PR

20
TION
C
U
D
O

22

AN
IMA
TIO

NFR
O

ME
VE

RYA

NG

L E.
CO

M

1

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Contents
Wonder Media and Split Studio on My Life is Worth Living.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 2Cinzia Angelini on drawing attention to war’s impact on children with Mila .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 10
Noah Cutwright on Kickstarting The Carsons .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 13
How WIA Vancouver’s ACE program helps women Pivot into creative roles.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 16
Black Write Edition’s organizers on supporting emerging Black storytellers .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 19
Way Singleton and Breana Williams on the Black N’ Animated podcast.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 22
Freebird is a short film about living a beautiful life with Down Syndrome .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 25
Rise Up Animation on BIPOC artist mentorship.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 28
Santiago of the Seas’ Niki López on diversity in preschool animation.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 31
How Black fans and creators are redefining anime .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 34
How streaming video changed adult animation. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 39
Animating Latinx culture and characters on The Casagrandes.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 42
How animation festivals were reinvented during the COVID-19 pandemic. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 45
Why are creators and audiences drawn to short-form content?. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 49
The pandemic’s impact on working parents and caregivers in animation.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 53
Lackadaisy shows how crowdfunding opens new genres for animated film.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 56
Arthell Isom and Henry Thurlow on being moved by anime. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 59
Echo Bridge is making adult animation work in Florida .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 65
Animating HIV/AIDS in the Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow Music Video .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 68
Broken Being: Prequel is Mature, Unmistakably Vietnamese Animation.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 71
Taylor K. Shaw on Building Community with Black Women in Animation .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 74
Untangling diversity in animation with Hair Love’s Matthew A. Cherry .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 77
Found in translation: Esther Cheung’s In Passing.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 80
How Creator X is closing the opportunity gap in animation education. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 82
Five in Focus’ The Butterfly Affect puts women in key creative roles .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 85
The Bravest Knight: Daniel Errico’s quest for LGBTQ children’s media. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 91

Wonder Mediaand Split Studio on
My Life is Worth Living
by Edward Hartley

Conveying depression accurately can be a challenge, but the team at Wonder Media and theircollaborators at Split Studio capture mental health with humanity in their new series, now
available on YouTube. My Life Is Worth Living follows the story of four teenage characters, eachwith a mini-series based around a serious problem they face.
[This article is about a series which addresses
suicide, self-harm, abuse and trauma. The teambehind My Life is Worth Living compiled links
to mental health resources on the production’s
website.]The stories in these episodes may feel familiar toviewers, such as struggles in college, social media-induced anxiety, or living up to parents’ expectations.
They illustrate the important role support networks
can play through the animated cast and their stories.
While the series isn’t afraid to touch on deeper issues,
it’s never guilty of glorifying, glamorizing or trivializing these matters. Emily faces sexual abuse at homeand feels trapped in her situation before confiding ina friend’s mother. After Kyle experiences cyberbullying, he grapples with his online anxieties spilling over
into his real life sense of self. These are examples of
how the series boldly tackles serious subject matter.
Read our interview with Wonder Media‘s Amanda
Carson and Mark Baldo as well as Split Studio‘s Chico Zullo and Jonas Brandao below. The teams discuss
the series’ stylish comic book aesthetic, and how they
achieve subtlety during tender moments. They also
share insights from the complex process of recording
emotional scenes remotely with voice actors during apandemic.

2

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Jam-packed days and meticulous
planning help 16-year-old Amie stayorganized and pursue her goals. They
also help her forget that her parents
treat her like she’s made of glass, andthat her boyfriend worries about her.

Hi! Please introduce My Life isWorth Living and the meaning
behind the series.
Amanda: There were three major entities working on
this project: The Cook Center for Human Connection, who funded the series and made it happen;
Wonder Media, who I am a part of, and who Mark is
working under; and then Split Studio, which is Jonasand Chico. The Cook Center’s goal is to normalize
the conversation around mental health. They wanted
to do suicide prevention work, and their CEO Anne
Brown got them connected with us. This series is verymuch in line with a lot of work we had been doing
previously, a lot of which had to do with child abuse
prevention.
We recently did a film called Are You Okay?, which
focuses on bullying awareness and what bullying
looks like now. So we got into working on My Life Is
Worth Living, originally working with someone that
we knew, Gabe Alvarado. Gabe had an inspiringstory, where he had gone through an experience witha traumatic injury, and had started doing speaking

engagements. We had become connected with him
and his story. He had wanted to do something forkids: he wanted to do something either safety-related
or mental health-related.
We were really struck by a story that he had broughtup that happened when he was doing speaking
engagements. He had people coming up to him,
parents of teenagers, asking him, “with all you’vebeen through, how do you get through it? How doyou manage your day to day? How’s your mental
health? How can I talk to my child about what they’regoing through? Because I’m really struggling.”
This he was really struck by and we were really struckby it as well. The need for people to talk about thissort of thing, feeling inspired hearing somebody else’s
story. So that was a really compelling thing for us, andwe started developing it with him. We got crowdfunding to expand the stories and then the Cook
Center for Human Connection came in. They were really excited about the idea and allowed us to make itwhat it is, and expand one story into five main stories.
We were really lucky to be able to do that.
What we wanted to do is show a series following
five characters that are in different journeys with
their mental health, or at different risks for suicidal
thoughts and behaviors, that have been affected

3

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

by suicide differently. We wanted to show what theuniversalities are between those experiences. What is
unique about those experiences? How can we connect people and normalize talking about these things,
how can we make sure we’re not afraid to bring up
the word suicide? Making sure that we’re not afraid
to ask people if they’ve been thinking of taking theirlife or if they have experienced that.
Because this needs to be a major part of the larger
mental health conversation. It always feels like this is
the scariest subject for a lot of people to talk about.
So there was a long development process; developing
what stories we want to tell first, and deciding what
the scenarios are that we want these kids to be going
through.
To his friends and father, Dante is a
popular high school football star on track
to enroll in business school. Behind closed
doors, however, he hides a repressed
identity and a passion for art.

Characters featured in My Life Is Worth Living. Image provided by Wonder Media.

What sort of research in the fieldsof mental health and suicide went
into the project?
Amanda: We worked with experts, such as Dr. James
Mazza. He’s a professor in the School of Psychology
at University of Washington – Seattle, and is day-inday-out working out how we manage the fact thatthe second leading cause of death in the UnitedStates, for ages 10-to-24, is suicide. What do we doabout that? What tools can we give young people
and the people that love them to make sure that that
does not continue. So he was an incredible resource
for this series.
He reviewed all of the writing material that we did,
and we bounced ideas off of him. Our head writer
Jordan, and myself, worked with a team of writers;
assigning one writer for each of the arcs, so that wegot separate voices for each of them. Then making
sure that we could shake them all together, so theyfelt like the same series. It was a really difficult, butalso a really wonderful experience. It’s also given us
tools to talk about suicide, as it should. We hope thatthat is what other people are able to as well; after
watching these conversations between these characters, identifying with them for whatever reason thatthey identify with them.
Mark: What Amanda and I say is that these are notthe end of a conversation. These are the beginnings
of a conversation. We want to normalize and destigmatize the conversation about mental health andsuicide.

4

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Who is the series’ ideal target
audience?
Mark: Wonder Media reached out to me and showedme the pitch document that they had created for thisprogram. I’ve had long conversations with Amanda,
with the team, and Wonder Media. The team wanted
to reach a teenage audience, because that’s who it isfocused for. In that initial conversation, I said: “if you
want to reach that audience, that is bombarded withso much stuff, we have to make it really interestingand visually stylish.”
I was looking at the character designs for the pitch
document and I said: “you know, this would lend
itself to be almost like an animated comic book.”
So I started putting together visual pitches for the
Wonder Media team, talking about how we need toturn out the characters and make that work with thebackground. Even at the time, the stories and thescripts didn’t have a lot of motion, but it had a lot of
emotion. We’re going to try to tell a very dramaticstory, very stylishly, in a way that’s visually interesting.

What techniques helped
achieve this art style?
Mark: We wanted to bring the series to life withcomic book styling, because this is animation, andit’s a visual medium. I started drawing from anime
sources for compositions. Things that we can do inanimation that look very stylish, very cool, very dramatic, but that are not very technically difficult. There
are simple ways to tell the story, just with simple camera drifts. Touching the camera for dramatic angle,
and having someone in the extreme foreground andsomeone in the extreme backgrounds. We definitely
started talking about who we were going to do this
with, and how are we going to pull this off. Enter
Jonas and the Split Studio team in Brazil…
Jonas: Split Studio has been in the business for
12 years now. Throughout that time, we’ve always
worked with Toon Boom Harmony. I met with Toon
Boom when I was still in college; I pitched a short film
idea to François Lalonde, and he decided to give mesome trial licenses so I could work on my film. WhenI started working in animation and started my company, we had no doubts we should go with Toon Boom.
Since then, most of our productions are made in Toon
Boom Harmony.
We’ve been doing TV shows for at least seven years
now. This project specifically is something that is really important for us, because as a studio, we dedicate
ourselves to a lot of social causes. As an example, wehave a training program where a lot of people frompoorer areas of Brazil are taught for free. Included in
our productions, we have some people that workedon the show from that process. We’ve been doing fora few years now a show with public television in Brazil about sexual violence prevention for kids. The kindof work that Wonder Media does is very attractive
to us, because it’s not only an animated project. It’s
more than that.
I think through the ability of our skills, we can makethe world better. I think the things that we do have ahuge capacity of achieving the attention of millions ofpeople. So works like My Life Is Worth Living makes
us think that we are doing the right thing as people.
As our main show, we have our best artists and ourbest directors involved in My Life Is Worth Living.
[Chico] Zullo is managing all of the creative aspects
on our end. Even though we had worked with Wonder Media before, like Amanda said, on the shortfilm, My Life Is Worth Living is a serial show, andbecause of that it requires a lot of technical resources.

