ACTION MAGAZINE | 1 THE BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY & ART OF ANIMATION AND VFX FLY ME TO THE MOON Your 2022 Animation & VFX Academy Awards Ballot! A Criminally Fun Caper PIXAR Giant Red Panda Express over- sized animals in Turning Red Little Kids, Big Visuals The Big Award Season Contenders Original short Blush
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4 | ACTION MAGAZINE CONTENT Raya and The Last Dragon and Luca 2-3 Content Page 4 Editor Page 5 Giant Red Panda Express 6-7 Fly Me to the Moon (After Recess) 8-9 Your 2022 Animation & VFX Academy Awards Ballot! 10-11 Soul nad The Lion King 12-13 Little Kids, Big Visuals 14-15 A Criminally Fun Cape 16 -17 The Big Award Season Contenders 18-19 Klaus and Tom & Jerry 20-21 CLOSE ENCOUNTER 22-23
ACTION MAGAZINE | 5 JUANITA CRUZ This magazine is Called “ACTION” a motion picture that is made from a series of drawings, computer graphics, or photographs of inanimate objects Birth 03.04.2000 JUANITA CRUZ 23 years old, has graduated diploma in digital graphics from the University Selangor, and is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in digital graphic design. Good at drawing or illustration and also good at using many Adobe software programmes, including Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, etc.
6 | ACTION MAGAZINE Giant Red Panda Express Director Domee Shi and her team explore the world of female puberty, tween friendships and oversized animals in Turning Red. By Karen Idelson ‘It felt so necessary to tell this story about an adolescent girl and these super personal, cringy and embarrassing experiences that she goes through.’ — Director Domee Shi — Pixar’s 25th animated feature Turning Red dares to go where few animated films have ever gone — the terrifying world of tween girl puberty, boy bands and confusing middle school dynamics. It also explores what might happen if you just happened to turn into a giant red panda. Led by an all-female team, the beautifully designed and animated feature is directed by Domee Shi, who won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature for her short Bao in 2019. The first-time feature director pulled from her own childhood to create the story of Mei Lee (played by Rosalie Chiang), a 13-year-old girl who struggles between following her mother’s (Sandra Oh) rules and growing into her own person. “Growing up as an only child, I felt like I bonded a lot closer with my friend groups through each stage of my life,” Shi says. “They were kind of like my support system and my second family and with the movie we really wanted to just celebrate female friendship. This was an important part of our lives for many girls like me. A lot of these friends were my cheerleaders. They accepted me no matter what — with all of my weird, pervy drawings and obsessions with boys. They were always there for me.” Female Support Shi says she wanted the same kind of warmth and support for the film’s main character. “It was also important for us to make sure that her friends all felt like individual girls and that they weren’t just all kind of cut from the same cloth,” she adds. “They needed to have their own identities and personalities, just to show how diverse and different teen girls can be as well.” Producer Lindsay Collins also felt that Mei Lee’s circle of friends were an important component of the story. “I think a lot of times, unfortunately, girl friendships are portrayed like ‘mean girls’ relationships,” says Collins, whose credits include WALLE and Finding Dory. “It was really important early on to establish that’s not how we’re representing this group of girls. . I think at the end of the day, as a parent, all you’re wishing for your kids is that they have friends around them that make them feel comfortable.”
ACTION MAGAZINE | 7 Panda Poof Scene Progression: 1. Storyboard by Kevin O’Brien captures the key beats (top left). 2. Concept art by Carlos Felipe Leon explores character scale and color (bottom left). 3. Lead layout artist Derek Williams chooses a wide-angle 18mm lens for the scene (top right). 4. The animation team captures Red Panda Mei’s frustration and emphasizes her scale in the classroom. rassing experiences that she goes through. I felt throughout the production, it was almost comforting to know that I had a shorthand for describing all of these embarrassing experiences and that I didn’t have to sit down and explain to the leadership, ‘Okay, a girl when a girl goes through a period, she’s going through this experience in this way. Everybody on the leadership team could share stories like, ‘Oh, man — this embarrassing thing happened to me this one time.’ We were all sharing our experiences and it just always felt like we were never short on juicy material to put in the movie, which is great.”
