Toby Genkel

“Everyone worked so hard to make this happen and to get the very best from every department. There is nothing I would change even if we had double the budget!”

— Producer Andrew Baker

FEATURES

An Artistic Homage to a French Favorite

Director Benjamin Massoubre

talks about the joys and challenges of adapting Little Nicholas to the big screen.

Last June, audiences at Annecy discovered the charming 2D-animated feature Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be (Le Petit Nicolas: Qu’est-ce qu’on attend pour être heureux?), which is based on the popular French children’s book series written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Jean-Jacques Sempé. Directed by Amandine Fredon and Benjamin Massoubre, the seamlessly realized movie manages to deliver a difficult hat trick: It pays homage to the creators of the books by weaving in their life stories as they set out to launch the project together, as well as offering vignettes featuring the mischievous schoolboy Nicholas and his friends and family. We had a chance to chat with Massoubre about how he and Fredon were able to pay

such a lovely tribute to the life and art of Sempé and Goscinny:

Congrats on your wonderful new movie, which has just been released in the U.S. Can you tell us a little bit how you got involved with the project?

Benjamin Massoubre: I met the film’s producer Aton Soumache (The Little Prince) years ago and worked as an editor on a TV series that he produced, and also worked with him on Joann Sfar’s movie Little Vampire. He offered me the job because he knew I had a special history with the Little Nicholas books, as I come from a family of school teachers and they used the books to teach students to read. So, when he finally secured financing for the project, he asked me and Amandine Fredon to direct the

movie. We started work on the movie in early 2020, when France was in full lockdown for COVID.

What would you say was the best part of working on a movie about these two wellloved creators and this modern children’s classic?

I loved to learn more about the lives of Goscinny and Sempé. We were able to find some material in their lives that cast a new light on how and why they created Little Nicholas. Structurally, it was also a difficult movie. It’s not your usual three or four-act movie. We put a lot of heart into it, because instead of having a narrative arc, it has an emotional one. It’s really a movie about resilience, about two men who were robbed of their childhood —

IN LIFE AND ART: Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be pays tribute to the artistry of René Goscinny and JeanJacques Sempé by including their stylish flourishes and poignant life stories.

one who was the victim of an abusive stepfather (Sempé) and one (Goscinny) who lost part of his family in the Jewish Holocaust. These two men created Little Nicholas, who has a perfect dream childhood, and were able to live through him. Amandine and I found that the essence of the movie was the story of their resilience.

The movie manages to interweave the story of the book’s creation with vignettes from the books themselves. Was that always part of the original plans for the project?

In the early days of development, the producers planned to combine archival footage of the creators with the animated segments, but the live-action material was not as good as we wanted them to be, so that’s when it was

decided to have both sections of the movie be animated.

We first had the script written by René Goscinny’s daughter Anne and Michel Fessler (March of the Penguins). We added more biographical material to the script. Amandine and I wanted to flesh out the creators’ stories, so we added more biographical material to the movie. We felt that we had never seen the story of a writer and an illustrator working together on the screen, so we were excited to extend the portions of the movie about the creators’ lives in an animated format.

Can you tell us about the studios that worked on the movie?

There were so many studios involved. In France, we have a lot of indie studios that join

forces to produce a movie, and sometimes we just build them from scratch to produce a project. Among the studios that helped us create the animation were Shan Too (Angoulême), which is run by Gilles Cuvelier and Arnold Boulard’s Gao Shan Pictures, located on the island of Réunion, and a smaller studio in the north of France called Train-Train. Most of the sets and compositing were done in Luxembourg, so I found myself taking a lot of trains in Europe throughout the production.

You did a wonderful job of paying homage to the books’ original ink and watercolor illustrations. How did you develop that technique? It was mostly done in Toon Boom Harmony. Our animation director Juliette Laurent and our art director Fursy Teyssier collaborated

Benjamin Massoubre

with Jean-Jacques Sempé. He was already sick at the time, but he was 100 percent behind us. As we developed the set and character designs, everything was approved by him … It was really fun and emotional for us to work with him because he’s such a big influence and legendary figure in France. Even though he was ill, his spirit was always up. He always used ink and watercolor, so we set out to reproduce his style with Harmony. We also allowed some white space around the frames to pay tribute the way his illustrations looked on the pages of the book. It took a lot of back and forth to imitate the style and pay a true homage to his work. [Sempé, who drew more than 100 covers for The New Yorker, passed away last August, six days before his 90th birthday.]

It must have been moving to see the audience response to the movie in France. The movie came out in early October and we had an amazing response from the audience. Even though it is still hard to get people in theaters these days. What made us happy was how people who grew up with the books in the ‘60s and early ‘70s came to see the movie with their children and grandchildren. It was quite emotional that we made a movie that spoke to these different generations of fans.

Why do you think the characters and their sto-

ries still resonate with audiences?

The stories written by Goscinny are in first person. Nicholas is narrating these books, and they are still very funny. Although life is very different for kids growing up in the world today, they still have similar experiences with their families, their friends at schools and teachers. The comedy and poetry are still relevant today.

You have worked as an editor on many of the best animated shows and features coming out of France over the past decade, from Arcane and I Lost My Body to Calamity, Little Vampire and Summit of the Gods. How did you get interested in animation?

It’s funny, because I don’t draw myself. I come from a screenwriting and editing background. But I grew up in a town near the center of France and lived close to a city called Clermont-Ferrand, which is famous for its short film festival. When I was in high school, I used to see a lot of animated short films at the festival and I was inspired by their creativity. They really opened my eyes to the possibility

of the medium.

In the late ‘90s, I saw Toy Story and The Nightmare Before Christmas, and then we had the Miyazaki movies and the Aardman shorts and movies. When I first arrived in Paris, I was lucky to get my start in animation. Back then, in France, we were producing only one movie every two years, and now we are so lucky because we are making 10 movies each year, in different styles and content. I feel like we’re living in the Golden Age of animation. Even big U.S. studios are exploring new ways of making CG movies with movies like Spider-Verse and The Bad Guys. It’s a very exciting time to be working in animation! ◆

Buffalo 8 released Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be in select U.S. theaters in December.

More Gods and Monsters

Director Ji Zhao tells us everything we wanted to know about his new epic fantasy movie, New Gods: Yang Jian.

The animated feature New Gods: Yang Jian, directed by Ji Zhao, was one of the most popular movies of 2022 in China. This second installment in the studio’s hit franchise follows in the footsteps of the director’s 2021 movie New Gods: Nezha Reborn. It was able to beat Minions: The Rise of Gru and earned $19.8 million during its opening weekend in August. Inspired by Chinese mythological figures, the blockbuster has already made over $77 million at the Chinese box office. This month, U.S. audiences will be able to enjoy the movie firsthand, thanks to a limited theatrical release by GKIDS.

The second New Gods storyline centers on a fallen hero, a penniless bounty hunter named Yang Jian, who is hired to track down his own long-lost nephew Chenxiang and find a magical lotus lantern to free his mother. Zhao says he was attracted to telling this origin story in a new, imaginative way to introduce a new generation of moviegoers to a classic character and mythology.

Tale as Old as Time

“Any story that lasts more than 1,000 years must have been told thousands of times in different periods of history,” Zhao in an email interview with Animation Magazine. “But in every period of time, the storytellers would connect their feelings and add some historical imprint in that version of the story. As a Chinese filmmaker, I feel so lucky that there are so many stories to be discovered from our cultural background. And, even luckier, with the technology of animation, we could rebuild the story in a more imaginative way. The New Gods series aims to reinterpret classic characters and stories from a younger perspective. How to make it ‘new’? This question is the origin.”

Yang Jian’s development started half-way through the production of Nezha Reborn, and it took about five years to complete. “We have had about 300 people within Light Chaser Studio who worked on this show, and another 400 artists from different vendors and another 200 post production artists who worked on dubbing, composing, sound, DI, songwriting, etc.,” says Zhao. “Yang Jian is a new height in terms of Light

Chaser’s CG production quality. We used our inhouse cloth simulation, motion capture technologies. The film’s total rendering time made a new record: We had 410 million CPU core hours, roughly half of which were cloud rendering.”

According to the director, the new story takes audiences along on a thrilling ride to another time and place, exploring a different film genre and different choice of style and music. “The only common thing is it is under the same New Gods frame and made by the same studio,” he points out. “Neither the studio nor I wanted to repeat ourselves.”

FEATURES

EASTERN EPIC: Also inspired by Chinese mythological figures, this second installment of Light Chaser’s New Gods series has grossed over $82.45 million.

Zhao, who also directed the studio’s popular 2019 movie White Snake, says he was drawn to the central character of the saga, Yang Jian, a once powerful deity who has fallen from grace. “For me, the opportunity to establish a household name is very rare,” he says. “He is a character full of contradictions; half-human, half-god, with a heroic past and a desolate status quo. He is a truly charming character!”

“At first, Yang Jian is introduced as an impoverished nobleman,” he notes. “The texture of his white robe should be reminiscent of expensive fine silk, and we laced it with intricate cloud patterns. In this story though, Yang Jian is no longer the God of War. His symbols as the God of War (the triple-tip double-blade sword and the silver-bullet slingshot) had to be repurposed. We designed his headwear in the shape of a triple-tip double-blade sword, and had him transform his silver-bullet slingshot into a harmonica. This harmonica is both an instrument Yang Jian carries around and is the key for his aircraft. Whenever he had noth-

ing better to do, he’d toss it around. That’s a personal quirk of his.”

The film is set around the era of the Wei, Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties (420-589 CE). “This is a period when many cultures clashed and fused,” says the director. “To stay faithful to the historical background, we went on discovery trips to places like the Shaanxi History Museum and Dunhuang City, and drew creative inspiration from traditional folk culture. What fascinated me the most about New Gods: Yang Jian was imagining how the realm of gods looked like in ancient times. In our story, the entirety of the Godly Realm is composed of many different fairy islands. The Penglai Fairy Island is akin to the central business district of the Godly Realm, Square Pot is the entertainment district, a city that never sleeps, and Yingzhou is a tourist spot with an exotic appeal.”