Referencing 3D models can help when working
with complex scenes, such as a car’s interior.

5

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

There are a lot of processes that we had to reinvent
the way of doing, because the way we used to do
things didn’t work for the show. It’s been a hugelearning process for us, and I think everybody’s very
happy at Split with the way things are going and how
we’re handling the show. Everybody that’s worked on
it is very proud of being part of it.

Can you tell us more about
what this project means to you?
Mark: I’ve been doing this for over 30 years now. I’ve
worked on huge feature films, I’ve worked on small
television commercials, and I’ve done 2D animation,
3D animation, computer generated stop-motion animation. All mediums of animation. I love animation.
When I was looking at this, and I was really thinking
about it, I was really drawing on my 30 years of experience in the industry to figure out the best way torepresent the show.
When speaking to the Wonder Media folks, they
opened up a new dimension to animation, wherethese animated stories could actually save someone’s
life. That’s something that’s completely new to me,
and I was very excited to become part of it. That was
the ultimate reason why, after speaking with Wonder
Media, I agreed to take on the project.
Because, again, I’ve been doing this for a long time,
I’ve been entertaining people for a long time, but theopportunity to use animation to actually save lives became incredibly appealing to me. I’m really very proud
to be a part of it. Never in my wildest dreams did I
ever add that to the equation of everything I’ve done.
I guess I’m just very proud to be a part of it.
Amanda: In all the work that we’ve done as Wonder
Media, leading up to this project in particular, thatis the most surprising thing. But also it’s what we’d
hoped for. We’ve been working primarily with clientsthat want to create a YouTube presence for theirprevention material. You actually get to see people’s
response and you get to see people interact witheach other. When someone says that they’re struggling, other people hop in and support them. That’s
the most amazing thing to see.
After you finish something like that, you get to give it
to other people. You actually get to see them interact
with it and engage with it. I feel like that’s a reallyunique experience. Because there is obviously a tonof life-changing art and media that exists, but you
don’t always get to really see what people think. You
don’t ever get to see exactly when they’re feelingimpacted by it. That happens alone in their homes
when they’re watching it, and you don’t know what’s
really going on there, you hope it’s helping them. But
you often don’t know.

Beat boards from My Life Is Worth Living.

The most amazing thing with a series like this is thatyou get to actually see people say those things. What
we’re always hoping for is happening: people see
it and feel relieved to see it. To feel like they either
heard something that was said in a way they haven’t
been able to, or makes them feel inspired to tell theirstory, or inspires them to have a conversation thatthey haven’t been able to have.

The writing process behind theseries sounds fascinating. Can you
tell me more?
Mark: For me, when Amanda and the team and I
were finalizing the scripts, I could absolutely relate toDante’s story. Because my father was in the military,
and I wanted to be an artist. He had a certain ideaof who I should be and the direction I should go in. I
did not want to go in that direction. So a lot of theseconversations are literally drawn from my past, frompersonal conversations. That’s why when we werewriting it with Amanda, the interactions, whatever
Dante says and the response from his father, Bruce,
have to have to sound true. Because I’ve had theseconversations, I know how they sound, and I know
how they end. So we were focusing on that a lot. Forme, the Dante story was very personal in that respect.
Amanda: Going along with that, Dante’s experience
really resonated with quite a few people on our teamduring the process of building his story. Whether it
was the team of artists, somebody on our art team,
our CEO, or Mark — it resonates. Our writer for thatarc as well, Jordan, felt he just really knew these conversations, and was very attached to them.

6

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

We’ve all found, in each of the story arcs, that there
are moments that really hit you. And you think, “I’ve
definitely felt like that.” Throughout all of them,that major thread of not wanting to burden people
around you with what you’re going through is suchan incredibly relatable feeling. Feeling like your story,or whatever you’re going through, is too much forpeople. That’s a big universal thread through all thestories that I hope will be relatable.
We also wanted to get the people that we’re representing in these first five story arcs right. Because
we know that there are as many stories as there arepeople, so these are not representative of everyone’s
story. But we wanted to make sure that we are
addressing specific groups that are at higher risk forsuicide.
Chico: I connect more with the character in the third
act: Kyle. I used to play soccer and I suffered bullying
when I was a kid. Actually, compared to Dante’s arc,
my parents were always super supportive of my career as an artist. But one thing that I really like about
the development of Bruce, is that his father is reallyreal.
He’s not the stereotype of the bad father. We had
to make some changes in the last episode. We had
to bring some sweetness during the scenes. Even
though he is very strong, he can be very rude andvery intense. We brought some sweetness every timethat we could, to make sure that when he transforms
in the last episode, it feels real. It was really touching,
the way we would deal with scripts throughout thestoryboard and the animation. There were times Markwould say, “he can’t be that rude,” and we would
tweak the storyboard.

Amanda: We didn’t want to make him seem like a
caricature of a person. We wanted to make sure that,even in the design, and the way that the animationis translated, makes sure that he looks like someone
who has his particular point of view. He has whateverhas been going on in his life that is making it impossible for him to connect with his son at that moment,
but it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t want to in someway. We were concerned with Dante’s story because
we didn’t want to get to the fourth episode and have
him make a lightbulb switch. Like, “I’m fine now.
Everything’s fine. I’m suddenly totally getting it.”Amanda: That’s funny because before the pitch evenhappened we had those initial character designs. We
were working with one writer at first just to build
the foundation of a series bible to start fleshing out
who these characters are. What are we seeing insuicide statistics, that would lend itself to who thesefirst stories should be about, and doing a lot of initialbrainstorming work there before the pitch. Then
taking those ideas, putting them into a pitch andcreating them and saying “we don’t have to do it
exactly like this, but these are the types of stories that
we could do.”We wanted to show hints of him wanting to be able
to connect, but feeling this block, feeling this wall,and not being able to break it down. And feelingisolated.

When we took it to the Cook Center, they really
loved the initial ideas. Once we had them on board,and they decided they wanted to do this with us,
that’s when we really got into the weeds with thedetails of the stories. Making sure that they really dofeel tied to what the experts are saying is needed, or
the types of stories they’ve heard, or that they’ve had
experiences with.

Chico: Yes. And to understand what’s going on withhis son. It was very successful in this way. But personally I relate more with Kyle.
Amanda: Kyle’s arc deals a lot with the presence ofsocial media in his life. Specifically, tied to what otherpeople think of him. He’s feeling very paranoid thateveryone is always watching him and always criticizing him and feeling like he’s not as cool or confident
as his father. Feeling like he just can’t quite connect
to people because he’s always bogged down withfeeling this distrust of the people around him, andthat’s only amplified by social media.
So we see him going through bullying. We see him
going through what he’s been dealing with on his
own, with his own mental health, and what he thinksof himself. Something he says specifically in his story:“it’s not just the comments calling me trash, it’s that I
believe it.” They’re all just reinforcing what he alreadybelieved about himself. That was, I think, a really relatable thing to feel: It’s not like these are new things;
they’re validating the worst things that I think about
myself, and so they must be true.
Chico: Production-wise, it was a huge learning curve,
working with Mark and Wonder Media on this, because my background is more working with comedy.
We got this really emotional script we have to workwith. It was a challenge that I really enjoyed jumping
into, because of that emotional charge. Throughout the production, in the first eight episodes, I waslearning what Amanda and especially Mark wanted
as the storytelling. I believe that, by the third arc, I already understood what we should do. So doing thosestoryboards and the animation was more enjoyable
for me. That’s why I really connect and relate with
Kyle’s arc, too. That’s another side of the story that I’dlike to put in.

7

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

We built a team of Jordan Gibler, myself and fourother writers, so that we have a separate writerfor each arc. We could have them working at thesame time and also lend their own unique voice topremises that the characters had already. They wereable to really expand upon them and bring their own
experiences in as well, and it made them that muchricher. So once we were able to get all of that script
work done with them, for the first couple arcs we didan entire round with Mark where we were bucklingin on the dialogue.
Then we would move it out to the clients and get
their thoughts on it. Even though there was a lot of
script work happening at the same time with thisrelatively small team, really mining these stories, andreally getting them to a place that felt real. It was
like we were just walking in on a conversation thatwas really happening. Once it got to the client, there
wasn’t a lot of back and forth. They’ve been wonderful people to work with, the Cook Center. I reallyenjoyed the entire writing process.
Mark: It’s not that we were hiding ourselves in thesestories, but more that we’re collaborating and adding
a layer of honesty and of personal experience tothe script. Everyone had something to add that washonest and important.
Amanda: I will say we were very lucky. I think we’vebeen lucky this entire time to have people who all
have the same goal. Most of the time, people weren’t
being a stickler on something just because they like aparticular way something is being said or if it makes
the most sense to them. Everyone has been reallyopen to collaboration and hearing other people out.
Assessing whether we should say things that way

because it doesn’t feel good or maybe a teenager
would hate hearing it, or something like that.
That was the other thing, making sure that not
only were we handling these difficult themes safely,
but also making sure that we were connecting to ateenage audience. And that we weren’t pandering tothem. Anytime we do something teen-related that’s a
big pet peeve. It’s a very grating thing when you hearsomething pander to a youth audience. They sensethat lack of authenticity right away. There was a lotof reminding each other that these are all humanbeings.
A painful secret has been haunting Emilyfor months. She’s managed to keep itfrom her mom, but now mom’s going out
of town for the weekend, and Emily willbe left alone with Brandon, her mom’s
fiancé.