8 | ACTION MAGAZINE Richard Linklater’s Apollo 10 : A Space Age Childhood blends rotoscopy, 2D and CG animation in service of a nostalgic tale. By Michael Mallory Tired of all those conspiracy theories claiming that the moon landing in1969 was faked; that it was simply a top-secret film production directed by Stanley Kubrick? If so, Oscar-winning filmmaker Richard Linklater has the perfect response: The Apollo lunar mission was indeed real it’s just that the first person to leave footprints on the Moon wasn’t Neil Armstrong. Instead, it was an ordinary Texas fourth-grader named Stanexcitement for the lunar program. Then one day, Stan’s ordinstead of any of the men who are already in the astronaut training program? After spending untold billions, the agency accidentally made the lunar lander too small for a grown-up to fit in.Known for both liveaction films (School of Rock, Boyhood) and adultoriented animated pictures (Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly), Linklater has crafted his latest movie, Apollo 10: A Space Age Childhood, in his usual look, in which the character animation is drawn from live-action footage. He maintains, however, that this film is the most traditionally animated he’s ever done. “This one isn’t really a rotoscope movie,” says Linklater, who wrote, produced and directed the film. “It’s a 2D movie with elements of 3D. We called it 2.5D.” Still, a rotoscope process was used for the characters, if nothing else Set in 1969, Apollo 10 focuses on the life of an average 10-year-old boy, who hangs with his friends, plays baseball and gets reprimanded by teachers for embellishing reality while speaking before his class. His family lives in Houston, which is blanketed with excitement for the lunar program. Then one day, Stan’s ordinary existence is interrupted by a couple of men in black who are scouting the perfect kid to send to the Moon. Why would NASA need to tap a young boy for the honor instead of any of the men who are already in the astronaut training program? After spending untold billions, the agency accidentally made the lunar lander too small for a grown-up to fit in. Lunar Fantasy “They totally screwed up,” Linklater laughs. “They made one mistake. A kid’s logic gets you there pretty quickly without a whole lot of logic.” The idea for such an enormous fubar came from Linklater’s own experience growing up in the Houston area. “It was an actual fantasy I had as a second-grader. r. I was the kid who was always asking, ‘What if?’ and I remember asking, ‘What if they build the thing too small?’ My dad went with it.” FLY ME TO THE MOON ( AFTER RECESS)!
ACTION MAGAZINE | 9 Zero Gravity Days: Apollo 10 follows the adventures of a young boy from Texas (voiced by Josh Wiggins) who dreams of flying to the Moon in the summer of 1969. Zachary Levi, Jack Black and Glen Powell supply additional voices. watching the nightly news reports on what was happening in Vietnam.The live action was shot on a greenscreen stage at the Austin-based animation house Minnow Mountain using mostly local talent, including Milo Coy in the role of Stan. “He was not a professional actor cute kid,” Linklater says of Coy, whose soulful demeanor registers perfectly through the animation. “He was a real kid who wasn’t intimidated by much. I wanted kids who were just goofing around.” Both Linklater and producer Tommy Pallotta emphasize that unlike just about every other ani mated film, regardless of technique, Apollo 10 was not pre-designed. “We approached this in a very organic way,” states Pallotta, who worked with Linklater on his two previous animated films, co-directed the 2014 feature Last Hijack and is an exec producer on Prime Video’s acclaimed animated series Undone. “[Usually] the pipeline, the design and everything is figured out before you start an animated film, but this was not done that way. We actually built it around the performances. That gave Rick the ability to be spontaneous on set.” Adds Linklater, “We could pre-viz it, but it wasn’t really pre-designed. We created a virtual environment for the actors to exist in, and then we designed that environment as we went. Every shot was a special effect.” Once the performances were captured and edited, Minnow Mountain animators crafted the black-and-white line animation overtop using TVPaint. Then the footage was sent to Submarine in Amsterdam for all other aspects of production: ink-and-paint, shading, backgrounds, special effects, compositing and rendering. Patchwork of Memories Both Linklater and Pallotta had a particular metaphor in mind while creating the film. “We had what we called a scrapbook approach to the animation,” Pallotta says. “We had a