Preserving Chinese Aesthetics

The director points out that balancing the traditional story and innovative new ideas

was not an easy task. “From a storyline perspective, the well-known hero’s story and his characteristics vary in each individual’s knowledge,” he explains. “We have to find a very efficient way to invite our audience to start the story from the same page. In terms of the feature’s visuals, it is very challenging to present abstract Chinese aesthetics with realistic CGI technology.”

Overall, Zhao is pleased with how the movie offers both familiar elements and its share of twists and original surprises. “I think the way we created this movie brings audiences both familiarity and surprises. For example, in most ancient Chinese stories, you won’t see the characters ride a ship or an aircraft flying from one place to another! I hope our new audiences will enjoy watching this adventure, and hopefully it makes them anticipate the next chapter in our saga.” ◆

GKIDS releases New Gods: Yang Jian in theaters on January 20.

“As a Chinese filmmaker, I feel so lucky that there are so many stories to be discovered from our cultural background. And, even luckier, with the technology of animation, we could rebuild the story in a more imaginative way.”

- Director Ji Zhao

The Art of Designing Stand-Out Characters

The brilliant character designers of some of the year’s best movies share the secrets of their craft.

- By Michael Mallory -

Things are looking a little bit simpler literally in the array of animated features circling over the Oscar field, requesting landing approval. Many of this year’s contenders have dialed back on digital realism to achieve new looks, tones and styles, particularly in terms of character design.

“Previously in the 3D world you were pushing the limits of animation to see how realistic you could go,” says Taylor Krahenbuhl, character designer for DreamWorks Animations’ The Bad Guys. “Our director Pierre Perifel said, ‘What if we did The Bad Guys in an Akira Toriyama/Dragon Ball kind of way? What if we made it childlike with animation driven with key poses and key frames that really push the medium, and try to get a bit of 2D stylistic choices as well?’”

Spotlight on Cartoony CG Characters

While the characters in the film definitely lean toward the cartoony, Krahenbuhl kept

the focus on their eyes. “We found that once we did the characters with a dark eyebrow shape that accented and framed and silhouetted the eyes, we were finding a special dynamic,” he states. The eyes may have it for the film’s human characters, but their noses don’t, being barely perceptible. “I remember a note from Pierre specifically saying, ‘Okay, that nose looks too big, make it a bit smaller,’” Krahenbuhl says. “We did and felt it worked. In 3D, when you light a scene, every form is going to have a cast shadow on it that is going to create other shapes and graphic forms. The more you can restrain within that form, the cleaner it is.”

Proboscis patterning was also a factor for character designer Jin Kim in crafting the characters for Disney’s Strange World, but in the opposite direction. “The [family characters] all have common noses … huge and round,” he says. “Even Legend the dog has a big nose.” Kim states that he drew inspiration for the designs from European comic books, notably Asterix. “Our director Don Hall really

likes the French/Belgian comic-book style, especially by the artist Didier Conrad,” Kim states. “[Conrad] uses a lot of curves, so we made sure everything was soft and round.”

The most difficult character in Strange World from a design standpoint, though, was one with no nose at all … or any other facial feature. “The Splat was the most challenging,” Kim says of the film’s amorphous, tentacled blob. “It looks simple and easy, but characters that are simple are harder to design because they have to communicate to the audience somehow with no eyes, nose or mouth.” The designer studied the similarly featureless-yet-endearing character of the Flying Carpet in Aladdin for inspiration.

Let the Feline Fur Fly

Nate Wragg, the production designer for DreamWorks Animation’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, drew upon the script’s somewhat darker tone to create a more stylized universe. “In previous films, he was living in a slightly more naturalistic space,” says Wragg. “But us-

CUTE CREATIONS: Turning Red character designer Keiko Murayama was inspired by the exaggerated expressions which were the trademark of the anime shows and movies of the 1970s and ’80s.

ing a more illustrative feel to the overall look, we were able to push his caricature a bit more, and surfacing-wise, back away from naturalism.” That included showing the lionhearted feline comically gone-to-seed to the point of wearing an untamed grey beard. “That was totally story driven,” Wragg says, “but what does a beard look like on a cat?” For inspiration, character designers Andrea Blasich and Jesús Alonso Iglesias studied a luxuriously hairy Maine Coon cat. “Whether it was a grooming choice by a human or it naturally grew out, they kind of look like they have beards.”

For Jason Deamer, character art director for Disney-Pixar’s Turning Red, the blow for simplicity came through the colors. “We’ve done movies where there were 52 shading colors that were done to the main character, and nobody notices,” he says. “It’s silly. If you look at the characters [in Turning Red] you’ll notice they each have a color.”

Chunky Cute Saves the Day

The film’s primary character designer was Keiko Murayama, who was brought in on a freelance basis by director Domee Shi. The

challenge for her was keeping the lead characters convincingly youthful. “When you start to put in so much detail, they start to age,” she says. “When I first attempted to design them, they looked much taller and older. I have a tendency to draw a character who’s described as beautiful or handsome a little more elongated. So I had to make perfectly beautiful human beings into chunky, cute versions of them.”

Murayama adds that the design influence for the picture came from 1970s and ‘80s anime, in which characters will often pull exaggerated expressions. “When they do that their mouths are half of their face,” she notes. “I deliberately tried to make it exaggerated and very comedic.”

Of course, the film’s signature design challenge was the fact that its star, 13-year-old Mei, turns into an enormous red panda that must still maintain her essential Mei-ness. “If you superimpose panda Mei’s eyes over human Mei, they have exactly the squircle — a square and a circle mixed together, which is what we’re calling eye shapes,” Deamer says.

At the other end of this year’s design spec-

trum are the characters from Netflix’s Wendell & Wild, directed by Henry Selick and produced by star and co-writer Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions. Here the stop-motion-animated characters are not chunky and chubby but linear and angular. That was no surprise, since noted illustrator Pablo Lobato, who was hired to design the characters, is renowned for his Cubist style of caricature.

Crafting Cubist Characters

“I received an email out of the blue from Henry Selick and my first thought was, ‘This guy has the same name as the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas,” Lobato laughs. But it really was Selick, and Lobato really was hired for his first movie. His first task was creating caricatures of Peele and Keegan-Michael Key, the film’s star voices (co-star James Hong is also eminently recognizable through Lobato’s design).

But creating the look of the film’s central character, a worldly Black teenage girl named Kat proved more difficult. “I did some sketches I was not happy with,” Lobato says. “I was concerned about the translation of 2D [drawings]

“CG [originally] blew everyone out of the water in terms of replicating reality. Now we’re seeing it pivot back to, ‘Okay, we’ve done a lot of that, so how about we provide the audiences with different experiences?’”

- Nate Wragg, production designer, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

“When I first attempted to design them, they looked much taller and older … So I had to make perfectly beautiful human beings into chunky, cute versions of them.”

- Keiko Murayama, character designer, Turning Red

ANIMAL ATTRACTIONS:

The

designers

behind Puss in Boots: The Last Wish charmed audiences by putting a luxurious beard on the famous feline and introducing the world to the adorable Perrito (right).

AWARDS

to 3D, and I thought, ‘What did the Cubist guys do with 3D?’” As a result he studied Picasso’s sculptures and learned that the painter was influenced by African masks. “I looked at a beautiful, very minimalist mask,” he says. “So, I put all these things in a blender and did five or six sketches and showed Henry, and he said, ‘Okay, this is Kat.’”

Fans of Selick will not be surprised to learn there are several skeleton characters in Wendell & Wild, though designing them forced Lobato to rethink an image that everyone on the planet knows: the human skull. “I had to do six different skeletons — and there’s not much difference between your skull and my skull,” he says. “But as a designer, I thought maybe I should place them in different geometric shapes, so one is a circle, one is more rectangle and one is wide.”

Another renowned illustrator, Gris Grimly, set the graphic tone for the year’s other major stop-motion production, Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio, produced by Netflix Animation and The Jim Henson Company. Grimly was brought on board as character designer when Henson acquired the rights to his 2002 illustrated book of the original Collodi story. While he was responsible for the unique look of Pinocchio himself, over the next decade’s worth of development and production, some refinements were made.

“The original designs were more whimsical and much more stylized and angular,” says Guy Davis, who along with Carlos Grangel designed the final versions of the characters. “As we went forward we pulled away from that because we needed to be more rounded.” More rounded perhaps, but much more simply textured — notably the characters’ hair, which

is sculpted rather than fibered with individual, realistic strands. There was also a technical factor: originally, the Pinocchio figure (crafted by puppetmakers Mackinnon & Saunders) had a mechanical face.

Innovative Approaches

“As a metal skeleton with paddles to push around flesh, it looked almost like a talking prune,” says production designer Curt Enderle. “It didn’t have that sense of a carved solid object. This version feels like he’s made out of wood.” As per del Toro’s input, his head also

has a work-in-progress appearance, which was animated using replacement faces, instead of a mechanical head.

Two of the film’s more unusual characters are the Wood Sprite and her opposite sister, Death. “Death was going to be based on Greek mythology, so we added a Greek style mask,” says Davis. “The Wood Sprite has ears because the giver of life is going to listen and learn, whereas Death doesn’t have ears because it pretty much knows the answers to everything.”

Trends come and go, of course, but Nate Wragg for one sees this as a natural evolution of the medium. “CG [originally] blew everyone out of the water in terms of replicating reality,” he says. “Now we’re seeing it pivot back to, ‘Okay, we’ve done a lot of that, so how about we provide the audiences with different experiences?” ◆

“I had to do six different skeletons and there’s not much difference between your skull and my skull. But as a designer, I thought maybe I should place them in different geometric shapes, so one is a circle, one is more rectangle, and one is wide.”

-Pablo Lobato, character designer, Wendell & Wild

“The original designs for Pinocchio were more whimsical and much more stylized and angular… As we went forward we pulled away from that because we needed to be more rounded.”

-Guy Davis, character designer, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

A STYLIZED APPROACH: Fans of Pablo Lobato’s unique Cubist caricatures were pleased to see the unique artistic style of the master reflected in Wendell & Wild

CARVED OUT OF WOOD: The designers behind Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio had to keep in mind that the titular puppet needed to have an organic wooden look.