When you consulted with experts,
was this to ensure the scenarios
were realistic?
Amanda: Yeah. Most importantly, we were making
sure that the way we were talking about suicide andmental health wasn’t super triggering, or inspiringcontagion, or showing suicide methodology. Because
it’s really a sensitive thing. When you need to talkabout suicidal ideation, you need to express visually
how it feels to some people, what suicidal thoughts
can feel like.
It’s a really tricky balance to be like: “okay, I needto show this without showing all of it.” Are we notreally conveying the severity of what’s going on hereor have we gone a little too far? Are we now doing
something that would inspire more suicidal behavior
or thoughts in someone?

Amanda: Yeah, and that was the thing with thescripts. I think the script may have said something as
simple as, “he considers the shard.” Which could bevague, but also not, depending on who’s reading it. I
think the client looked at that and said: “that’s a redflag.”
We want it to come across that he’s in an emotionally
volatile place, and he is dealing with these feelings ina way that’s more intense than he’s ever felt before.
You get that punching a mirror in the locker room is
not normal. It’s not the sign of someone who was doing okay. It’s a sign of someone who cannot express
themselves and is just at a boiling point — and that’s
all you need to know.

What techniques did you use toaffect the mood throughout the
scenarios?
Chico: We were really leaning on acting from thecharacters to provide emotion. Mark was really
important at this stage, because he did really great
directing. At first, when I was talking to Jonas at
the beginning and to the team, I thought that there
would be even less motion than we have in theepisodes. But it really struck us that we need moremotion than we had. Mark gave us the right points
and the words that we need to work on to convey
emotion.
This style, the designs of the characters, are more
realistic than you would usually do in cartoons. So
it’s really easy to lose the model during a scene oncethe character moves his face or his head right, left orsomething like that. Having envelope deformers and

We don’t want to do that. That’s the opposite ofwhat we want to do. So that was something wewere always checking in on, with the clinicians on theteams; trying to make sure that it never felt that way.
Or it always felt emotionally grounded and important.
Or the weight was there, but in a way that wasn’t
dangerous.
Mark: In episode two, when Dante punches themirror, for instance, and shatters the glass. There is ashot in that sequence where he looks at the shardsof glass in the sink. It was really dramatic and reallypowerful. But immediately we went: “Are we giving
someone an idea? Are we triggering something? Are
we suggesting something?” So we removed it completely. That’s kind of an illustration of telling thesevery dramatic stories, very carefully.

8

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Envelope deformers allow artists to make subtle adjustments to acharacter without redrawing a frame.

the drawings inside Harmony helps us when, even
if the animator misses the model in a scene, we cangive the scene to a very skilled animator, and they canbring it back to the model without a big retake.

With such a focus on the closeupcharacter’s emotions, it seems likethis was very important to get right?
Chico: Yeah, we had to focus on that. We started thinking about that right from the start, in thestoryboards and animatics. As I said before it took us
maybe like five six episodes to understand what weneeded emotionally to tell the story. We did it rightfrom the start, from the first episode, but it got usback and forth working on those boards. The last
episodes that we delivered to Mark and Amanda, we
had really few notes on them. It really seemed to me
that we understood what needed to be done.
Jonas: From a technical perspective, where Toon
Boom Harmony really helps, is that since we need toachieve subtlety, like Zullo mentioned, we can use
the deformers and controllers to make slight changes
when necessary. Because the characters, even though
they are stylized, they have to have a natural, realistic
performance in the acting. In that sense, the builds
we do… they’re not very complex. But they offer
enough to convey a performance that matches what
the scene needs to tell.

What’s the process of capturing
the voice actor’s expressions in the
animated character?
Mark: A lot of the time, like in feature films, they put
a lip-sync cam in the voice booth. It’s super useful toanimators to see the voice actors actually perform thewords. A lot of the time, it’s a luxury that productions
cannot afford, because you’re recording several takes
and then you’re only picking one take. So it has to be
the one take where you used the right lip-sync cam
footage. And it becomes a bit of a logistical nightmare.
I’s a luxury that a lot of productions can’t afford andcertainly we could not afford that. So I had to bringin what I saw, or what I see through my ears, andcommunicate that to Zullo and his team. And that is
how it’s done.
Amanda: Something important to say about thevoice acting and recording process was that we’re stillin a pandemic. When we were doing voice recording
for this, we were deeply in a pandemic. The entire
production has been done remotely, and specificallythis was something that I hadn’t done at this scale
remotely before. We did all of these voice sessions
completely with, I think, nearly all the actors recording from their own studios.
We worked with Verité, which is a studio based
here in L.A., who Split and Jonas have worked with
before as well, to cast the show and to set up thevoice sessions. Voice direction came from Rene andour buddy Nico, at Verité. But all of this was being
9

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

done essentially over Zoom. And so everyone was intheir own separate environment recording, and it was
really wild what we were able to do.
We never had two actors or more in the same roomat the same time. Everybody recorded on their own,
by themselves, and so that was a major part ofmaking sure that it was emotionally sound afterward.
Sometimes you would hear the radio play and think:“Wow, like, this is already very close.” And sometimes you’d think, “these two characters don’t soundlike they’re in the same conversation.” Because they
weren’t having the same conversation.
As much as we tried to channel what we had experienced in the previous session, it was sometimes justa very different style. So we would have to go into
those other voice files and make sure that the emotion of the scene was not lost and we were able togive Split something that really felt was an accurate
representation of these scenes. But it was wild how
many sessions there were and sometimes how long
there they were. They were all done remotely. It was areally special and bizarre experience, all at one time.
Amanda: Luckily we also had Zullo spending a lotof time in the sessions as well. The three of us werein nearly all of those sessions together so that Zullo
could have that initial representation of what thesevoices would be, and feel informed in that way. Manytimes it was incredibly late for him to be in thosesessions, being five hours ahead of us.
I remember one session, for Kyle’s arc specifically, wasover four hours. It was nighttime in L.A., and it was
already deep into night-time for New York, which iswhere that actor was living. Then Zullo was five hours
ahead of us. It was so bizarre, but it was great.
Mark: And it was a Friday!
Chico: By the end, the biggest challenge that we had
was to match the emotion in the voice recordings.
That’s something that I always said to the team: “Thisacting is too good for us to ruin. Let’s make it right!”
Every time that we sat with Mark, it was a great
opportunity to bring all that emotion to the scene. So
it’s been amazing to work with this team, with suchquality and a great effort from everyone.

• All episodes of My Life Is Worth Living can now be
watched on YouTube.
• Discover more meaningful work from Wonder Mediaon their website.
• Read more stories from our animation community on
Toon Boom’s blog.

Cinzia Angelini on
drawing attention
to war’s impact onchildren with Milaby Philip Mak

The vast majority of people who have grown up in the Global North have had the fortune of neverexperiencing lethal conflict. Yet for nearly 200 million children around the world, living in a deadly
war zone is their daily reality — a number that has increased by almost 20 percent in 2020, according
to Save the Children. Filmmaker Cinzia Angelini hopes that her short film, Mila, will raise awareness of
the impact that armed conflict has on innocent civilians and the next generation.
Angelini wove together her mother’s and relatives’memories of Trento, Italy during the height of WorldWar II — ultimately bridging her personal heritageand professional passion as an animator. Supported
by UNICEF Italia, the 20-minute short follows a young
girl immediately following an air raid; simultaneously
losing everything and finding hope in a complete
stranger.
350 volunteers spanning 35 countries created Milaover the course of 10 years, with additional production support by Cinesite. The multi-lingual, multicultural crew constituted the largest independent
animation studio ever.

“Artists really want to love the project they’re working on in their free time. The fact that Mila has sucha strong message against war brought people inand they fell in love. And then it spread by word of
mouth,” explains Angelini.
Seen through the eyes of a child, she hopes that using animation as a medium will make Mila’s message
about armed conflict more accessible to both younger audience members and their parents — sparking
conversations in the moment and positive changes
in the future. She wishes that viewers of all ages findinspiration in kids’ ability to cope with tragedy. And
to find hope in the face of despair and destruction.

Cinzia Angelini speaking at TEDxVail
about her experience producing Mila.
“[The story of Mila] is more of a sentiment of how
my mom felt in the middle of bombings and how she
couldn’t think or move or do anything. She was reallyterrified and frozen by fear. I always thought about
what impact war has on kids’ lives. Those momentsof tragedy, how are their lives affected by that? That’s
the core of the film,” says Angelini.
So, how did Angelini bring together hundreds ofpeople to give their time for free? According to her, itcomes down to the universal resonance and relevanceof Mila’s message.
Official trailer for Mila.

10

“I think animation is so special because it’s the first
medium we fall in love with as kids. What you experience as a child always stays with you,” says Angelini.

different people working on the short. Fortunately,
they discovered that they could take advantage oftime zones and have a pipeline that was active 24/7.