lot of reference material and the idea was that we were going to build it all together, but we noticed scrapbook nature of our references with different aspect ratios and different resolutions. We started talking about how that was really nice in terms of how our memory works.” Most noticeably, the archival footage that includes news clips of combat in Vietnam and Walter Cronkite’s actual newscast of the real Apollo 11 landing was rendered in a more painterly look than the main action. “There’s a pragmatic side to that, too,” Linklater notes. “A lot of that newsreel footage doesn’t have a really good line. It’s kind of blurry.” Says Pallotta: “It gave a lot more freedom in terms of how the artist approached it. When you go into social unrest, it’s dark and monochromatic, while the war part of it has a lot of faded green. We were trying to break ‘We could pre-viz it, but it wasn’t really pre-designed. We created a virtual environment for the actors to exist in, and then we designed that environment as we went.’ — Director Richard Linklater —
10 | ACTION MAGAZINE Your 2022 Animation & VFX Academy Awards Ballot! A big congratulations to all of this year’s Oscar nominees. We have all the animation & VFX-related categories compiled on one page for your at-home-viewing-and-guessing pleasure. No matter who takes home the golden statuette, they areall our winners in our book! Best Animated Feature Encanto Directors: Byron Howard, Jared Bush Released by: Walt Disney Pictures Production Studio: Walt Disney Animation Studios Synopsis: A young woman, the only one in her family who does not possess a super-power, must find her natural strength when the magic of her enchanted Colombian village is threatened. Release Date: November 24 Flee Director: Jonas Poher Rasmussen Released by: NEON (U.S.) Production Studios: Final Cut for Real, Sun Creature, Vivement Lundi!, Mostfilm, Mer Film, VICE Studios, Left Handed Films Synopsis: An Afghani refugee in Denmark discloses a 20-year-old secret upon the eve of his marriage to another man, which will either ruin or save his life. Release Date: January 28 (Sundance), December 3 (U.S.) LUCA Director: Enrico Casarosa Released by: Walt Disney Pictures Production Studio: Pixar Animation Studios Synopsis: Two adventurous young sea monsters dare to taste the world above ground, while struggling to hide their true selves. Release Date: June 18 (Disney+) . Raya and the Last Dragon Directors: Don Hall, Carlos López Estrada Released by: Walt Disney Pictures Production Studio: Walt Disney Animation Studios Synopsis: A return attack by deadly creatures called Druun forces a young human warrior to locate the last protective dragon and learn to trust it, in order to save her world again. Release Date: March 5
ACTION MAGAZINE | 11 BEST VISUAL EFFECTS Dune Director: Jonas Poher Rasmussen Released by: NEON (U.S.) Production Studios: Final Cut for Real, Sun Creature, Vivement Lundi!, Mostfilm, Mer Film, VICE Studios, Left Handed Films Synopsis: An Afghani refugee in Denmark discloses a 20-year-old secret upon the eve of his marriage to another man, which will either ruin or save his life. Release Date: January 28 (Sundance), December 3 (U.S.) Spider-Man: No Way Home Director: Enrico Casarosa Released by: Walt Disney Pictures Production Studio: Pixar Animation Studios Synopsis: Two adventurous young sea monsters dare to taste the world above ground, while struggling to hide their true selves. Release Date: June 18 (Disney+) . Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings Directors: Don Hall, Carlos López Estrada Released by: Walt Disney Pictures Production Studio: Walt Disney Animation Studios Synopsis: A return attack by deadly creatures called Druun forces a young human warrior to locate the last protective dragon and learn to trust it, in order to save her world again. Release Date: March 5
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14 | ACTION MAGAZINE Little Kids, Big Visuals Three of the key creatives behind the new series Big Nate give us the scoop on the innovative new show. By Ramin Zahed I t’s hard to believe that it’s been over 31 years since cartoonist and author Lincoln Peirce introduced the world to his charming sixth grader Big Nate and his best friends in his popular comic strip, which went on to inspire a series of successful books. This year, the precocious 11-year old and his friends star in their own CG-animated series, which premiered on Paramount+ in February. The show, which features the voices of Ben Giroux, Dove Cameron, Rob Delaney, Bryce Charles, Arnie Pantoja and Kevin Michael Richardson, among others, is executive produced by Mitch Watson (All Hail King Julien) and