AWARDS

The Animation Race Heats Up!

Here’s your handy guide to all the year-end animation race shortlists, nominees and critics’ picks:

Academy Awards Shortlists

Animated Shorts

Black Slide (Uri Lotan; Israel, U.K.)

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

The Debutante (Elizabeth Hobbs, U.K.)

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

The Garbage Man (Laura Gonçalves; Portugal)

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

It’s Nice in Here (Robert-Jonathan Koeyers, Netherlands)

More than I Want to Remember (Amy Bench, U.S.)

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

New Moon (Jérémie Balais, Jeff Le Bars, Raúl Domingo; France)

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

Passenger (Juan Pablo Zaramella, Argentina)

Save Ralph (Spencer Susser, U.S.)

Sierra (Sander Joon, Estonia)

Steakhouse (Špela Čadež; Slovenia, Germany, France)

Golden Globes Nominees:

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. Directed by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson (Netflix)

Inu-Oh. Directed by Masaaki Yuasa (GKIDS/Science SARU)

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. Directed by Dean Fleischer-Camp (A24) Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. Directed by Joel Crawford (DreamWorks/Universal) Turning Red. Directed by Domee Shi (Disney/Pixar)

Critics Choice Awards Nominees:

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio Marcel the Shell with Shoes On Puss in Boots: The Last Wish  Turning Red Wendell & Wild Directed by Henry Selick (Netflix)

Guillermo

Visual Effects

All Quiet on the Western Front (Netflix)

Avatar: The Way of Water (20th Century Studios)

The Batman (Warner Bros.)

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Disney/Marvel)

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Disney/Marvel)

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (Warner Bros.)

Jurassic World Dominion (Universal)

Nope (Universal)

Thirteen Lives (Amazon Studios/MGM)

Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount)

Animation in Other Categories

Best Original Song: “Ciao Papa” from Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Best Original Score: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Best Sound: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Other Critics Groups &

Picks for Best Animated Feature of 2022 Boston Film Society of Critics: Turning Red Chicago Film Critics Assoc.: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio L.A. Film Critics Assoc.: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

National Board of Review: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On New York Film Critics Circle: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On Utah Film Critics Assoc.: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On Washington Film Critics Assoc : Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

European Film Awards: No Dogs or Italians Allowed

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

del Toro’s Pinocchio

2022 Animated Movies at the Box Office

Rank. Title U.S. Gross Studio 1 Minions: The Rise of Gru $369,500,210 Universal/Illumination 2 Sonic the Hedgehog $190,872,904 Paramount 3 Lightyear $118, 307,188 Disney/Pixar 4 The Bad Guys $97,233,630 Universal/DreamWorks 5 DC League of Super-Pets $93,657,117 Warner Bros. 6 Sing 2 $86,307,835 Universal/Illumination 7 Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile $46,475,466 Sony Pictures Ent. 8 Dragon Ball Super $38,112,140 Crunchyroll 9 Strange World $33,788,315 Disney 10 The Bob’s Burgers Movie $31,933,830 20th Century Studio

Worldwide Box Office Top 10

Academy Awards will be announced on Jan. 24.

The 95th Academy Awards will take place on Sunday, March 12 at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood. The 50th Annie Awards will take place Feb. 25 at Royce Hall in UCLA. For more info, visit oscars.org and annieawards.org. ◆

Wendell & Wild

Turning Red

Fighting Against Animal Cruelty

Save Ralph’s lovable rabbit puts the spotlight on cosmetic testing on animals.

Among the 15 wonderful titles that will be competing for the Best Animated Short Oscar this year is a powerful project titled Save Ralph, which was created in conjunction with Humane Society International to call for an end to cosmetic testing on animals worldwide. The stop-motion spot, which was written and directed by Spencer Susser (Hesher), first debuted in April 2021 and went on to win numerous awards, including last year’s Annecy Cristal and OIAF prize for best commissioned film, and both the Grand Prix for Good and the not for profit Gold at Cannes Lions.

The short introduces viewers to Ralph, a hapless rabbit (voiced by Taika Waititi) who is one of the many victims of the brutal practices of the cosmetic industry. Susser joined forces with puppet maker and set designer Andy Gent (Fantastic Mr. Fox, Isle of Dogs) and his team at London-based studio Arch Model to bring the likeable rabbit to animated life. Produced by Jeff Vespa, the short also features the voices of Ricky Gervais, Zac Efron, Olivia Munn, Pom Klementieff and Tricia Helfer.

Susser points out: “Animals in cosmetic testing labs don’t have a choice and it’s our

responsibility to do something about it. When the opportunity came up to create a new campaign for Humane Society International, I felt that stop motion was the perfect way to deliver the message. When you see the horrifying reality of the way animals are treated, you can’t help but look away. What I was hoping to do with this film was create something that delivers a message without being too heavy handed. I hope that audiences fall in love with Ralph and want to fight for him and other animals like him, so we can ban animal testing once and for all.”

Wake-Up Call for the Cosmetic Industry

“We applied a lot of love and attention in showing the physical suffering of being used as a tester — the skin rashes, the scars and swollen red eye,” says Gent. “Ralph is such a sweet character, he tries to downplay the awfulness of what is happening to him, but his injuries tell the true story, and in a way that draws the audience in rather than makes them look away. Your heart breaks for him because when he’s trying to convince the audience that everything’s OK, he’s really trying to convince himself. Of course, it’s not OK. But

stop-motion animation allows us to tell this tragic, upsetting truth about something awful and unjust in a way that recruits people to win this fight with us.”

Gent mentions that he and his team worked on the project for many months. “We knew the ins and outs of every single part of it all, but when you play the roll back, everybody’s welling up in tears at the end. So, I think you can see from that there’s a personal investment in it. It’s not just about telling a story in a film or in advertising. People working on this have connected to it, and when we see it played back, we’ve stopped thinking of Ralph as a stop-motion animation puppet and instead as a character telling a story that makes you want to change things. In our miniature world of models and puppets, using stop-motion filmmaking, we hope to bring attention to this mission to stop animal testing for cosmetics. We’re all very passionate about what we do, and it’d be very nice to think that this project to Save Ralph will have a greater, wider effect.” ◆

Watch  Save Ralph and find educational materials on the current status of animal testing and how to take action against it available at hsi.org/saveralphmovie.

Andy Gent

ANIMAL ACT: Spencer Susser and his team use a sweet stop-motion rabbit to spread a dark message about the cosmetic industry in Save Ralph

A New Wonder from Down Under

Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit talk about the distinctly Aussie charms of Hulu’s hot new animated show Koala Man.

This month, animation fans will be introduced to an awesomely offbeat and original new kind of superhero from Down Under. Created by the brilliant Aussie mastermind Michael Cusack (YOLO: Crystal Fantasy, Smiling Friends), the new show Koala Man follows the adventures of a middle-aged suburban dad (voiced by Cusack himself) who sets out to clean his small town of Dapto from evildoers of all shapes and sizes and often ropes his poor family into his adventures.

In addition to Cusack, the new Hulu show features the voices of Hugh Jackman as the popular Big Greg, head of the town council; Sarah Snook as Kevin’s wife; Jermaine Clement as Bazwell, a nerdy dandy who mentors Kevin’s son, Liam (also voiced by Cusack) and Demi Lardner as Kevin’s popularity-hungry daughter, Alison; with Rachel House as Vicky’s coworker Janine and local bowling club owner Louise, Jarrad Wright as Kevin’s neighbor/ BFF/superhero sidekick, Spider, and guest roles by veteran actors Miranda Otto and Hugo Weaving.

Celebrating a Unique Voice

Koala

is

animation landscape is the distinct voice and vision of its creator, Michael Cusack.

“It was part of our job as showrunners was to make sure Michael’s authentic point of view was not lost in translation,” says Hernandez. “When you look at his work on YOLO: Crystal Fantasy or Smiling Friends, it has such a strong point of view and visual sensibility. We didn’t want to lose that special Adult Swim style that makes Michael Michael But, we also knew that this show was double the length of those other series, and it had a little more of a seasonal arc narrative. So, the question was, how do we take everything that Michael is all about and put it into a longer format and not lose that alchemical thing he has that is so brilliant?”

Samit points out that the overall visual look of the show all comes from Cusack. “All of the character designs come from his own sketches,” he says. “A lot of animation these days looks like it could be all the same show. We are very fortunate that we have a vision that comes from our show creator, Michael. Even when we are all in the writers room, he is doodling. It’s so great to have someone like that in a writers room where

we are talking about a character or a story idea, he just draws it and says, ‘Here it is!’”

The origins of the show go back about four years ago when Cusack created the Koala Man character for a series of shorts, which caught the attention of the development team at 20th Century and exec producer Justin Roiland (Rick and Morty, Solar Opposites). The cool 2D animation for the show is produced by Melbourne-based Princess Bento, which is a joint venture of FOX Entertainment’s Bento Box in L.A. and Princess Pictures in Australia.

“We’d been working with 20th Century on several projects, including Central Park, and then asked us to take a look at Michael’s shorts,” says Samit. “We thought it was hilarious, and we had instant chemistry with him. We were totally on the same page about what the show would be. It was one of those arranged marriages that worked out perfectly. Then, we went on to cast the show and make the pilot and then pitched it to Hulu, and soon we had this amazing creative partnership that continues to this day.”

About half of the show’s writers are Americans and the other half hail from the land down under. “One of our advantages is that the voices and the subject matter are so authentic and fresh,”

Man

executive produced by  Solar Opposites and  Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland and  Pokémon: Detective Pikachu writers

Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit. As Hernandez and Samit point out, one of the main reasons the show stands out in the very crowded adult

“I hope the audience will be surprised by how invested they are in Koala Man as a superhero and how they really care for these characters.”

— Exec producer Benji Samit

says Hernandez. “Australia is very similar to our country but it’s also significantly different, so we set out to explore all those differences. There has been so much American adult animation that it’s sometimes hard to think of a completely original idea, but there haven’t been as many exploring Australian life. Every time one of our Australian writers would suggest something, we’d be like, ‘Oh, we’re doing that! It’s a great idea!’”