She continues, “Animation touches a special cord ineverybody’s soul. When you look at difficult things
through animation, it’s like taking it almost from a
poetic angle. Live action is great, but I think you caninterpret very difficult things through animation in avery creative and awesome way that has even moreof a chance of touching people.”

The crews were supported by Cinesite, who offeredproduction support beginning in 2019. Given the sizeand scope of Mila, they were invaluable in helping
it cross the finish line in terms of lighting, renderingand more over the course of 10 months. In doing so,they had to harmonize their independent pipeline
with Cinesite’s established one.

Music is almost as important as animation in thefilm’s educational and empathy-building powers.
Angelini chose not to have any dialogue in order tomake Mila even more universal, instead working witha full orchestra in Italy who volunteered two days toplay an original score composed by Flavio Gargano.
Incredibly, they performed and recorded everything
live with the film screening behind them.
Given that Mila was also animated entirely by volunteers, Angelini admits there were significant pipeline
challenges; particularly in the first half of the last
decade, when collaborative tools were not as widespread and working remotely was not yet the norm.
At any given time, she estimates there were 80
Production still from Mila, provided by Cinzia Angelini and Cinesite.

11

Animation from every angle | Cinzia Angelini on drawing attention to war’s impact on children with Mila

“It was incredible the amount of beauty and love that
the Cinesite artists put into Mila, while still respecting
all the work that had been done in the prior 10 years.
I think it’s amazing that we were able to bring these
two worlds together,” notes Angelini.
In exchange for all the volunteers’ hard work, Mila
offered animators not only a feature film-quality
portfolio piece but also membership into a global
family of artists who could and would support them;whether it be through letters of recommendation or
introduction to contacts. Angelini notes that many
went from students to studio leads over the course of
production.
For her, supporting and mentoring women in the industry is both personal and paramount: “A milestone
in my life happened when I was showing my portfolio
just after school to one of the Italian studios: it wassome clean-up drawings, but I always wanted to be
an animator. The person I was interviewing with said,‘You’re a woman. You can either do backgroundcolouring or clean up. Why do you want to go into
animation?’”“I wanted to be an animator. I realized very soon that
I was not going to listen to any negativity coming myway. So I was just gonna do my thing and keep myhead down, and I did. When you have something likethat happen early in your career, it can really impact
you heavily. So, I’ve always supported women in theindustry.”

Fortunately, Angelina’s story has a happy ending.
She now works at Cinesite, where nearly 45 percent
of animators on its upcoming feature are women.
Angelini is hopeful that Mila will be nominated foran Academy Award. And she hopes to someday havethe budget to turn the short into a full-length film, tocarry its message even further.
“Awards and prizes are amazing, but the mostimportant thing for me is knowing that people arewatching Mila and learning. We always said that
all the effort of the last 10 years was worth it if weeven change one future decision maker; one kid thatwatches Mila that will be a future president or diplomat. Someone that will make a difference,”says Angelini.
What advice would she give to animators hoping tofollow in her footsteps? Much like Mila, hers is a message of hope: “If you’re going to do the independentroute, you need to know that it’s very difficult. And
you have to believe in your project. If you believe in it,
everybody will believe in it. If you’re really passionate
about what you’re doing, just keep your head down
and keep going. People who really believe in you will
come your way.”

Production still from Mila, provided by Cinzia Angelini and Cinesite.

12

Animation from every angle | Cinzia Angelini on drawing attention to war’s impact on children with MilaNoah Cutwrighton Kickstarting
The Carsons
by Philip Mak

Crowdfunding is an increasingly viable avenue for animators getting their productions off theground. By pitching to the public, artists can get the financial support needed to create a short thatcan be shopped around to studios, streamers and networks. An artist in the midst of this process isaward-winning Los Angeles animator Noah Cutwright. Noah is currently using Kickstarter to crowdfund his animated pilot for The Carsons.
Launched a decade ago as a webcomic, The Carsons
is a semi-fictionalized and comedic take on Cutwright’s own life; following a young Black couple
trying to make it in Los Angeles. The satirical series
parodies the single-camera mockumentary format,
made popular by live-action sitcoms like Modern
Family, Parks and Recreation and The Office. While
those shows were overwhelmingly white and middle
class, The Carsons will ground its humour in Black
culture and the lifestyles of working-class Millennials
and Gen Zs.
Clearly many see value in Cutwright’s vision, as heraised his Kickstarter goal in just five days. The project
also attracted the support of Matthew A. Cherry andChaz Bottoms — two creators who have also seen
success on the crowdfunding platforms with their respective projects, the Academy Award-winning short
Hair Love and upcoming musical series Battu.

life. We caught up with him to learn more about the
project, his view on mockumentary sitcoms and his
tips for a successful crowdfunding campaign.

Hi Noah! We love The Carsons’mockumentary angle. What drew
you to this style?
Noah: I think the idea of doing a mockumentary
stemmed from my love of sitcoms. Growing up, myfamily loved shows like Good Times, The Fresh Princeof Bel-Air and George Lopez. I always thought thesitcom is such a fun format — it’s timeless, yet withevery decade or so, there’s a certain time capsulequality to it. Each sitcom is like the perfect encapsulation of the era it came out in.

Bottoms says: “The Carsons is Noah’s charming,
funny and fresh animated series that I’ve been a fanof for a long time. The Kickstarter is a chance for theworld to see Noah’s vision and to get to know thesehilarious characters. The talent with this project isout-of-this-world and Noah has been an incredible
director, writer, producer and collaborator.”
Cutwright has been working with Toon Boomanimation software since he was 12 years old, andwill be using Harmony to bring The Carson’s pilot to
13

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Promotional art for The Carsons provided by Noah Cutwright.

The Carsons is meant to be a love letter to the experiences of folks in my generation, and the sitcoms
we’ve found ourselves loving are ones like The Officeand Parks and Recreation. It seemed fitting that The
Carsons followed suit. Not to mention, I felt like thatwould be such a fresh take for an animated sitcom inparticular; it’s certainly not something I’ve seen.

Totally agree! How did Matthew A.
Cherry and Chaz Bottoms become
involved?
Noah: Matthew A. Cherry was one of our first backers, on day one. He was super generous by donating
and sharing on social media. It was really cool to see
someone I’ve admired for so long supporting the
project.
As for Chaz, he and I are good friends. We’ve beenworking together on projects since 2019 and I’ve
always admired his drive as an animator and person.
He’s been super helpful in terms of advice. In fact, his
advice was what gave me the final boost of confidence I needed to go forward with this Kickstarter.
He’s just an all-around talented guy, and I’ve genuinely appreciated every bit of his support and friendshipthroughout this journey.
MOVIE NIGHT, an animated short directedby Noah Cutwright and Jimmy Taylor.

14

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Speaking of your Kickstarter,
why did you decide to do a
crowdfunding campaign?
Noah: I was just really ready to see this show get
made, even if it was only one episode. When I was
writing the pilot and developing the series, it just felt
like the perfect encapsulation of what my friends
and I were experiencing and, on top of that, we all
thought it was really funny! I knew I was still very
new to this industry in many ways, but I didn’t wantto just wait for someone to tell me ‘yes’ and that it
was my turn.
I want to make the show that I’ve wanted to see.
The talent behind this series is insane! The cast, theartists — for a lot of us, it’s our opportunity to showwhat we can do. I’ve had difficulty getting the showin front of the folks I wanted to before the Kickstarter, but who knows. After all the buzz generated by it,
maybe all that’s about to change.

Clearly it’s connecting, as you’veraised your Kickstarter goal!
What tips do you have for otheranimators who also want to pursue
crowdfunding?

That’s amazing that you’re creating
the stories you want to see —especially ones that are morediverse and inclusive. Was thisimportant to you?

Noah: One of the biggest issues a lot of the character’s struggle with on this show is self-doubt, and it’s
definitely something me and many of my peers deal
with as well. What I would say to any other animators
is believe in yourself. As cliche as that may be, it’s a
lot harder than it sounds.

Noah: I think it’s just important because it’s a reflection of the world we live in. People want to see themselves in the stories told about them, and Black folks
are no exception. There’s something so gratifying
about watching or reading something and feeling likeit was written for you. You feel seen.

I used to talk myself out of doing things because I
thought I would fail, but the thing we always forgetis that we may also succeed. When you go into
something like this with all of your heart and passion,
good things will come out of it. We just have to get
out of our own way.

I know the biggest thing that drove me to want tomake this show was I wanted to see Black characters
who are just starting to ‘adult’ and struggling to try
to figure out how to navigate maturing relationships
and finding out who they are. That’s been my experience, and many folks of my generation are dealing
with that — likely while working full-time jobs thatbarely pay enough to do anything without stressing
about paying rent on time. I think having characters
you can connect to on that human level helps tomake us all feel validated and realize we’re not alone
in any of these struggles.

And after your Kickstarter, where do
you want to see The Carsons go andgrow?
Noah: I would ultimately hope to see the show
picked up to full series by a streaming service or
network, but at the end of the day I just really like to
see how folks respond to the pilot. If people respondwell, and find it as funny as we think it is, we’ll
continue to see more from the Carson family in the
future!

• Interested in backing The Carsons? The Kickstarter
campaign is running until Wednesday, December 15.
• Curious about Noah Cutwright’s work? Be sure to takea peek at his portfolio and reel.

Samples of preproduction documents sharedon The Carsons Kickstarter campaign.