John Cohen (The Angry Birds Movie) and produced by Amy McKenna (Beware the Batman), with Peirce serving as consultant throughout development and productio I have been a huge fan of Lincoln’s work for years, and when we started to talk about bringing Big Nate to animation, it was clear that it was very important for him for the property to have a great animated look,” says Cohen. “Many people had approached him to develop it into a liveaction property, but he kept saying no, because these characters were designed for comic strip. of people to collaborate with on this show.” I mean, you wouldn’t want to make Peanuts into a liveaction show. These characters don’t age. Nate’s always in sixth grade and we wanted to honor and respect that and stay true to that cartoon physicality. So, once we talked to Nickelodeon and Paramount president Ramsey Naito and some of our other friends at Nick about three years ago, they introduced me to Mitch. We knew we had the perfect home and group of people to collaborate with on this show.” Watson says the show had a quick development period. “I was hired in October of 2019, and the show was greenlit by that December,” he notes. “We had our supervising director Jim Mortensen and art director Dave Skelly, and a couple of other key people. Then, we had one day of casting, and then everything got shut down because of the pandemic. Overall, we have about 70 people here in our group at Nickelodeon, and then there’s the production team at Xentrix Studios in India.” The visual look of the show was conceived by Watson in partnership with David Skelly “Our show looks unlike anything I’ve seen before in an animated series,” says Cohen. “He had the idea piring comic-strip artist in middle school, just like Nate. I had my own comic strip published in my local paper in Michigan, so it was very easy for me to invest myself in this character and this subject!” Watson adds, “I met very few people in person. Everything has been done remotely. I mean, animation is an extremely collaborative process, so it has definitely been an interesting experience! We also have the amazing Sam Koji Hale, who is our associate art director. I call him our Terry Gilliam, because he can turn things around two weeks later. He has a stop-motion background, so he shoots a lot of the stuff in his own studio and then animates it all in After Effects.”
ACTION MAGAZINE | 15 ‘The show plays just as well to me as it does to my eight-year-old and four-year-old kids. I hope everyone enjoys it and that they understand that this was made with a lot of love and passion.’ — Exec producer John Cohen ‘I really wanted to reflect Lincoln Peirce’s original style as well as evoking a certain sense of nostalgiawhich I associate with the Big Nate books.’ — Exec producer Mitch Watson Nostalgic Fun For that same reason, viewers will be hard pressed to find shots of the classrooms or the school that look pristine and brightly lit. As Watson recalls, “They would show me a scene and I would ask them to make it a little bit more dirty, so we’d bust out the wall or put some water stains on the ceiling. We wanted to show a typical public school. The master shot of the public school is this beautiful brick building, but then as the years go on, it gets crappier and crappier. Just like in real life.” Cohen, Watson and Skelly are proud of the fact that they’ve created a show that looks great and is also quite entertaining. “I find the show to be genuinely funny,” says Cohen. “The show plays just as well to me as it does to my eight-year-old and four-year-old kids. They laugh constantly through all the episodes, so I hope everyone enjoys it and that they understand that this was made with a lot of love and passion by a group of people working remotely from their homes over the past two years!” “That’s right!” says Watson. “That’s right!” says Watson. “We were all at home and this show kept us from losing our minds. We really wanted to make a very funny show that also features lots of music and wellknown songs from the ’80s and ’90s. One of the best compliments we got was from Dove Cameron, who plays Ellen on Big Nate. She said our show reminded her of the cartoons she used to watch on Nickelodeon years ago. I mean, some of those shows were just crazy. We want to make kids laugh and hope that adults will want to watch them and that nostalgic element will resonate with them. I have kids myself and watching some cartoons with them makes me want to jab my eyes out. I’m always attempting to make shows that parents will also want to watch with their kids. I think with Big Nate there’s plenty for everybody that they are going to really enjoy watching it together.”