Samit mentions that because of the pandemic, the writers room had to be conducted via Zoom, so that allowed them to bring in original Australian voices into the mix. “Our writers were in different places in Australia, so we actually got to understand some of the regional differences over there as well. They’d fight over how things would be done. They’d say things like, ‘Oh, that’s now how we play kickball. This is how we play it!’ We tend to view all of Australia as one big culture, but of course, every region is different from others as well,” adds Hernandez.

The acclaimed showrunners admit that one of their favorite parts of the job was seeing how many crazy situations they could get Koala Man into. “We challenged ourselves not to put things in that we have seen a million times before and not be afraid of being too conceptual, abstract or surreal,” says Hernandez. “But we also wanted it to be very accessible and not feel like homework to watch. The plots had to be good superhero plots. They still needed to present real threats to the characters. Threading the needle between absurdist situations and real stakes

was a real challenge, but it also helped us create a lot of awesome villains for Koala Man to go up against. I hope that people enjoy the villains as much as we do during the course of that first season.”

Samit adds, “We had so much freedom on this show. More than anything else that we’ve worked on, we were able to go for what makes us laugh and what would be shocking to us. We asked ourselves, ‘Hey, can we do that?’ and Hulu said we can. They were great supporters of the show since the first day. We were really never held back from doing what we wanted to do on this show.”

Hernandez is also quite grateful to have landed such a stellar voice cast for the show. “It may sound like a cliché, but this was a dream come true,” he says. “To have Hugh Jackman on board for this crazy thing was something that we could not have anticipated other than as a fantasy in our wildest imagination. Everyone we worked with on the show was the best of the best. If anything, it taught us that you never know who is going to say yes unless you ask. That has been a rewarding lesson!”

Chuck Jones and Matt Groening

When asked about their biggest animation influences, Santi quickly singles out The Simpsons “That show got me into comedy, and when I look back at my childhood, that was the show that pushed me towards television.”

Hernandez also mentions The Simpsons, but he also gives a lot of credit to his mother, Lorna

Hernandez, who is a professor of computer animation (at the Art institute of Florid and at Univ. of California in San Diego). “She instilled in me a love for all the classics; Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and the early Looney Tunes. I even gave her an original Daffy Duck cel from Quackbusters (1988) for her birthday because Daffy’s her favorite character. As I got older, I have tried to add new tricks to my frames of reference by studying anime and shows like Cowboy Bebop!”

The talented writers hope that audiences will embrace their new show and find it funny and entertaining. “I hope they’ll be surprised by how invested they are in Koala Man as a superhero and how much they really care for these characters,” says Samit. “I hope they laugh and think it’s silly, but at some point they feel really invested in the fate of the characters.”

Hernandez agrees. “When you embark on these kinds of genre explorations, you have to do it with love and an understanding of what makes these tropes work. So our hope is that by the end of the first season (eight episodes), viewers will say, ‘Wow, I laughed my ass off, but I also saw an amazing superhero story. That our show stands with these other superhero stories in a diagonal, twisted way. But Koala Man is a hero, and that’s a surprising thing!” ◆

Koala Man premieres on Hulu on January 9.

“The big question was how do we take everything that Michael [Cusack] is all about and put it into a longer format and not lose that alchemical thing he has that is so brilliant.”

— Exec producer Dan Hernandez

PASS THE VEGEMITE: The new Hulu animated series follows the adventure of a superhero dad named Kevin/Koala Man who fights evil and misfits who don’t take their trash out in the Aussie suburb of Dapto.

The Animated Man from Oz

It’s time to catch up with Michael Cusack, the brilliant man behind YOLO: Crystal Fantasy, Koala Man and Smiling Friends.

Over 10 years ago, Australian animation wunderkind Michael Cusack created a short called YOLO, about two fun-loving female friends who have a weakness for partying and enjoying massive amounts of alcohol. As we enter the first month of 2023, the talented creative is launching the second season of their Adult Swim series, YOLO: Crystal Fantasy, while his other show Koala Man premieres on Hulu. His third popular series Smiling Friends (also on Adult Swim) will also be coming back later this year. We recently had a chance to chat with the prolific guy about his amazing career and the second season of YOLO, subtitled Silver Destiny and starring Sarah Bishop (Sarah) and Todor Manojlovic (Rachel) as two ladies who are still desperately seeking “fun times, positive vibes and hot guys in the town of Wollongong!”

ago

Michael Cusack: The new season will be basically a continuation of season one, and I’d like to think it’ll be better, as I love it and am very proud of it. The same writers came back. We are basically working with the same team: Studio Monkeystack (Adelaide) and Princess Bento (Melbourne). You are a bit limited during the first season of a show, and then you get to be creative in different ways during the second one. We have a bit more of an arc through this season as we follow Rachel and Sarah, but it’s still the same old craziness. We have 10 episodes this season, two more from the first one. It’s been more of a balancing act, since I’m also working on Koala Man and Smiling Friends, but I have a great team working with me.

Were you surprised by the show’s popularity in the U.S.?

The thing I love about YOLO is that it has a cult-y feel to it. It is the dream show that I always wanted to make: It’s an Adult Swim show that has a strong niche following. The best part of it was the fact that it was Australian and it resonated with non-Australians as well. That was the most satisfying part for me.

What is your schedule now?

We are working on season two of Smiling Friends and Koala Man for Hulu is also premiering in January 2023. It was always my dream to bring Australian characters and stories to animation because I felt like it was such an untapped playground to be creative in. The fact that Koala Man and YOLO are both very Aussie and we get to make them for American networks and American audiences is just amazing. Of course, working on Smiling Friends is yet another beast and very satisfy-

Congrats on the new season of your show YOLO: Crystal Fantasy premiering this month on Adult Swim. Did you expect the show to have a big cult following when you started working on it a few years

Michael Cusack

ing in its own way. The fact that it has such a big audience is really fantastic. I love to see all the fan art for the show.

So, how do you manage to juggle all three shows at once so ably?

Well, now it’s got to the point where work is definitely heating up and it’s getting more hectic, but I’m very lucky to have a lot of amazing people that are even more talented than me help me do all this stuff. That’s the only way all these shows could be made. It’s such a big collaborative effort.

Can you talk a bit about the original look of YOLO?

Sure, the ethos for the whole series is supposed to be like a fun playground for animators, so the characters can go off model. It should look like drawings you may find on a pencil case in school. Sometimes I see people getting annoyed at the art style, and they think it makes it look crappy, but personally, I love that. Crappiness should add to the comedy and the strangeness

of the show. I think it’s drawn better in season two, but it still has the same spirit.

Koala Man is still my style, but characters don’t go off model as much. It follows more of a Solar Opposites/Rick and Morty/The Simpsons pipeline. It’s more mainstream. It would be too chaotic if it was animated like YOLO. The concept of the show is already very strange so it needs to be more grounded in reality in its animation.

Tell us about the voicing experience.

We had the same cast. Sarah Bishop as Sarah, Todd as Rachel my best friend from high school. I play Lucas the Magnificent and all the other characters. Todd and I would go to this church in Melbourne and record all these voices at night when it was quiet because nobody else was there. We had Flying Lotus on the show for the first season. For the second season, we had so much fun doing voices. There’s a piano and musical instruments in the other room, so whenever we wanted to, we’d go there and write a song for a scene, improv it and sing and record it right there. It was a really fun environment to do voices and music.

What makes you happiest about the show?

I love the fact that it’s set in Wollongong, where I grew up. It has a lot of elements to like. It’s very colorful and strange and Australian. It also has a lot of unique, interesting drawings. The best part is that Adult Swim lets us get away with a lot, so we have a lot of creative liberty to do anything. That’s my favorite part of animation, when you are free to explore a lot of strange ideas, both in the writing and in the art.

What were the main animated shows that made a big impact on you growing up?

I was definitely inspired by The Simpsons, South Park and Futurama a lot. Then, I discovered people like Egoraptor (Arin Hanson), David Firth and Sick Animation that made all these Flash-animated cartoons on the internet that really inspired me. That was the first time I felt like I really could do it myself.

As a guy who has three great animated shows on the air right now, what kind of tips would you give up-and-coming animation types? Well, I would say that I’m definitely not the best, but I I think that the way that I kind of got to the level I’m at now is definitely through collaboration. It was about having a goal and a vision and then getting other people excited about that same vision, so I think that’s probably the key to getting these shows made. It’s definitely not an ego trip, but it’s really about having a big group of creative people that make it all work. It also makes it fun. ◆

The first two episodes of YOLO: Silver Destiny will premiere back to back on Jan. 22 at midnight with one new episode premiering weekly thereafter. The show is produced by Laura DiMaio with line producer Paul Moran; exec producers are Cusack, Mike Cowap and Emma Fitzsimons.

DEMENTED, BUT DELIGHTFUL: Season two, YOLO: Silver Destiny , finds our friends Sarah and Rachel pursue new thrills and experiences as a gardener and a dark empress.

Smiling Friends

Mission: Pawsible!

Feisty feline heroes save the day in Disney Junior’s hot new show SuperKitties.

- By Karen Idelson -

Cat lovers of all ages will have reason to celebrate when  SuperKitties, a new superhero series featuring four fierce felines, comes to Disney Junior and Disney+ in 2023. The show takes audiences along on adventures in the city of Kittydale with Ginny, Sparks, Buddy and Bitsy as they keep the metropolis safe and help their preschool audience better understand the actions of others.

The series is the brainchild of Emmy Award winner Paula Rosenthal, who is creator and executive producer on the show. Rosenthal previously worked on Sunny Day, Olivia and Peter Rabbit. Kirk Van Wormer, who is also an Emmy winner and previously worked on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, The LEGO Movie 2 and Transformers Prime, is co-executive producer on the series.

It’s Meow or Never

When Rosenthal was working on developing the series, she confesses she did have a bit of a

cat-focused agenda in mind.