15

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

How WIA Vancouver’s
ACE program helps
women Pivot intocreative roles
by Erin Hynes

According to a 2019 USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study conducted in partnership with Womenin Animation (WIA), women continue to be underrepresented in the animation industry; occupying
just 20% of creative roles in the field. While representation has certainly begun to improve in recent
decades, women are still a minority across almost every level of creative and business leadership inanimation.
WIA is a non-profit organization that promotes andsupports women working in the art, science and business of animation. WIA Vancouver’s ACE (Animation
Career EXCELerator) Program was designed specifically to help advance the careers of women in the
animation industry. The program does so by giving
women credit in the making an original short film,
TV proof-of-concept or web series pilot. The programprovides supportive mentorship and training along
the way.
The goal of the ACE program is to advance creators
who identify as women into key creative roles inanimation. According to Tini Wider — a line producer
currently enrolled in the program as Producer — theopportunity for women to develop, create, and own
a project is integral to improving representation in theindustry. “There are women in the industry now, but
it is thin at the top,” she says. “One of the current
challenges is to find ways to elevate women into
those leadership roles.”As part of ACE, Tini is working with a team of several
other women on an animated short film. Ana Gusson
directed the film, written by Robyn Campbell. All
three women applied to the program, which broughtthem together to work on the project. The film,
called Pivot, explores a defining moment in the main
character’s quest to be herself at the risk of disappointing the person she loves the most: her Mom.
To join the program, Tini, Ana, and Robyn had to apply for their positions. “To become a participant, you
explain why you are the right person for your role.
This mimics the real hiring process for a production,”says Ana. This is just one of the ways in which ACE
helps women to build the foundation for success.
By focusing on how to present yourself and yourcraft, women gain skills and confidence to apply forleadership roles.

ACE addresses this problem by giving women thefoundation they need to advance into leadershiproles. The program provides participants with theopportunity to develop, create and own original
intellectual property. Having completed the two year
program, participants develop skills to take on the
responsibilities of leadership roles.
Production still from Pivot, provided by WIA Vancouver and theparticipants of this year’s ACE cohort.

16

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Ana says she started working in animation at atime in which women began to appear more in film
schools and in the industry. “I was very lucky that myfirst job out of school was with a production whose
director was a woman,” says Ana. Prior to that, she
had worked mostly with men, who were always insenior positions. “Working with a woman director
was so important for me because it provided me withan example to look up to. I had never worked with awoman who was in a senior role. Having that experience inspired me to become a leader myself.”
Ana’s experience points to how important it is toacknowledge that simply hiring women for entry-levelroles in animation isn’t enough. To achieve genuine
parity, women need representation across the spectrum of roles from entry level to leadership; not justin animation, but across all industries
Women in leadership roles are particularly important. Studies demonstrate that people pursue goals
when they see people like themselves succeed. When
women see other women in roles, they find it easier
to imagine themselves in those roles themselves, andare therefore more likely to put themselves forward.
In addition, when they see women in leadership
positions they are more likely to speak up themselves.
Once women are well-represented in leadership,
there’s a trickle-down effect: Women tend to hire

17

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

more women. Having women in key creative roles increases opportunities for gender parity into the future.
The ACE program also helps to build the confidence of women working in animation. Robyn saysthat it has enabled her to find her individual voice.
“The mentorship I’ve received so far has been reallyencouraging,” she says. “I’ve become comfortablewriting content that is empowering and relatable forfemale-identifying and non-binary viewers in particular. This was a really important step for me in finding
my personal voice as a creator.”
Outside of the ACE program, Robyn works as a fulltime screenwriter, but worked in development prior
to that. In her 3 years in development, she saw projects pitched on a daily basis. She observed a clear gap
in animation content written for female-identifying
audiences. Robyn emphasizes that programs like ACE
are important because they not only train women,
they give them the confidence to find their voices.
And fill gaps in content.
While the ACE program gives women the foundation
to advance in their animation careers, there are some
aspects of the industry that are harder to address. For
example, Tini explains that in her years of working as
a producer, she observed how the culture in animation studios can disservice women’s advancement.

“I was attracted to animation originally because of
the industry’s amazing culture of collaboration andcamaraderie,” says Tini. “But, there are still many
unspoken expectations in the animation workplace.
Working past 5:00 pm is not uncommon, and networking events are often held in the evening. Since
women typically hold the bulk of family and caregiving responsibilities, this means they often miss out on
opportunities that will advance their career.”
Tini, Ana, and Robyn all agree that this issue has
improved in the last year; in part because of the shift
toward remote work. “Studios are now recognizingthat working from home doesn’t have to impact productivity or workflow,” Tini explains, “Many studios
are adopting flexible work structures; this helps tobalance work and life for women, or anyone, who
has responsibilities at home.” The pandemic also
removed some pressures of in-person networking.
Rather than heading to a social event after work,
networking is taking place in digital spaces, which
can be more accessible for caretakers.
The animation industry also continues to lack equity
for women of color. In the last 12 years, 37% of
producers of animated movies were women, but only
5% were women of color. These figures demonstrate that while there have been gains for women inanimation, there is still work to be done for womenof color.

The current iteration of the ACE program will wrap in
2021; a new cohort of women will join the programin 2022. With their time in ACE coming to a close,
Tini, Ana, and Robyn appreciate their experiences in
the program. Aside from professional development,
they are grateful for the connections they’ve madewith like-minded women. “Everyone on the projectis appreciative of each other, and supportive,” says
Tini. “This has been the most ideal production experience.” Tini hopes that in the future, collaborative
experiences like this become the norm.
For Robyn, a highlight of the program has beenlearning how relatable her film has been for others.
“Many people have come to me sharing their personal stories, explaining how they relate to the story,”
she says. She found herself having deep and personal
conversations with people about the issues that thefilm addresses. “It’s as though the story has given
people permission to talk about something that they
may not have been comfortable discussing before.”
Production still from Pivot, provided by WIA Vancouver and the participants of this year’s ACE cohort.
While the impact that their participation in ACE will
have on their careers is impossible to predict, Tini,
Ana, and Robyn are encouraged by the doors they
opened. Tini hopes to continue making shorts andworking on projects in which she can contributecreative input. Ana’s goal is to take on more directingroles, and Robyn will continue writing scripts. They
all already have their next projects in mind, but first,
laughs Ana, “I’ll take a little break!”• Curious about Pivot? The short premiered at Spark
Animation 2021 on October 28.
• Toon Boom Animation is a proud supporter of WIA
and WIA Vancouver.

Production still from Pivot, provided by WIA Vancouver and the participants of this year’s ACE cohort.

18

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Black Write Edition’sorganizers on
supporting emerging
Black storytellers
by Erin Hynes

In September, Nelvana, a leading international producer, distributor, and licensor of children’s content,
and Kids Can Press, an acclaimed children’s book publisher, announced a collaborative talent incubator: Black Write Edition.
The incubator invites Black storytellers and illustrators to submit their work and ideas. The initiative’s
mission: Discover, support, and mentor emerging
Black creators. Black storytellers and illustrators within
Canada can submit their story proposals or illustration
portfolio through the blackwrite.ca website before
November 30.
We caught up with Athena Georgaklis, Head ofDevelopment at Nelvana, Natalia Williams, Directorof Internal Communications at Corus Entertainment,
and Naseem Hrab, Associate Publisher, Creative at
Kids Can Press, to learn more about the initiative.
The idea for the incubator began over a year ago,
when Athena and Natalia worked on a panel thathighlighted lack of representation in children’s content. Athena says that from the panel, they learned
that while there were significant improvements indiverse representation, children’s content was still far
off from achieving actual equity.
According to preliminary data provided to The
Associated Press by the CCBC, which has been tracking statistics on children’s book representation since
1985, children’s books written about racially diverse
characters or subjects grew by only 1% in 2020. Lackof diversity and representation persists in animatedkids series, too. According to research from Ryerson
University’s Children’s Media Lab, white characters
continue to make up the bulk of who is shown on
screen in animated series aired in Canada.