16 | ACTION MAGAZINE A Criminally Fun Caper How the creative team behind DreamWorks entertaining The Bad Guys created a zippy new visual style for the studio’s 42nd feature. By Ramin Zahed I f the new DreamWorks feature The Bad Guys awakens fond memories of the best heist movies in the history of cinema, the film’s director Pierre Perifel, screenwriter Etan Coen (Tropic Thunder, Idiocracy, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa) and producers Damon Ross and Rebecca Huntley will be very pleased. Not only does the charming new caper takes audiences on a wild ride full of unexpected twists and turns, it also works as a cool homage to some very grown-up movies — including Heat, Oceans 11, Snatch and Pulp Fiction. DreamWorks’ 42nd movie follows the adventures of five infamous criminals Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Mr. Snake (Marc Maro), Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos) and Ms. Tarantula (Awkwafina) who set out to pretend that they have given up their bad, bad ways and become model citizens, with some assistance from Professor Marmalade, a clever guinea pig voiced by Richard Aoyade. News reporter Tiffany Fluffit (Lilly Singh), governor Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz) and put-upon police chief Misty Luggins (Alex Borstein) round out the film’s zany gins (Alex Borstein) round out the film’s zany cast of players. Planning a Perfect Heist Perifel, the film’s French director who is best known for his acclaimed shorts Bilby and Le Building, says he was instantly drawn to the project when he came across the books by Aaron Blabey. “It was an immediate attraction for me,” he says. “The film has a great concept and it mixed two of my favorite things: heist movies and anthropomorphized animals. Damon and I talked about making an Oceans 11-type movie for the whole family, so I helped create a trailer using storyboards Our production designer Luc Desmachelier was also already attached. After we pitched it to Margie Cohn and Kristin Lowe [DreamWorks’ president and CCO, they really liked it and greenlit it as the first original feature at the studio under their leadership.”
ACTION MAGAZINE | 17 Tarantino,” he notes. “In terms of the overall look, we were longing for something different from what had become customary in CG animated films. When Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse came out, we all felt that someone was finally doing something to change the status quo, what we had seen coming out of the big U.S. studios for many years. I think that opened the door for us. That’s how we were able to pitch something that was more illustrative and stylized and not going back to the same old character designs that we have seen before.” Achieving that desired 2D look was not an easy task. “All the big studios are equipped with proprietary rendering tools and ray tracing,which forces the light to react in a way that mimics the physical world accurately,” he explains. “We are also used to these surfacing and texturing tools that give us very realistic images. We had to revert back to. He adds he is especially proud of the movie’s dynamic opening scene, which really grabs the audience and draws them into the world of these lovable criminals. “We see the two characters at the diner, and the bank heist and chase that follows turned out exactly as what Perifel had in mind,” says Desmarchelier. “Even though we took some great chances with some of the visuals because the look is really pushed, we were able to do this long single shot, which is quite unusual in the beginning of an animated movie. We were able to incorporate a lot of things we love so much in grown-up movies, but we turned those things around and used them in a goofy, silly comedy. It was a beautiful way of bringing in all the influences and things that we love in cinema.”