“Let me say, I’m an animal lover and that I love all animals,” says Rosenthal. “But I do love cats, and I didn’t think they were getting their due. There were lots of shows with puppies out there. There were lots of shows with lots of animals. But there weren’t a lot of shows with cats and I thought it would be fun to do something for people who love animals and cats.”

She adds, “I’d say that it came together even better than I initially imagined. I just imagined an homage to superheroes and making sure that our characters were real superheroes rather than just rescuers, and that they can do everything from having their own powers and their own poses to their own superhero uniforms and masks. With the incredible collaboration with Kirk and Disney, we got it to a place where it’s better than imagined.”

Rosenthal, Van Wormer and their team poured over hours of cat videos on sites like YouTube as they were looking for inspiration for the move-

ment of the characters. They also looked back towards classic superhero series from decades past. Each kitty wears a color coordinated mask and superhero suit and has brightly-colored fur to set off the whole ensemble. This sort of striking look for the main characters was something they wanted to emphasize.

“We thought about 1960s-era  Batman, and the bright colors, energy and humor of that time,” says Van Wormer. “We were all just thrilled with this idea of having that kind of farce in our series. We started to think about how to bring that pop of color and that Saul Bass sense of style into Kittydale, which is a big city. Some big cities can be dark, but we want ours to be bright and the kind of place where kids want to go. So, we built this world with some really talented people who helped us find our way around. We tried to get the best of this stylized environment and cute kitties that become powerful heroes, and over-the-top villains who are also just adorable. We were also

“We started to think about how to bring that pop of color and that Saul Bass sense of style into Kittydale, which is a big city!”

— Co-exec producer Kirk Van Wormer

able to work with teams who knew how to create maximum fluffiness for the kittens on a realistic budget and timeline, so were very fortunate.”

The brightly colored CG animation was done by Bardel Entertainment’s studio in Vancouver and Rainbow, which is located in Italy. The series is produced by Sony Pictures Television – Kids (formerly known as Silvergate Media) in association with Disney Junior.

As the series came together, Rosenthal also knew they’d have to keep their preschool audience in mind. The kitties all have their superhero gear which includes playful, stylized masks and a strong superhero stance but they’d have to craft the stories in a particular way. While superhero films and series often go into some very dark places with their villains, this show would have to take a different approach to work for Its viewers.

“I wanted to tip my hat to  Batman and similar shows that inspired the storytelling here,” says Rosenthal. “When we were creating our felines, we wanted to show children these characters who were smart and strong, brave and resilient in the face of danger. When I say ‘danger,’ I mean danger in the form of a pantheon of villains who create challenges for our kitties. So, there’s that element of classic superhero storytelling for sure.”

Rosenthal points out that even the rogues gal-

lery of Kittydale has its charms and complexities. “One thing that really came out of the collaboration with Disney was that, once we had the spine of the stories and the storytelling, we understood that the villains weren’t really bad,” she adds “They were just misunderstood and did a bad thing. We were able to create a path toward empathy for them. We were able to tell kinder, gentler stories about how sometimes people do something bad, but there may be a reason behind their actions. We can understand them better when we understand those reasons, which is very important for children. Once we understand the reasons behind a behavior, we might be able to help someone choose a better path.”

Viewers may also recognize some of the familiar voices when they watch the show, which features an experienced group of young performers. The voice cast includes Emma Berman from Disney-Pixar’s  Luca as Ginny, Cruz Flateau from  CoComelon as Sparks, JeCobi Swain from Home Economics as Buddy and Pyper Braun from  Country Comfort as Bitsy.

Each of the  SuperKitties also has their own superpower, which is designed to work well with the abilities of the other kitties. They’re all a nod to the powers we usually associated with cats.

“With Ginny, she’s already super powerful, but when she suits up her superpower is that she

has these power claws that enhance her natural abilities as a cat, so she can stick to things you wouldn’t normally expect her to be able to stick to,” says Van Wormer. “She can swing through things or hop through spaces that would be difficult for a regular cat, so her powers make her super-duper incredible. Buddy is really strong like a big, strong cat that will just walk over and lay on top of things and just knock everything down. He’s that times 10 when he furball blitzes into a big puff ball and he can bounce off walls and just knock them down. His brother, Sparks, is that cat that can open doors — he’s very smart and he’s our tech guy.”

Adds Rosenthal: “Ginny may be the leader of the pack, but you see the show through Bitsy’s eyes. She’s the one who comes back to the lesson or message of the day. She does a video blog about what they’ve learned and the lessons in the show for that day. This is the only time they break the fourth wall and Bitsy will wink to the audience, because she knows they’re in on her story. This way the audience gets to feel part of the story she tells them at the end of the episode.”◆

SuperKitties premieres on Disney Channel and Disney Junior at 10:30 a.m. on January 11. The first batch of episodes will also premiere the same day on Disney+.

LET THE FUR FLY: Four fierce and furry kittens called Ginny, Sparks, Buddy and Bitsy turn into SuperKitties whenever trouble arises.

“We were able to tell kinder, gentler stories about how sometimes people do something bad. Once we understand the reasons behind a behavior we might be able to help someone choose a better path.”

— Creator/exec producer Paula Rosenthal

Ruh-Roh! Your Movie’s Shelved!

Director Michael Kurinsky talks about how his animated movie Scoob! Holiday Haunt had its plug pulled.

- By Jeff Spry -

We interrupt your mid-winter malaise to offer up a melancholy fireside tale of what could have been for Scoob! Holiday Haunt, a Christmastime CG animated feature that became the victim of modern-day corporate accounting.

Industry vet and first-time director Michael Kurinsky was at the helm of this planned sequel to 2020’s Scoob! alongside co-director Bill Haller when dark clouds formed. Nearly completed and about to start acquiring a post-production gloss, the family film starring the voices of Iain Armitage, Mark Hamill, Cristo Fernández, Ming-Na Wen and Frank Welker got the unfortunate news on August 2 that it was being officially yanked from the Warner Bros. release slate.

“I’m not a Warner Bros. executive or movie studio finance person so I really don’t have any idea why it was targeted,” Kurinsky tells Animation Magazine. “I can say that when we had our

phone call and we discussed it with the new execs that came in, They thought the project was great and it was theatrical quality. It had nothing to do with the creative aspects, it was purely a financial decision. I do know that the two most expensive products coming out on HBO Max for 2022 were Batgirl and our project. Batgirl was $90 million and we were $42 million.”

Scooby Fan Support

“There are a lot of Scooby-Doo die-hards out there and I hear from them, though it’s trickling down a bit,” he notes. “But a couple of months ago I was getting daily messages on Twitter and Instagram, all little shows of support. The fans are really great.”

Even though Kurinsky and his creative team labored on the movie for nearly two years, number crunching accountants used the joyful project as part of a cost-cutting initiative in the wake of AT&T’s Warner Bros. spinoff and Discovery merger. Scoob! Holiday Haunt was destined to air on HBO Max on De-

cember 22, but instead it joined DC’s Batgirl in the graveyard of abandoned projects to tighten up the financial books with tax writedowns to offset production costs.

Kurinsky’s impressive resume includes work as a production designer, art director and background painter on high-profile projects like Sony Pictures Animation’s Hotel Transylvania 2 and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and Disney Animation’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Fantasia 2000 and Tarzan

Warner Bros. profusely apologized to the filmmaker for the sudden cancellation of Scoob! Holiday Haunt and lack of decorum in not letting him know first.

“Apparently the story was leaked and it got out on social media before we were able to get formal calls from anybody,” he recalls. “I found out pretty much like everybody else did, through an article in either Hollywood Reporter or Variety. We finally had calls a couple hours later from the new presidents of Warner

— Director Michael Kurinsky

Bros. They apologized, saying that was messy and not how they wanted us to receive the news, but unfortunately that’s the way we did.”

Scoob! Holiday Haunt takes place two months after Scoob!’s opening Halloween sequence, with the young amateur detectives still getting acquainted and embarking on a Christmas excursion where they visit Fred’s eccentric Uncle Ned and teach Scooby the true meaning of the season.

“For people who saw the first movie, Scoob!, the first 12 minutes was an origin story about how Scooby met Shaggy and how they met the rest of the gang and how they solved their first mystery on Halloween Eve,” Kurinsky explains. “One of our major themes was that if Halloween made them friends, Christmas makes them family. It was how we saw solidification of not just Mystery Inc. and their crime-solving abilities, but why they work so well together.

“So we got to take them out of Venice Beach and take them into a snowy mountain setting of this Christmas-themed resort. The

gang investigates a ghostly mystery at Holiday Hamlet and solves it. That’s the bare bones of every single episode of Scooby-Doo

At times it’s a pure mystery and other times where it’s very Christmassy. But it’s where the two combined, that’s where it got really fun — we used stuff from Christmas folklore all around the world, beyond Santa Claus — and then it’s just good Christmas heart and fun in the ending.”

It’s a Wrap!

To soften the blow ever so slightly, Kurinsky and his co-director were able to finish the animated movie for the simple reason that it was already bought and paid for, but those were dark times.

“I had to put on my bravest face every single day and communicate to a crew of incredible professionals who all knew the situation and the circumstances. To keep the morale up was not easy. I tried to be the head cheerleader, but I think we all supported each other and got through it collectively. We decided that a fin-

ished thing has a chance of living more than an unfinished thing. And since we were so close to being finished, we knew the quality of what we had done up to that point. Every frame is going to look as good as every frame that happened before we knew this news, and that was the attitude we went into every single day.”

The team’s diligence and solidarity paid off when weeks ago Kurinsky entered a small screening room with ex-EVP of Warner Animation Group (WAG) Allison Abbate, executive producer Tony Cervone, WAG VP Chris Leahy and one of his key executives, Susan Peters.

“We all watched a finished print and it looked great. I needed to see it, even if it was just that one time,” he says. “To be able to sit and watch the movie start to finish was a wonderful feeling. If there was a magic wand that could tap me on the head and my two choices were that we can erase this whole experience and you don’t have to go through that pain, or we do it all over again and it’s exactly the same outcome, I’d take number two every single time.” ◆

SCARY SITUATION: Director Michael Kurinsky, who has worked for almost three decades in the animation business, had high hopes for his movie Scoob! Holiday Haunt until it was abruptly pulled by Warner Bros. Discovery, due to financial considerations and tax write-downs.