19

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Athena and Natalia were surprised to learn how slow
moving the progress in equitable representation was,because both of them understand how important
it is to work toward that equity. Natalia says that inraising a bi-racial son, she sees first hand the lack ofcontent that includes Black characters, and she sees
how impactful it is for her young son to engage with
content which shows characters he can identify with.
Nelvana previously launched a program for diversity
and inclusion, oriented around development. Athena
explains that the Black creator program (which is still
active today) provides opportunities, but they findthat they don’t receive as many projects or concepts
submissions as they hoped. Athena believes that thismay be because the program targets more established creators, with the expectation that they alreadyhave experience pitching. That started the idea forthe new incubator.
According to Athena and Naseem, breaking into theanimation and literature industries can be overwhelming. Many artists have no experience or mentorship when it comes to pitching, which creates abarrier for joining development programs, or working
with studios and publishers. They wanted to create a
program that would “open the door” to the industries, and amplify underrepresented voices.
Kids Can Press joining the incubator was important,as the publisher wants to diversify the stories they list.
According to Naseem, it’s important to think about
the famous “windows and mirrors” metaphor, asPromotional banner for Nelvana and Kids Can Press’ Black Write Edition talent incubator.

explained by Emily Styles. Styles argued that curriculums in schools should be both windows and mirrors,
because students and teachers need to see both others and themselves in the content they engage with.
Naseem says Kids Can Press wants the books children
read to offer a reflection of the world around them,rather than a narrow view.
The goal of the incubator is to address initial barriersof entry, by inviting Black creators in Canadian with
an idea to apply. Black Write will match promisingcreators with industry professionals from two of Canada’s leading children’s content companies in order todevelop original work. It gives budding creators who
may have little-to-no experience the chance to develop their project and make essential industry connections. That way, when they complete the incubator,
the creator has the skills and connections to sustain acontinuing career.
Natalia explains that they put together a very broad
outreach approach for the incubator. It was important
to consider how best to reach the right community
groups, which meant looking beyond formal avenues.
For Black Write, they wanted to reach as many people
as possible, so they looked at organizations like the
Jamaican Canadian Association to get the word out.
Candidates who are selected for the incubator will bepaired with creative advisors in animation production
or book publishing to develop and fully realize theirwork. The goal of the first edition of the incubator is20

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

to develop at least one original concept each for TV
and book publishing, as well as to foster community
between emerging voices and industry professionals.
By fostering these connections, the incubator cansupport ongoing mentorship that will help lead to
long-term professional relationships.
Naseem emphasizes that applicants don’t need any
formal training or professional experience. For the
publishing side of the incubator, an applicant should
submit a story on paper. Applicants may have experience submitting to short story contests, or perhaps
they’ve written for a local newspaper, but they shouldhave no experience in traditional publishing.
According to Naseem, what’s most important is thatthe submission shares a strong story or has a strong
character. She says that what especially stands out
are stories which only that person can tell. Rather
than trying to fit into trends, she suggests going forsomething original and surprising. Aside from that,applicants to both the animation and literature sidesof the incubator should demonstrate a willingness tohone and craft their story.
Athena says that submissions to the TV stream shouldpresent a clear and concise concept, and should
show who the applicant is. Ideas can be presented inwhatever format an applicant wants, whether that’s
a video, a presentation, a storyboard, or written document, anything goes. The team behind Black Write
hopes that artists apply, even if they feel intimidated,or that they don’t have what it takes to publish a story or create a series. They emphasize that this is themoment for creators to take a chance on themselves.
Black Write Edition is the first iteration of Nelvana
and Kids Can Press’ incubator. In the future, theincubator will invite other marginalized and underrepresented voices to apply. Athena explains that evenas new waves of the incubator are launched in the
future, the existing programs will continue to grow.
The participants in Black Write will have ongoingsupport and mentorship, so that they can continue togrow their careers, even after completing the incubator project.

21

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Way Singleton andBreana Williams on
the Black N’ Animatedpodcastby Edward Hartley

Way Singleton and Breana Williams are the hosts ofBlack N’ Animated, a podcast which spotlights theBlack animators working behind-the-scenes of yourfavorite shows and series. Having just celebrated their
50th episode at the time of our interview, their backcatalog is a who’s who of Black animation talent andindustry insiders, and is well worth a deep-dive. Featuring guests “of all shapes, sizes and shades,” BlackN’ Animated celebrates diversity, alongside rigorous
analysis and tangible industry advice for animators.
When not presenting the podcast, both hosts ply
their trade at Disney Television Animation. We asked
Way and Breana about their experience working
on major productions at the studio; in particular,
the challenges they face in their respective roles asstoryboard artist and production coordinator. Trueto their mission to educate, inform and inspire Blackartists pursuing careers in animation, they share theirbiggest influences, sharpest industry insights, andadvice drawn from their own experiences on how
to manage your mental health while developing
your craft. Listen to their podcast blow and read ourinterview!

Hi Way & Breana! In your own
words, who are you and what doyou do in animation?
Way: I am Way Singleton, and I am a Storyboard
Artist working in animation, currently storyboardingon The Ghost and Molly McGee at Disney Television
Animation.

22

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Breana: My name is Breana Williams and I am Production Coordinator at Disney Television Animation
on The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder.

When did you both discover yourlove for animation?
Way: I grew up obsessed with cartoons. I tried towatch any cartoon that premiered on TV, and I wasconstantly flipping channels back and forth between
Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, andany other channel that I knew some cartoons would
be showing. As the internet era of animation was
rising, I would watch shows and shorts on YouTube
and Newgrounds.
A lot of these independent online cartoons helpedme realize that I could make cartoons myself. I didn’t
really think of animation as a career path until I started touring colleges in high school.
Breana: It’s a super-cliche answer, but my two influences on my love of animation were Disney films andanime. I remember always being super-interested in
waiting for my Disney VHS tapes to finish playing.
Walt would come on and start talking about themultiplane camera in Bambi. That had me hooked
to the screen.
I wanted to be a ‘drawer,’ as I called it, and stuff like
Sailor Moon and Pokemon didn’t look like anythingelse on TV. I wanted to make things like that. And I
carried that love of those Disney films and everything
anime with me into high school and deep-dived on
how to get into animation as a career.

Congratulations on passing 50
episodes of Black N’ Animated! For
readers who are unfamiliar, can you
describe the podcast?
Way: Black N’ Animated is a podcast that strives to
educate, inspire, and empower Black creatives seeking careers in animation. Bre and I interview Black
creatives with different roles in the animation industry. Not only to give information about the jobs donein this industry, but also to highlight Black creatives
working these roles, to help inspire budding animation talent, who might be seeing a lack of people thatlook like them, working behind-the-scenes.
We also talk about Black animation from a Black
perspective, hitting topics like the Censored Elevencartoons produced by Warner Bros., or talking aboutanimated content with Black representation like Static Shock and The Proud Family.

Are there any other contributors
you’d like to introduce?
Breana: Of course! BNA wouldn’t be where it istoday without the help of our BNA team leadership.
Our former Director of Programming, Nilah MaGruder. Our current Directors of Programming, Myra

23

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Thompkins. Lorraine Grate, our Co-Director of Programming. Neil Wade, Director of Studio Outreach.
Lauren Andrews, Union Liason. Our Administrative
Assistants, Jacqueline Barnes and Kalley Haddleston.
And our-super awesome Podcast Audio Editor andEngineer Tyler Schlossman — he’s the audio king.

What kind of guests do you haveon the podcast, and how do you
choose who to have as a guest?
Way: Our guests are mainly Black Professionals
working in Animation. Usually we’ll either ask afriend or co-worker if we could sit down with themfor the podcast to talk about their craft. We’ve also
had guests recommended to us by listeners. Since we
do about 15 episodes a year, we try to diversify ourguests in terms of their role in animation, their gender identity, and amount of experience, so that ourlisteners get a wide range of stories and animation
journeys to hear about.
Breana: Our podcast is about showcasing the diversity within the animation industry; that Black people
are here and thriving in these roles. It makes sensethat we break it down even further and make sure
we have that diversity in terms of gender and sex
within our guests too. Highlight Black women, men,

Portfolio sample provided by Way Singleton.

Portfolio samples provided by Breana Williams.

nonbinary, lesbian, etc… Black people in animation
come in all shapes, sizes and shades.

Breana: We’re hoping to just keep moving withbeing that bridge that helps put Black voices in frontof the studios. Or just providing resources to Black
creatives who may not have access to this stuff ontheir own. Mixers, online safe creative spaces, portfolio review, etc.

When you’re not programming andpresenting Black N’ Animated, what
does your working week look like?
Way: It looks stressful! Working in animation can be
taxing. As a board artist, a lot of my mental energy
has to go into creating images out of words, which
can take a lot of time and energy but it’s fun. I feellike I learn more about myself with every project I
do. A lot of the time, it feels like my brain is trying
to force a cube shape into a circle hole. It’s a lot of
problem solving, but I love puzzle games!
Breana: Working in animation is very much a job.
It’s not hanging out with your friends and shooting
hoops with Bugs Bunny on the lot like some documentaries or the internet may make it out to be.
Productions have to put a lot of time, care and love
into telling the stories that people love to see on air,and it can be a lot sometimes. Especially when you’re
doing it during a pandemic.
As a Production Coordinator, I’m a people mover andmanager: Making sure the artists meet their deadlines, turn in the work, organizing files, scheduling
meetings, putting out fires, and problem solving. The
life of production is busy, but it’s rewarding because
you get to help make sure that a beautiful piece ofwork gets made and gets made right. It’s tough, but
I’d rather be doing this than anything else.

What can you tell us about yourupcoming projects? What can you
share with us?
Way: Black N Animated is continuing to provide
events where aspiring animation professionals canlearn about the different opportunities and roles
they can have in animation, as well as network withstudios and other animation professionals.

24

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

And personally, I’m not sure. I hope to pitch sometime in the future so maybe we’ll see what happens
there!

What advice do you have for young
Black animators entering theindustry?
Way: Some good advice I’d like to give: Remember
to be kind while you’re pursuing your goals. Don’t
feel entitled to having someone’s attention, or a job,or something, because you went through animation
school. Or because you are a big animation fan. Be
thoughtful and empathetic to others.
Breana: Don’t give up. Protect your mental health.
I always say this and I can’t stress it enough. It’s
really difficult, and it’s not easy. The road may belong. Imposter syndrome is real. But you can do this.
Your work and your stories have value and you cansucceed. Do your best to protect your mental healthand allow yourself to rest and practice self-care on
your journey.

Interested in learning more about Black N Animated? Besure to visit the show’s Carrd for links to the podcast’s
website, episodes, and social media accounts.

