Making an Adventure Feel Epic with Multiplane Effects

If you keep a close eye on up-and-coming talent in the animation industry, there’s a good chance that you were one of the four million viewers to watch The Legend of Pipi. Inspired by a character that Julia Schoel created for a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, this SCAD thesis film follows the adventures of a scraggly little cat named Pipi who is tasked with rescuing his kingdom’s missing princess.

Toon Boom Animation interviewed The Legend of Pipi’s director, Julia Schoel, to discuss the production process behind her film.

How would you describe your role in this film?

Julia: This experience was my first time directing. My role included just about anything that needed to be done. I was the one who needed to be steering the ship and I needed to be decisive. That was a hard learning experience because I’m someone who can’t decide what to eat on any given night. Having to give people a very straight answer of what I want and sticking to that was definitely a learning experience.

My main role was holding all of us accountable for our responsibilities and our work while trying to maintain a productive environment and keeping the scope of our production in mind. I spent my day mostly expressing what I needed to get the vision I wanted. It was really just a lot of notes.

What makes the characters and monsters in the film funny?

Julia: I think what made characters funny was finding out the best ways to play up the juxtaposition between Pipi and the other characters. Anything Pipi had to face needed to be massive or intimidating, to make it funny. We tried to go ham with our designs, especially the minotaur. We wanted to make him big and muscly. There’s no way this little cat could defeat a big monster like that.

For the dragon, we wanted to introduce her as something that was big and scary and daunting, and then we wanted to reveal her as almost chicken-like. We wanted her to feel fumbly and funny so that when she and Pipi inevitably face off, they’re slipping and falling and tumbling after each other. It would make it more believable for Pipi to run off with her at the end.

How did you go about designing scenes with a multiplane camera in mind?

Julia: Whenever I wanted a shot to look more dynamic, I was like, “Oh, we’ll make it Parallax.” Toon Boom Harmony’s Z-depth function is so easy, I use it any time I can. I used to separate layers out in After Effects and do the effect manually, then someone told me you can do it in Harmony by putting all the layers in the top view, move them a little bit, and the camera does the work for you. For every single shot that needed to be dynamic or had some movement, I said: “Separate that. Put it on a Z-plane.”

In pre-production, we would do a sketch of a background and plan out how many layers of background were needed. At the very least we would do a foreground, midground, and background. Some had more, some had less.

Do you have any advice for students planning their thesis films?

Julia: The biggest thing is to stay aware of the position everybody’s in and the people around you. As a director, if you make a student film, that film is your baby. You are going to be the one pulling the most allnighters for that film. You’ll be the one stressing over it. That’s probably all you’re going to be thinking about for a year.

Sometimes, it can be unfair to put some of those expectations you have onto other people because sometimes that’s just not realistic. You need to work with what you’ve got and elevate people in the best ways you can. Find people’s strengths, and use those strengths. ◆

For more behind-the-scenes material from The Legend of Pipi, follow @pipifilm on Twitter.

Planning your thesis film? Learn about Toon Boom Animation’s student licenses at toonboom.com for Storyboard Pro and Harmony.