“We decided that a finished thing has a chance of living more than an unfinished thing … Every frame is going to look as good as every frame that happened before we knew this news, and that was the attitude we went into every single day.”

Go. Fast. Again!

Sonic is back in action in a glorious new CG-animated Netflix show.

Everyone’s favorite speedy, blue, spiny mammal is back in action. The new Sonic Prime series began its eight-episode first season on Netflix in December and found our popular SEGA icon (voiced by Deven Mack) traveling across the “Shatterverse” after a battle with Dr. Eggman (Brian Drummond) caused reality to break apart.

The new CG-animated series is executive produced by SEGA, WildBrain, Marza and Man of Action. As the show’s exec producer and director Erik Wiese, who has worked on shows as diverse as SpongeBob SquarePants, Snoopy Presents and Samurai Jack, tells us, “Audiences will get a big action series with their favorite video game characters. It’s an epic tale, serialized over multiple episodes. We haven’t seen that before with these characters — or with any cartoon-y show. We want existing fans to have a new adventure where they discover, with Sonic, brand-new worlds, and first-time viewers to immediately connect with him and his crew.”

Wiese and his team worked hard to ensure audiences could empathize with the familiar characters in ways they maybe haven’t before. “Even though this show runs on action and comedy, we

also went to some emotional places that hadn’t previously been explored. We hope those moments augment the big, fun action scenes the franchise is known for and give audiences a whole new Sonic experience,” he says.

Fresh and Dead-On Accurate

According to Logan McPherson, senior VP of creative/animated production at WildBrain, the Green Hill characters are all faithful versions of themselves. “They exist in the series as franchise mythology demands,” he points out. “SEGA sent us the geometry for the character models, which we fit into our pipeline, so they are dead-on accurate. We then developed a unique and innovative graphic surfacing style that fits them into the unique worlds we were designing. This gives the characters a fresh appeal that doesn’t push them off the model or make them feel unfamiliar. Slight adjustments to the costumes were also made. In the case of Rouge, SEGA designed a stunning new outfit for her that feels more contemporary and in-line with her character development.”

McPherson and his team set out to bring something new to the White Gloved One’s multiverse. “The mythology is the jumping-off point for the

series, fans get a familiar taste of what they know and love, and then we quickly move into an entirely new realm that showcases alternate versions of Sonic’s friends in vastly different worlds,” he explains. “This propels Sonic on a hero’s journey that truly stretches him to his limits! We think both new and old audiences will love the intrigue and the incredible journey the series takes them on. Other than Green Hill, the environments are all original and unique, which will be new for fans. We worked to push the cinematic depth with mood, lighting, tone and atmospheric depth, which give them a wow factor and appeal for a whole new audience!”

Sonic, who was first introduced in 1991 in the popular video game, has been the star of five animated shows and two blockbuster movies (released in 2020 and 2022). The second film earned $400 million dollars worldwide and holds the title for the highest-grossing domestic opening for a video game adaptation ever. We have a feeling this new iteration is also going to fast track its way to the heart of fans in record time. ◆

The first season of Sonic Prime is currently streaming on Netflix worldwide.

Logan McPherson

Erik Wiese

Autonomous Animator

Is It Really Necessary to Go Back to the Office?

- by Martin Grebing -

Now that the world has more or less settled from the major shockwaves caused by the pandemic, the entire global workforce is starting to realize that working from home may be forever more and things may never go back to the way they were.

And my question is: Even if they could, should they?

Other than missing out on in-person camaraderie, staff and business owners have certainly, by now, realized that paying for a giant building and requiring hundreds of people to commute to and from work is not only unnecessary, but as it turns out, is almost unanimously counter-productive and less profitable than an autonomous approach.

And it only makes sense. It’s hard to fathom the amount of time unnecessarily wasted by pre-pandemic commuting, only to sit in a

is an incomprehensible amount of money that has been saved by reducing the burdens that over-reliance on transportation causes. And let us not forget Mother Nature in this equation: The copious amounts of fuel required to transport the working population of an entire country across town, sometimes even across borders, just for the sake of clocking in at a building far from home — and then back again — produces Earth-choking amounts of toxic fumes and a host of other sinister pollutants. Now, in an environment where commuting has been greatly reduced, there is room for Mother Nature to breathe just a little easier.

Trepidation: Meet Results

One of the biggest fears for upper management having staff suddenly required to work from home was loss of productivity.

Trust was the other concern. Supervisors that were used to monitoring staff by peering over their shoulder worried they would lose control of their workforce and have difficulty communicating. However, with unlimited free email, group chat rooms, remote logins, electronic timecards and plenty of phone and video conferencing options available, trepidation about the loss of management’s ability to supervise staff members at home was swiftly quelled.

With almost every economy in the world being connected by an internet that travels near the speed of light, it just makes sense that every person who can work from home should work from home.

There will always be those that hold onto pre-pandemic beliefs about how businesses should operate, but they may soon become the minority. Today, when someone tells me they just moved into a 40,000 sq. ft. building, my initial reaction is not as it once was, “Wow, that’s impressive, you must be successful!,” but rather something more along the lines of, “Is that really necessary?”

Even Uncle Sam has joined the party. Highlevel government agencies have already experienced great success with staff members being allowed to work from home. Ironically (sarcastically) enough, productivity has increased as in the private sector, morale has improved, and indirect costs and expenditures have shown a decrease.

cubicle to use a phone and/or computer which is quite possibly inferior to the one you have at home or even carry around in your pocket.

Sadly, commuting one to three hours one way is still a reality for some even in today’s work environment. That’s up to six wasted hours per day that could be recaptured and used to be more productive and live happier lives if they were to work at home instead.

In addition to reducing or even eliminating time wasted by unnecessary commuting, there

However, it turns out that in many (if not most) cases, productivity actually improved. One example of this is a study by Stanford which showed that working from home increased productivity by 13%. Improvements like this greatly contribute to a company’s bottom line, which means things will probably never go back to the way they were. What business owner, seeing a company-wide boost in productivity and resulting profit, would ever want to go back to operating the way things were pre-pandemic?

Some companies certainly need large spaces to operate, but for every person that can perform their duties remotely from a home office the entire world stands to benefit. A mass reduction in the number of people required to commute to and from work on a daily basis has significantly reduced the burden on our economy, our environment and our personal lives. What say we continue down this path to free up even more resources so we can reallocate them to focus on what really matters: improving the quality of life?

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

Lion Forge: A New Creative Home for Authentic, Diverse Voices

Three years ago, David Steward II formed Lion Forge Animation when he and his family recognized a huge need in the industry to create a platform for authentic diverse voices.

Drawing from his experience in publishing (graphic novels and comics) and informed by market trends, he launched Lion Forge Animation, one of the only Black-owned animation studios in the world. Within months, Lion Forge Animation had an Oscar win as the studio behind the animated short, Hair Love (directed by the enormously talented trio of Matthew A. Cherry, Everett Downing Jr. and Bruce W. Smith).

The company has been developing and producing world class IP, building global partnerships, and focused on team recruitment and

ing and training the next generation of diverse talent for the animation industry.”

According to the company’s VP of production Saxton Moore (Sugar and Toys, Iyanu: Child of Wonder), Lion Forge has a robust content pipeline. “Several current projects at Lion Forge Animation include a highly anticipated adaptation of the popular graphic novel series, Iyanu: Child of Wonder, which our studio is making into a children’s animated series for HBO Max. Created by Nigerian creator Roye Okupe, Iyanu: Child of Wonder is an epic superhero tale steeped in Nigeria’s rich culture, music, and mythology.”

ing and engaging previously ignored audiences. We not only make content for the marketplace – we make content that creates and shapes new markets. We want to show the industry that going beyond on-camera diversity and working with writers, producers and crews that are representative of the stories being told benefits everyone.”

talent development. Today, Lion Forge Animation is well-positioned and uniquely equipped to create, drive, and deliver genuine, diverse stories to meet increasing audience demand.

“Lion Forge Animation’s overarching goal is to create a broad content slate ranging from children’s and family entertainment to adult animation that is rooted in authenticity and speaks to audiences all over the globe,” explains Steward II. “Our content is wildly immersive and anchored by groundbreaking characters, which allows us to explore new ways of telling stories. We build deep and layered franchises that advance the diversity of content in the media landscape in meaningful and powerful ways, and in turn, if we do it right, drive change.”

He adds, “A fundamental part of achieving our goals is fostering a talented, collaborative group of professionals whose lived experiences and voices make these creative visions a reality. We are particularly focused on develop-

Other projects include a Hair Love spinoff series (Young Love) for HBO Max; Marley and the Family Band, an animated series based on Cedella Marley’s picture book in association with Universal Music Group; Rise Up, Sing Out, executive produced by Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, for Disney; an animated series based on the multiple award-winning Excerpts from an Unknown Guidebook book series; a slate of projects introducing the groundbreaking life and legacy of Wendell Scott, the first Black race car driver and team owner to win a race at NASCAR’s highest level; and a new multi-media initiative in partnership with St. Louis-based Nine PBS designed to positively represent Black and brown kids and help close the literacy gap, Drawn In.”

Drawn to Raising Awareness

Steward II believes that great storytelling is authentic and grounded in experience. “We believe by embracing diversity and amplifying previously unheard voices, animation can be a powerful driver for awareness and understanding,” he notes. “We are advancing the narrative of authentic content and see animation playing a pivotal role in reach-

Both Steward II and Moore believe that it’s imperative that the industry move past the idea that there can only be one of any particular genre of show or movie with a diverse or under-represented lead character. As Moore points out, “The animation industry’s key players have gone through multiple cycles of growth and subsequent reduction, a trend which has been exacerbated by the stream-

ing platforms entry, expansion, and prominence in the global market.”

“This impacts content output, fuels uncertainty around studio stability, and creates demand for more diverse content,” he adds. “We see this as a great opportunity for authentic, minority voices to contribute and make new content. The bottom line is that there remains a lack of minority talent in the industry and Lion Forge is here to help address that issue.”