18 | ACTION MAGAZINE The Big Award Season Contenders Your guide to the wide list of 2021 animated movies that will be vying for the Oscars, the Annies and other year-end prizes! By Michael Mallory Vivo Director: Kirk DeMicco Released by: Netflix Production Studio: Sony Pictures Animation Voice Cast: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Zoe Saldana, Juan de Marcos González, Gloria Estefan, Brian Tyree Henry, NIcole ByerRotten Tomatoes Score: 87% Synopsis: A musician and his pet kinkajou make beautiful music together, even after the musician’s death a tragedy that forces the honey bear to carry a message from his friend to the man’s long-lost love. ReleaseDate:July30 (limited);August 6 (Netflix) Director Talk: “We wanted Vivo to have all of those strong, beautiful qualities; but, at the same time, it’s a comedy. We wanted to put him up a tree and throw rocks at him.” Kirk DeMicco The Word: “A warm, colorful, family-friendly tribute to all things Cuban.” Nicholas Barber, BBC.com Belle (a.k.a. Belle: The Dragon and the Freckled Princess) Director: Mamoru Hosoda Released by: GKIDS Production Studio: Studio Chizu Voice Cast: Kaho Nakamura, Takeru Satoh, Kji Yakusho Synopsis: A teenager divides her time between the real world and a virtual world called “U” in which she is a pop music icon. Release Date: July 15 (Cannes), July 16 (Japan), October 23 (L.A.) Director Talk: “My daughter is five years old. I thought a lot about her future while making this film.I imagined what it would be like when my daughter and her generation, who were born with the internet, are grown up.” Mamoru Hosoda Nomination Chances: Possible, given Hosada’s name recognition among Academy voters and his previous work
ACTION MAGAZINE | 19 The Boss Baby: Family Business Director: Tom McGrath Released by: Universal Pictures Production Studio: DreamWorks Animation Voice Cast: Alec Baldwin, James Marsden, Amy Sedaris Rotten Tomatoes Score: 48% Synopsis: Original Boss Baby Ted and his older brother Tim have grown up and apart, and only the appearance of a new Boss Baby can reunite the family and launch a new business. Release Date: July 2 Director Talk: “Characters that get along aren’t very interesting characters. The Boss Baby: Family Businesswent to the truth of what it can be like with our brothers and sisters in a family. It’s fun to take that truth and caricature it.” — Tom McGrat Ron’s Gone Wrong Directors: J.P. Vine, Sarah Smith; co-director Octavio E. Rodriguez Released by: 20th Century Studios Production Studios: 20th Century Animation, Locksmith Animation Voice Cast: Zach Galifianakis, Jack Dylan Grazer, Olivia Colman Rotten Tomatoes Score: 80% Synopsis: An awkward boy in the near future forges a friendship with his equally maladroit B-Bot. Release Date: October 22 (U.S.) Director Talk: “It couldn’t be timelier to be telling the story of the joys of ‘analog,’ real world friendship in a world dominated by online relationships.” Sarah Smith The Word: “What the animated feature lacks in daring imagination, it makes up for with endearing good humor, thoughtful cultural critique and one heck of a cute robot.” Angie Han, Hollywood The Summit of the Gods Director: Patrick Imbert Released by: Netflix Production Studios: Folivari, Mélusine Productions Voice Cast: Lazare Herson-Macarel, Eric Herson-Macarel Synopsis: Adapted from Jiro Tanaguchi’s manga, a Japanese reporter and a mysterious mountaineer use the recovered camera of legendary Mt. Everest climber George Mallory to trace his steps. Release Date: November 24 (limited U.S. & U.K.), November 30 (worldwide on Netflix) Director Talk: “It’s the universal dimension of why we do something obsessively that interested me. I’m a cartoon ist. I just draw, because that’s the way it is. In fact, I can’t live without drawing. And so I drew this parallel with mountaineering.” Nomination Chances: The dramatic scale, nail-biting tension, beautiful visuals and the pedigree of the director and producer of the feature should make its ascent to the top an easy goal to achieve
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22 | ACTION MAGAZINE CLOSE ENCOUNTER How a personal tragedy inspired Joe Mateo to create his beautiful Skydance Animation/Apple Original short Blush. When Joe Mateo’s beautifully crafted Blush premiered at Annecy this past June, audiences were moved by its lovely visuals and heartfelt storyline. Billed as the inaugural short by Skydance Animation and Apple Original Films, the short centers on an astronaut who crash lands on a desolate dwarf planet, but finds his life saved and forever changed by an ethereal visitor.Mateo is an Emmy-winning writer and story artist (Prep & Landing) and a longtime animation veteran at Disney and Pixar, having worked on features such as Pocahontas, Mulan, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Tarzan, The Emperor’s New Groove and Treasure Planet. In addition to co-writing Meet the Robinsons (and voicing Tiny the T-Rex), Mateo served as story artist on such hits as