Freebird is a short film aboutliving a beautiful life with
Down Syndromeby Erin Hynes

To mark World Down Syndrome Day, intellectual disability charity L’Arche Canada partnered with
Tonic DNA and international recording artist Jordan Hart to create a new short film that challenges
misconceptions around Down Syndrome. Written and directed by Joe Bluhm and Michael McDonald,
Freebird is a coming-of-age story. The film’s protagonist learns to navigate the world with a loving
mother, an absent father, a classroom bully, and a life-long crush. The film’s soundtrack is Jordan Hart’ssong, Freedom, and the film was officially released on March 21st.
We caught up with the creative team behind Freebird
to learn how the project came together, how theyused the film to address stigma about Down Syndrome, the making of the film, and its reception.
Read on to hear from musician Jordan Hart, creative
director Nicholas Herd, and directors Joe Bluhm andMichael McDonald.
L’Arch Canada wanted a film thatreflected the core message of its activism:‘Why does the world assume that adisabled life is not profoundly beautiful?’This project got started initially,
because of the song Freedom. Can
you tell us about how you decided tocreate a music video for the song?
Jordan Hart: I was planning on making a music
video for my debut EP, and I felt that it was a great
opportunity to shine a light on a community that deserves visibility. So, I called Michael, a friend of mine,
who works in disability advocacy at L’Arche Canada.
I asked him if he’d be interested in collaborating on avideo marking World Down Syndrome Day specifically, because I know that there is so much misconception around Down Syndrome.

25

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

How did Tonic DNA connect with
L’Arche Canada, and how did thisproject come to be?
Michael McDonald: Jordan sent me the song, andwhen I listened, I immediately thought of the stories
and oral histories that I’ve heard from around theworld. I absolutely felt the song was a good fit,and so we talked about creating a live action film. I
reached out to Nick, who was immediately on board,
too. We actually got started with planning the live
action shoot, but then the pandemic hit.
We didn’t feel it was responsible to do the shoot, given the pandemic. So we shifted to the idea of an animated video. We asked Nick whether he’d ever seen
an animated film that featured a Down Syndrome
character who looked like him, and he said he hadn’t.
So we started reaching out to a couple different contacts to see who would connect with the script. Tonic
DNA was at the top of our list, so we were overjoyedwhen they told us they were interested.
Joe Bluhm: Tonic DNA cares about telling meaningful
stories, and stories that matter. When we saw the
script we were attracted to it right away.

What kind of representations ofDown Syndrome has been normal
in the media? In what ways did
you want to depart from those
representations in this film?
Nicholas Herd: I grew up loving animation, but had
never before seen representation of Down Syndrome
in an animated film. So having the chance to createthat representation in Freebird was very special.
You know, I was an advocate myself when I wasjust a baby. My mother got involved with the Down
Syndrome Association because she noticed that I
had to give justification for my own life, from a really
young age. There is so much stigma around Down
Syndrome.
One thing that was particularly important to me wasthat we show lots of the character’s lives, instead ofjust a glimpse. And I wanted the story to be for all
people who can see themselves in it. For example,
another theme of the story is being an advocate andcaretaker for your parents. The film is about how
everyone is free to be who they are.
Michael McDonald: Often depictions of Down
Syndrome have a negative connotation, like pity andfear. For example, after discovering a baby has Down
Syndrome, the following scene in a movie or show
will be sad. We wanted to make sure we departed
from that. We also put thought into the broader allegory of the story. The father in the film represents anableist view of the world, and the mother represents
the opposite, she celebrates neurodivergent minds.
We felt this juxtaposition was important.

Could you describe the style of theanimation you used for this film?
Joe Bluhm: We used a limited colour palette for thefilm, as well as line art. We didn’t intend for the line
art to be perfect, because we felt that would bring
movement and life to the piece. We kept backgrounds neutral, so that the focus would be on thecharacters and the story. We also purposefully left
much of the animation loose, so that viewers could
project themselves into it. The most thought definitely went into character design, and Nick was super
helpful in that department.

Character designs from Freebird provided by Tonic DNA.

26

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Nicholas Herd: Yes, I can see myself in the character
design, which was important, because the characteris meant to represent a real person who has Down
Syndrome. The first time you see the character, you’remeant to know he has Down Syndrome.

Still image from Freebird, from L’Arche Canada, Tonic DNA and Jordan Hart

What has reception for the film
been like so far?
Jordan Hart: The reception has been amazing.
We’ve noticed many parents commenting on the video that watching it made them feel relief, love, andcognizant of what their children are capable of. It’s so
special to see how many people have been impacted
by the film.
Michael McDonald: You really can’t say to a personin 4 minutes what this film manages to communicate.
I think that’s what the magic of a song, animation,and storytelling together do. It’s been amazing to see
all the shares on social media, and comments fromparents from all over the world.

Is there anything more you would
like to share about the process ofmaking this film?
Nicholas Herd: Be sure to watch to the end of thevideo, because we highlight real people with Down
Syndrome from around the world, and say what
they’ve been free to accomplish in life. I’d also justlike to say that this story isn’t just for people whohave Down Syndrome, it’s for anyone who can see
themselves in this story.

27

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Joe Bluhm: Tonic DNA, and myself, are so grateful tohave been able to work on a story like this. Every single person on our team felt connected to this project,
it was a very emotional process. It’s truly fulfilling towork on a story with so much meaning behind it.
Michael McDonald: With the history of disability
storytelling, it’s a big deal that we had Nick on theteam to shape the story. We couldn’t have done thisstory justice without him.

Rise Up Animation on BIPOC
artist mentorshipby Erin Hynes

The murder of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer, caught on camera, was one of many
defining moments for the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. Communities across America andaround the world gathered to protest against police brutality and to demand better from otherpowerful institutions, including the entertainment industry. Facing increased public scrutiny, media
companies responded to criticism of underrepresentation and racial disparities, both on-screen andbehind-the-scenes. This was far from the first time the entertainment industry was called to be moreaccountable to BIPOC creators and viewers; as previous movements, such as #OscarsSoWhite, revealed
ongoing underrepresentation.
A group of friends, all animation industry professionals, were grappling with what they themselves could
do to support the BLM movement in the midst of the
global pandemic. “We were all donating, reachingout to friends, and taking time to educate ourselves
about racism and inequality,” says Trent Correy, director and animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios.
“But, we realized that the best work we could dowould be within our own community.”
Trent Correy, Frank Abney, Bobby Pontillas, andMonica Lago-Kaytis began to brainstorm ideas. “Wewanted to think of a way that we could really support
BIPOC talent who are trying to break into the industry,” says Bobby Pontillas, director, character designer,
and animator. The four friends, who came to knoweach other by crossing paths in the industry over theyears, understood how difficult it can be to get yourfirst industry gig.
“The animation industry has a legacy of mentorship,
going back to the early days of Disney,” says Trent.
“All of us have benefited from mentorship in our
animation careers. Mentorship has gotten us in, but
it’s also helped us grow as artists.” Trent explains thatwhile there are plenty of animation schools, pricing
presents a barrier of access. “We wanted to find away to provide mentorship opportunities that wereaccessible,” he says.
28

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

The group felt that mentorship could help address theindustry’s diversity problem. The presence and visibility of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC)
within the professional workforce is key to increasing
on-screen representation. With BIPOC talent behindthe scenes, TV shows and films can do a better job ofcreating narratives that reflect the lived experiencesof underrepresented viewers.
BIPOC artists have long faced systemic barriers inpursuing careers in animation. A lack of mentorship
opportunities is just one of those barriers. In June
2020, the organization Black ‘N Animated shared an
open letter, from the US Black Animation community to the industry itself. In it, they explained the depthof the problem. They wrote:“The Black animation community finds itself fighting
for our humanity at the same time that we fight for
the right to exist in our chosen profession. Audiences
can plainly see this struggle in the absence of developed Black human characters in cartoons and theabsence of Black professionals named in the creditsof these productions. Black people have been systematically suppressed in all levels of the industry: in
education, in hiring, and in promotions for leadership
positions.”By addressing accessibility to education throughmentorship, Trent, Frank, Bobby, and Monica felt thatthey could help relieve one of the systemic barriers
that BIPOC artists face. It was just a matter of how
they would do it.
“That’s when we realized that we were in a unique
moment. Because of the pandemic, everything was
being conducted online. This meant we could easily
connect with young artists around the country, andthe world. And the best thing we could offer themwas our mentorship,” says Monica Lago-Kaytis,
producer and CEO of Frogbot Films. “We decided to
put together a program that would offer free virtual
portfolio reviews to BIPOC talent.” And that’s how
Rise Up Animation (RUA) was born.
The four founders put out a call to their friends andcolleagues across the industry, and within a week,
they had 300 volunteers who’d agreed to join the initiative. Industry professionals from studios, including
Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks, Netflix, Nickelodeon, Sony,
Cartoon Network, came forward to offer mentorship,participate in panels, and volunteer their time. They
sketched a logo, created social media accounts, andstarted posting.
Now, less than a year later, RUA is a registered
non-profit organization with over 500 active mentors and a community of over 33,000 followers on