Steward II wants the animation community to know that Lion Forge tells stories that others won’t or can’t. “We are home to diverse creators and professionals, and a robust IP portfolio,” he says. “We have developed collaborative industry partnerships that are changing how content gets made. And we have proven that we make and deliver dynamic, award-winning content.” ◆

For more info, visit lionforgeanimation.com

David Steward II

Saxton Moore

Dawud Anyabwile and Darnell Johnson

Rediscovering a Romanian Space Odyssey

Rare animated sci-fi flick The Son of the Stars scores a new 4K restoration.

- By Jeff Spry -

Every so often, cosmic tumblers align and the sci-fi universe gifts us a vintage jewel in the animation arena, some long-forgotten project now cast in the golden glow of modern accolades and provided with a generous dose of tender loving care from restoration specialists.

Deaf Crocodile Films, a major player in the discovery and revival of previously unknown movies deserving of historical respect, has taken the 1985 Romanian animated science fiction saga The Son of the Stars and given it a sparkling 4K restoration to be presented in North America as a first-ever special edition Blu-ray in early 2023.

Back in the days of hair metal bands and Jazzercise classes, the animation industry was in a bit of a funk. At a time when Michael Eisner’s House of Mouse renaissance was still in its infancy, this sequel to the 1984 space opera spectacle Delta Space Mission was unleashed in Europe to great fanfare.

Surreal Space Adventure

Reuniting Delta Space Mission’s same creative team of directors Călin Cazan and the

late Mircea Toia, The Son of the Stars was never officially offered theatrically in the United States. Its plot line is best explained as an ambitious fusion of Alien, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan for a trippy, 80-minute mash-up that delights with old-school charm and hallucinatory design aesthetics.

In partnership with the Romanian National Film Archive and Cinematheque and the Romanian Film Centre, Deaf Crocodile has freshened up this impressive project with a new ultra high-definition transfer scanned from the original 35mm camera negative and soundtrack, supervised by Deaf Crocodile co-founder and in-house restoration wizard Craig Rogers.

“Everything you loved about Delta Space Mission, only even better!” Rogers claims. “Space dragons, pterodactyls, amorphous blob creatures, amulets of power … Seriously, what’s not to love?”

Strap in for the official synopsis: “In the year 6470, a husband and wife team of explorers receive a mysterious distress signal from a female astronaut who disappeared

decades earlier. They leave their son on board their ship while they go searching for the missing woman — but fate intervenes, crashlanding the ship on a jungle-like planet populated by bulbous, telekinetic aliens and eerie stone gardens of frozen space creatures.”

The genesis of the narrative was a combination of many influences besides Star Wars and Alien, and carried with it certain phantasmagoric origins that seemed in step with that awesome decade.

“Tarzan, Robinson Crusoe, the Brothers Grimm stories, Moby Dick ... these are childhood books for everyone,” Cazan tells Animation Magazine in an exclusive interview.

“Of course, we also saw the movies — The Jungle Book (the Disney animated version from 1967, and the version with actors from 1942) at the Cinematheque — a special cinema in Bucharest.”

And if eerie disembodied eyeballs, cosmic sorcery, decomposing Cubist structures, levitating purple tentacles and a crusading medieval space knight weren’t enough insanity, The Son of the Stars also showcased a

“Their ingenuity, working behind the Iron Curtain in the mid-1980s, incorporating elements of Western sci-fi and Japanese anime with Eastern European music and mythology and even politics, was just astonishing.”

— Dennis Bartok, co-founder, Deaf Crocodile

sensational psychedelic score by synth-rock pioneer Ștefan Elefteriu.

“We ended up working with Ștefan Elefteriu because he was already known at the time for piano music and synthesizer,” Cazan recalls. “It was not difficult to get in touch with him through the Union of Composers with the relationships of our colleagues from the sound team. It wasn’t hard. He is such an open man that he was able to work without money, just [out of] curiosity.”

Similar to Delta Space Mission, The Son of the Stars was first produced as a series of short episodes which originally aired on Romanian television and then combined to make an entire feature. Plans for a second series began immediately after production ended with Delta Space Mission and the

distinctive style was partly inspired by American Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

“We didn’t really have the Cold War here. The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Tom & Jerry and The Jetsons were all on Romanian TV,” explains Cazan. “Hanna-Barbera’s style was perfect — simple characters in structure, very funny in appearance, without unnecessary additions, very expressive. Each character has his own personality, his own way of moving and his own expressions. And the stories are well balanced. There were wonderful people at Hanna-Barbera Studios.”

Behind the Iron Curtain

Dennis Bartok, Deaf Crocodile co-founder and head of acquisitions and distribution, remembers his ideal working relationship

with Cazan on Delta Space Mission’s restoration.

“We discovered that he and Mircea Toia had directed another feature right after, just as surreal and psychedelic — and if anything, even more criminally unknown here in the U.S.,” Bartok says. “Their ingenuity, working behind the Iron Curtain in the mid-1980s, incorporating elements of Western sci-fi and Japanese anime with Eastern European music and mythology and even politics, was just astonishing. I just wish they’d been able to make a dozen more features — but we’re incredibly proud that we’ve been able to restore their two animated features together.” ◆

The Son of the Stars is scheduled to shine on 4K Blu-ray sometime in 2023.

BACK TO THE ‘80S: Working with the Romanian National Film Archive and Cinematheque and the Romanian Film Centre, Deaf Crocodile has restored The Son of the Stars in 4K.

Diving into Pandora’s Magic

Director James Cameron and his VFX team discuss the stunning visual effects achievements of Avatar: The Way of the Water.

- By Trevor Hogg -

Watching the Hollywood blockbusters of James Cameron, it is not hard to point out the influence of his deep fascination with marine life, whether it be an underwater alien encounter in The Abyss, setting a love story aboard a doomed ocean liner in Titanic or depicting a coastal clan in Avatar: The Way of the Water, the first of four proposed sequels that takes place on the exomoon named Pandora. Cameron and his VFX team discussed his eagerly anticipated feature, its state- of-theart visual effects and their inspirations during a recent interview with Animation Magazine. “I would say that the first Avatar borrowed from the colors and patterns and the variety and the shape language, like the Wood Sprites being jellyfish-like, from shallow water marine life,” he explains. “All we were doing was taking the amazing aliens that exist right

here on planet Earth and taking them out of context, changing their scale because some of them are quite tiny. The interesting truth of it is, we can’t beat nature’s imagination.”

Inspired by Natural Wonders

He adds, “But when tasked to tell a story, we have to come up with something interesting. The [film’s] ilu, for example, has the neck of a Plesiosaurus and the body of a manta ray that was turned into a biplane, so it has lower and upper wings. It’s a beautiful creature and looks completely plausible. It’s based on touchstones in reality, but is its own thing.”

The director acknowledges the evolution of VFX technology and its important role in the filmmaking process. “Anybody from my generation was going to go out and do our physical production,” notes Cameron. “Then we’re going to shoot plates for some small subset of the movie and those are going to be

spectacular sequences that would be finished later during a long post production. However, for me, visual effects are the fabric of my craft as a filmmaker. There are days when I’m just hand-holding the camera and running around with the actors.”

He adds, “We’re just doing it within a space that allows the camera to be tracked so that we can set extend using CG. That’s the only difference from a straight live-action movie, but I get to do all of the stuff I used to love back in the day. The point is that my attitude towards visual effects is that it’s the heart and soul of how we create this other world and these otherworldly characters.”

Overseeing the digital animation and augmentation were production VFX supervisor Richard Baneham and the team at Wētā FX led by Joe Letteri and Eric Saindon with additional support provided by ILM. “We basically gave Wētā FX a big traunch of money

BUILDING A WATER WORLD:

Led by James Cameron and Joe Letteri, the visual effects team tested the capabilities of the medium by constructing a performance-capture tank at Lightstorm Entertainment’s facility in Manhattan Beach, Calif. According to Wētā FX, 57 new species of sea creatures were eventually created for the film.

to develop how to do water,” explains Cameron. “Everything from how water drains out of hair, how water sheds off of skin, how a person emerges from water, how their costume would take the weight of the water and then drain out, and how the water itself would react as it’s displaced around the body. They were working on that piece of the puzzle and we were working on the physical aspects of how to capture [everything] in water, which proved to be quite a daunting thing.”

Performance capture had to take place within three different situations and stitched together in real time. “They were in an infrared volume above the water, when they went into the water and were swimming on the surface or diving down, and they would go into an ultraviolet volume underwater,” he points out.

Selected performance capture moments were assembled together to produce what is referred to as a template. “We have a lab in Los Angeles consisting of 160 people who build these files that are a slightly cruder representation of the movie, but they describe exactly what it is we want to achieve,” states Richard Baneham. “There is a huge investment of time and energy in making that happen. The technology that we’re using onstage is part of the Wētā FX pipeline, so we are truly integrated with them from the

inception of the shots all the way through to final execution. Jim [Cameron] is able to take the cameras that he or I did on set and literally repeat them on set with the live-action crew.”

Baneham adds, “We’re making a movie about an alien world, so we try to ground ourselves in a film language that is familiar. Jim would literally go, ‘What piece of equipment are we using to do that?’ He’s always thinking of it from a practical standpoint.”

Simulcam was an indispensable tool throughout the production. “We knew that the plates and live action would fit together because it was all captured in the right depth and lighting,” says Eric Saindon, senior VFX supervisor at Wētā FX. “[Cinematographer] Russell Carpenter was able to light it in a way that we don’t have to manipulate these plates like you typically have to. The plates drop into the CG environment and you know that they’re going to work because you see it in rough

format early on when you’re shooting it.”

Saindon points out that the depth compositing and Simulcam worked even with the water. “We were able to see where the other characters were going to be in the water and waves as we shot it,” he notes. “Because of this, we knew that there was enough space for them later on.”