Bolt, Tangled, Zootopia,Wreck-It Ralph and Raya and the Last Dragon, and head of story on Big Hero 6. Mateo talked to us earlier this year about his labor of love: Animag: Congratulations on all the accolades your short has received so far. Can you tell us a little bit about the origins and inspirations for Blush? Joe Mateo: When I lost my wife about four years ago, I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know what a panic attack was, and it was the first time I had it. Right after that, I felt like I wasn’t able to breathe. I had a hard time going back to work. I was at Disney at the time, and everyone was very supportive. But drawing and animation has always been my outlet. So I thought, why not channel all of this grief and experience to tell this story? That’s how it all came about. . With my kids, being the new air that I breathe, I thought I should share my source of healing and hope with the world. ‘We knew when we started the project what our message was going to be, but for me, I didn’t expect the healing to happen to me in the process of making it.’ — Director Joe Mate— Did the short start at Disney or was Skydance Animation involved from the beginning? It wasn’t supposed to be a Disney project. When I started toying with the idea of the short, I started thinking about John Lasseter, with whom I had worked with in the past. He had started his new position at Skydance at that time. He is so good at staying with the filmmaker’s ideas and is very supportive of the true story that the filmmaker wants to tell
ACTION MAGAZINE | 23 The design of the planet and the overall visuals of the film are quite striking. Can you tell us a little bit about them? So, I designed the characters and I followed my own personal style, how I always do storyboards. I am really comfortable working in that style, and it fit with the tiny planet. I didn’t plan to design it, but John really liked how I did the storyboards and decided to go with it. For the look of the world, I had a lot of help from my production designer Noëlle Triaureau and my art director Julian Romero Muñoz. One thing that stands out: When we startedproduction, we designed the planet I had a rough drawing, and then Noëlle did thispainting that served as a springboard that really got everything going.Another standout part was the design of the tree and how it grew on theplanet. I know it had to be special, but the way I storyboarded it, it was just a basic mango tree growing. But Julian, our art director, came up with this spiral movement. I saw it and I knew it was perfect. It didn’t stop with the tree: It became a unifying element throughout the short. We have the spiral image, which symbolizes life and makes total sense for us Where was the animation produced? Did you all work from home? We started production here in L.A., two months before the pandemic shutdown. It was a small group of us at Skydance L.A. We also collaborated with the Skydance Madrid studioformerly Ilion Animation Studios, which was awesome. How does it feel to finally release this very personal project into the world? It feels like you’re showing off your baby. For me, it goes back to the original intent and message of the short, which is about hope and healing, and the importance of love. We knew when we started the project what our message was going to be, but for me, I didn’t expect the healing to happen to me in the process of making it. I felt that Blush gave me and our crew who were working from home something to look forward to every morning. When did you decide to tie in your own personal photos and images during the end credits of the short? Initially, I went back and forth. I wasn’t sure because I wanted people to relate to the short and have a connection with it. When we were putting the storyboard reel together, we tried it both with and without it, and it was just so much more impactful with the addition, and the message really resonated with that autobiographical connection. It became a love letter to my wife and my family. When you were a kid growing up in the Philippines, did you always know you wanted to work in animation? I was a big fan of Saturday morning ’80s cartoons, shows like G.I. Joe, Transformers, etc. I think watching Disney movies really made me look into the art form. It was amazing to witness how things come to life. That’s how I got into it. I took two animation classes in college in the Philippines, but I majored in advertising. So, all my knowledge in animation came from those two classes. I was just fortunate that there was an opening position for cleanup in-between artists for Pocahontas at Disney and I learned so much on that job. Any final words of advice for other animation hopefuls? I never imagined being a director, but this idea for the story came along and it was so personal to me. So, my advice would be to find something that means a lot to you, and then figure out a way to tell the story in the most entertaining way. That’s it I guess!.
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