One of the film’s many dramatic sequences involves a whale-like creature. “The tulkun hunt is a great action sequence, but is also terribly sad,” says Saindon. “All of it happens at sea and we never went out on the water for any of the shots! Because of the way we shot the boats and gimbals and have them move properly in the water it feels like it was shot out on the water, and all we’re adding is a few

“The end result on the screen which is what I’m seeing every day as it is pouring in from Wētā FX is quite astonishing in terms of the veracity of the performances, the body movement, the hands, all of those things both in air and water.”

— Director James Cameron

“The Metkayina characters are more impervious to being in the water; their expressions are more natural underwater. We take that into account by mixing what the actors do above water with what we’re seeing them doing below water to craft that performance together.”

— Senior VFX supervisor Joe Letteri

things in the background.”

For senior VFX supervisor Joe Letteri, one of the most important aspects of the visuals were the advances made in facial animation. “There are two aspects to it,” he notes. “One is capturing the data, making sure that you understand what the actors are doing in the moment, and the second aspect involves translating that into unique characters that are based on the actors which have to hold their own on the screen. That’s where we have put the bulk of the effort, trying to get that realism not only in the technical visual sense but in the emotional sense. Basically, understanding what the actors are doing on the stage should translate to what the characters are doing on the screen.”

An important factor to consider is that the

to squint more underwater,” says four-time Oscar-winner Letteri, whose many credits include Avatar, King Kong and The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies. “Things like that that may work for a human actor are not what you want these characters to be who spend their life in the water. I’m talking about the Metkayina characters which by design are more impervious to being in the water; their expressions are more natural underwater. We take that into account by mixing what the actors do above water with what we’re seeing them doing below water to craft that performance together.”

Better than Ocean Photography

Obviously, the Avatar sequels required years of planning and developing VFX technologies and methodologies. “We’re not going to make a movie just to do something new,” notes

there are tools at our disposal from a technology standpoint that allow us to tell stories that we couldn’t tell in the past in a better, more compelling and engaging way.”

The creative and technological odyssey leading to Avatar: The Way of Water has been a highly rewarding experience for Cameron and his team. As the visionary director concludes, “The end result on the screen which is what I’m seeing every day as it is pouring in from Wētā FX is quite astonishing in terms of the veracity of the performances, the body movement, the hands, all of those things both in air and water. Of course, all of the water work is spectacular. It’s in the same league as ocean photography which was our original goal, but it’s not an easy one!” ◆

Avatar: The Way of Water was released in theaters worldwide by 20th Century Studios in December.

WAVES OF INVENTION: According to the Wētā FX technicians, about 1,600 different major effects simulations were created for the film. These visuals involved the proper flow of waves on the ocean,

Tech Reviews

- By Todd Sheridan Perry -

Higx Point Render for Nuke

Everyone loves smokey, tendrilled and wispy effects. I don’t know why, but there’s just nothing like a gorgeous nebula in space, or how ink moves when dropped in water, or the way Wanda conjures up wiggly-woo magic in Marvel movies. When these are created in CG, it’s usually made in a 3D program with particles, a bunch of wacky forces and, for those beautiful tendrils, a simulation of a gazillion particles.

Back in my day, you had to export out passes with slightly different parameters and then comp them back together because our workstations couldn’t handle the particle count. But now, there is a blazingly fast plugin for Nuke called Point Render, developed by Higx (Mads Hagbarth), which allows these cool effects within the compositor using Nuke’s BlinkScript in the 3D work area. The speed comes from it being a point renderer (hence the name), which means its handling a point per pixel, rather than actual particles. And the points are additive, meaning that if points are on top of each other they will get brighter. There is no occlusion because there is no lighting. This is the signature for Higx Point Render: cool, energy-like forms that swirl and undulate.

The basic workflow is pretty straightforward: You set a point generator, modulate and modify with nodes to add fractal noise, twists or custom expressions, and then render with the Point Render node using a camera. But it’s the layering of these that give you the beautiful complexity of the imagery. Because you can use cameras, the points live within the 3D space of the shot — so it tracks with all your other elements. In addition, the render supports motion blur and depth of field.

Point Render uses only Nuke native nodes, so it will keep working as Nuke gets upgrades. What’s even cooler is that the nodes are open source. The BlinkScript in the nodes is accessible, so you can poke around under the hood to find out how it works. And you can even customize the code for your own purposes.

To summarize, it’s powerful, fast and at $157, it’s well worth the price. Not only you

can have it in your toolkit, it will also support the talented folks who are out there making cool tools for you.

Website: higx.net/point_render Price: $157

Adobe Creative Cloud 2023

Adobe recently announced its plans for Creative Cloud for the fall, which should be released out in the world by the time this article hits the newsstands. This next generation CC features 18 upgraded desktop applications, including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, InCopy, Animate, XD, Dreamweaver, Premiere Rush, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, Character Animator, Media Encoder, Prelude, Bridge, Camera Raw, Lightroom and Lightroom Classic.

There are a lot of advances in most of the apps, but there is also a bunch of crosspollination. So for this article, I’m going to focus on Premiere Pro, because it reaches into the new tools for After Effects and Audition as well. There aren’t any huge updates to the actual “editing” part of Premiere Pro, but there are some sweet additions to the supplemental things that make our projects look and sound good.

A primary upgrade is a set of tools that will change your whole color workflow. It’s called Selective Color Grading. Those familiar with Nuke will know this as a HueShift. Basically, it lays out your color wheel into a horizontal

line. You then add control points to isolate a specific hue you want to modify or select. The resulting curve can be as soft or hard as you wish depending on how specific the hue is you wish to isolate. This can be used to adjust luma or shift hue or what I have been using for quite a bit — despilling (which allows you to specify a color from the image and separate from the alpha bias). It is extremely powerful, and once you wrap your head around it, there won’t be a day that goes by in which you won’t crack it open.

After Effects has more powerful motion graphics templates that can be ported over to Premiere Pro. This means the motion graphics artist can design the titles or branding for a spot or TV show — and then send it over to the editor. Parameters can be promoted to only reveal the components that will be changing. This way, editors can update credits, lowerthirds text, etc., but use the base animation from the artist. This is a huge timesaver to allow the text change to happen in editorial — keeping the artist free to make new, super cool graphics for the next show.

As an extension of the motion graphics tool, Premiere Pro can accept data from a CSV spreadsheet, and then utilize the data therein to automagically create infographics. This also saves a lot of time, allowing the data to drive the animation.

But my absolute favorite new tools lie in the audio. Using Sensei, Adobe’s AI/machine learning algorithms, Premiere Pro and Audition have intelligent denoising and dereverbing tools. Analysis of your audio (and presumably numerous other audio samples) allows the Sensei to learn what is sound and what is undesirable noise. It can then separate them out. The same holds for the de-reverb. After learning, Sensei detects the additional echoes (the reverberation) of the primary sound and filters them out. I can think of at least 20 things that I need this for, and that’s just off the top of my head!

Website: adobe.com/creativecloud

Price: All Apps, $82.49/mo. (monthly), $54.99/mo. (yearly), $599.88/yr. (yearly upfront); Premier Pro, $20.99/mo.

Adobe Characterizer

Afew months ago, Characterizer was also announced as part of the software company’s Character Animator CC release. In its first inception, I wasn’t bowled over by Character Animator. I felt it was an easy way to make things move, which basically opened up the ability to people who had no experience doing it in the first place. This leads to horrible animation which results in judgments against the tools rather than the talent — from people like me, for instance. However, I also knew that when it got into the hands of capable animators, we would start to see some ingenious stuff. The animated segments we saw on The Colbert Show and Tooning Out the News are perfect examples of how the technology can be used in live situations.

Feedback from these actual production situations helps Adobe focus on further development of their tools. Character Animator seemed to have started as a quaint idea rather than a fully-formed development plan, but it is driven by the feedback of the users to create a better product. This is a textbook example of how app development should work: Release frequently, fail quickly, pivot and rerelease.

I see this in Characterizer as well, which seems to have started as a seed of an idea that doesn’t know the strength of its own potential. Characterizer is able to take samples of your face from your webcam, analyze the poses and, via Sensei, learns what pieces of your face are what. You can then apply different artistic styles to your visage. This is not limited to “pencil sketch” or “charcoal” or “oil painting” — you can use photos of objects that have a color palette that will be transferred to you. However, the process of creation doesn’t entirely need to be automated. There are tools to define areas of the sample image to apply to your features.

Once you have something you like, the result can be tied into Character Animator rigs which are able to be driven by your own

performance through your webcam or other cameras. Now you have a live performance that could be a pen and ink drawing ... or a wall of bricks. It’s absolutely fascinating.

The results currently range from artsy to terrifying, but not necessarily artistic. This is because we are very early in the evolution of Characterizer. Sensei is learning and continues to learn how people’s faces work and how to apply the looks to them. The more it learns, the more refined the results will become. And the more refined the results, the more users will be attracted to using it. That, of course, means Sensei will gain even better knowledge and artistic expertise. Some have predicted major advances to happen with Characterizer in the next five years. I have a feeling those people are underestimating the power of machine learning.

Website: adobe.com

Price: Included in Adobe CC suite, see above.

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

A DAY IN THE LIFE

8 a.m. After a couple of decades of my career, deciding what to wear in the morning is still the most time consuming-thing in the world. Why is that? I always end up wearing something black anyways!

1 4

10 a.m. Fun time begins at work. Working with my EP Peter Hastings, CG producer Dan Godinez and the hardworking and talented crew of Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight is so much fun. We turn everything into magic here: Skadoosh!

Noon: Here’s my semi-balanced lunch! Vegetables are overrated anyway, right? Just please don’t tell my kids I said that!

3 11 a.m. Whaaaat? I just get to sit and paint!? I love this! 5 6

1:30 p.m. Our incredible lighting lead Kim and I finish reviewing footage. Teamworks, DreamWorks! 2:30 p.m. Our superstar production manager Monica keeps us all on the right track.

3 p.m. Production coordinators Jada and Carolyn take a stroll around the campus with me. We all need a break!

7:30 p.m. So that was another good day at work. Now it’s time to relax with my family! 8

This month, we were invited to share a day with the amazing Ellen Jin, the talented art director of DreamWorks’ animated series Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight, which begins its second season this month on Netflix.