29

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Instagram. The organization focuses on providing
free one-on-one feedback sessions. Applicants simply
fill out a form in which they indicate their chosen
discipline and personal details. The only qualifications
are that they are over the age of 18 (or have parental
guidance), and identify as BIPOC. They don’t needto have prior education or experience in animation.
RUA then matches the applicant with a mentor.“Fromthere, the mentorship experience is very individual,”says Bobby. The mentee can choose to connect with
their mentor in whatever way is comfortable forthem. That might be by email, phone, or video call.
They spend anywhere from 30 minutes to one hourwith their mentor. During the session they might lookat the mentee’s artwork, resume or they might justshare stories. It’s up to the mentee to decide what
they’d like to gain from the session.
Following the session, the mentor can choose to continue mentoring that mentee and the mentee is free
to sign up for another feedback session 60 days later.
These virtual feedback sessions give mentees aroundthe world a glimpse into the animation industry thatthey wouldn’t be able to access without travelling to
Hollywood.
“Unfortunately, most of the mentors we have available at RUA aren’t BIPOC. This actually reinforces
how important mentorship for BIPOC talent is. The
fact that most of our mentors are white demonstrates

the need for diversity and inclusion in the industry,”says Monica. That’s where panels come in. Aside fromfeedback sessions, RUA provides weekly panels thathighlight BIPOC animation professionals and provide
resources and tips.
“The panels are about showing up-and-coming
BIPOC talent that there are people who look like youin the field,” says Trent. Seeing diverse representation
is incredibly important when working toward equity
in any field. A recent working paper published in the
The National Bureau of Economic Research showsthat having just one Black teacher not only lowers
high school dropout rates for Black students but also
increases their likeliness to enroll in college. Similarly,
by hosting panels led by BIPOC artists, RUA provides
their mentees assurance that they do belong in the
animation industry.
One of those mentees is Kylie Gay. She attended
the Savannah College of Art and Design, where sheearned a major in animation. Kylie had graduatedfrom school and started applying for jobs, but kept
receiving rejection letters. She signed up for every
career and animation webinar she could find, butsays, “You can only get so much out of a webinar.
They can tell you what to put in your portfolio, butreally you need someone to take a look and help you
understand why what you’ve got isn’t working.”
Because there’s barely any animation presence inFlorida, where Kylie lives, it felt to her as though theanimation industry was worlds away. “I started to feelas though a career in animation wasn’t in the cards
for me, and I’d begun to think about what my othercareer options might be.”That’s when she discovered RUA. “I found RUA within an hour of their first Instagram post,” she says. She
attended the panels, got connected with her mentor,
and had her first feedback session. Kylie explains thatthe mentorship was incredibly helpful, but that she
also found strength in the community. At the time
Kylie had no one to talk to about her career frustrations because all of her friends had found jobs.
The RUA community offered a safe space for support.
She joined the RUA Discord channel where she wasable to connect with other BIPOC artists who could
relate to her frustrations. They shared resources,
reviewed each other’s art, and had honest discussions
about things like mental health. “This support helped
me to muster up the confidence to keep at it, to keep
submitting my work,” Kylie says.

30

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

RUA is meaningful for the mentors as well. “Asmentors, we understand the frustration of searchingfor a job. We know how tough it is to break into theanimation industry, especially for BIPOC artists,” says
Bobby. So talking with mentees who are sometimes
on the brink of giving up can be emotional. Bobby
explains that as mentors they can provide practicalguidance, but emotional support as well. “It’s our job
to encourage mentees not to give up,” he says.
Monica explains that RUA wishes they could guarantee every mentee a job. Mentors will always do theirbest to get portfolios in front of the right people,“but we can’t promise jobs,” she says. “What we canpromise is to give the support and confidence that
mentees need to keep applying.”
For Kylie, the big break came without an application.
In the late fall, Disney Television Animation reached
out directly to Kylie — a member of their art department had seen her work on Instagram. Within amonth, she had an official job offer. “I had to read it
several times just to absorb that the offer was real,”
Kylie laughs. Now, a few months later, she says thejob is going well. Currently, she’s a storyboard revisionist, but in the future she has dreams of making
her own movie.
When Kylie landed her job, the news spread across
RUA’s channels. Trent says that when he heard about
it, it felt like a victory. Not just for Kylie, but for thewhole RUA community. And for Trent, Frank, Bobby,
and Monica, the founders of RUA, victories like Kylie’s
represent the ethos of their organization. “The name‘Rise Up Animation’ was about capturing this ideaof raising BIPOC up,” Bobby explains. “We want togive BIPOC artists tools, knowledge, and community.
We want them to see themselves represented in the
animation. And we want to raise them up to be an
active part of this industry.”

Santiago of the Seas’
Niki López on diversity inpreschool animation
by Philip Mak

Conversations around representation in media have brought marginalized communities into themainstream, with broadcasters and streamers publicly touting their respective diversity and inclusivity
initiatives. While children’s entertainment is still experiencing growing pains, Nickelodeon’s Santiago of
the Seas is charting a new course in preschool content.
Santiago of the Seas is created and co-executive
produced by Niki López (Fairly Odd Parents, Glitch
Techs), a Puerto Rican-born artist. Premiered in
October 2020, it follows the eponymous 8-year-old,kind-hearted pirate Santiago “Santi” Montes and hisbest mates as they go on adventures, search for treasure and keep their home safe from villains like thenefarious Bonnie Bones. For López, it embodies anongoing journey towards representing her language
and culture, while teaching a new generation the
power of kindness and empathy.

The series sailed onto screens at a pivotal time, withchildren consuming more media than ever due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, one ParentsTogether study found that 48% of parents report theirchildren are spending six hours per day online — a
500% increase from pre-pandemic levels. Prior tothis, kids up to 8 years old averaged an hour and40 minutes a day, while research by Nielson putsthat number closer to 3.9 hours per day among 2 to
11 year olds.
If children are at home watching more content, it
should positively reflect what their families lookand sound like. Unfortunately, American animatedcartoons remain largely white. One sample of 1,500
characters found that 11.6 percent were of Asian
heritage, 5.6 percent were black and 1.4 percent
were Latino.
A lack of representation in media can lead to negative
psychological outcomes for those with identities thatare not shown or are depicted negatively, according
to Jordan Levinson, writing for UCLA’s Psychology
in Action. For children, this may make them feel
invisible or unimportant — leading to poor self-esteem and other serious effects. By contrast, popularcharacters who share their identities can lead tohigher self-esteem.

Character design of Santiago Montes, provided by Nickelodeon.

31

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

An interview with Niki López, hosted by
ASIFA Hollywood.

Setting sailBeneath the altruistic characters and action-packed
adventures, the true treasure of Santiago of the Seasis how the animated series pays homage to López’s
heritage through infusions of spoken Spanish and
Latino-Caribbean culture. She has described theshow as a “love letter to Puerto Rico and an ode to
the magical power of empathy within an inclusive
community.”
López tells us, “The idea for Santiago of the Seas
really originated out of homesickness for my community — the food, the music, the environment. I
was having an informational with Mary Harrington,
who I call the fairy godmother of Nickelodeon, andshe asked me what was important to me when I was
little and I told her about my childhood and some of
the mythology and history within Puerto Rico. WhenI started to talk about a Robin Hood of the high seas
she was like, ‘Ooo, I feel like there’s something there.
You should chase that.’”So, she did just that. López took a sabbatical andwent back to Puerto Rico on a treasure hunt ofinspiration. While there, she visited two caves where
this legendary pirate used to hide his booty — all thewhile imagining what her show’s animated world
would look like and how it could translate to a young
audience, both visually and linguistically.

32

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

“I put myself in that mindset of what this world could
be and how it could work in a preschool setting,while elevating the representation of Latino-Caribbean communities as well as highlighting the importance of bilingualism and how crucial it is to champion these moral values of empathy and kindness. It
was just a big old melting pot that I put all the things
that mattered to me and it exploded into the Santiago of the Seas pitch,” says López.
A brief stint in the advertising world helped López
refine her pitching skills, ultimately getting the show
greenlit. As a Latina series creator, López herself
represents how the tide is changing — part of a risingcohort of diverse faces in the animation industry. She
had been hired by a woman of colour to work on her
first production at Nickelodeon, who saw the value inhaving different perspectives.
“I’ve been very lucky to be surrounded by allies at
Nickelodeon who are always looking to find ways toelevate my voice and truly honour my vision, and I
hope I can do the same to those within the crew andoutside even outside the studio. If there’s any way
that I can give people advice or mentor them, mydoors are always open,” says López.

A sea change
Describing her role as “the keeper of the lore,”
writers now pitch their ideas to López and she advises
whether they work in the world of Santiago of theSeas. Sometimes they are too dark for the demographic, but the process is always collaboration.
López readily admits that stepping into this leadershiphas come with its challenges, however working closely with her talented, kind crew on fulfilling her vision
has been a humbling experience.
She explains, “I think it’s been cool to let go a bit
and be pleasantly surprised as to how elevated theshow has become by trusting my crew. I definitely
went through the rite of passage of, ‘Am I doing thisright? Am I a good leader?’ The impostor syndrome
played its tricks on my head every so often, but time
conditions you to the experience and I’ve been lucky
to have certain people in my crew who have been
extremely supportive, as well as Eryk Casemiro (SeniorVice President, Nickelodeon Preschool) and Ramsey
Naito (President, Nickelodeon Animation).”Support from both López’s crew and studio executives
have meant clear sailing for Santiago of the Seas.
Across both ratings and reactions from audiences, thepositive results have spoken for themselves — in both
English and Spanish. For López, this bilingual inclusivity was both paramount and personal.
“We have research and real time instances of how
little kids are immediately affected by the show
— kids that might come from Spanish-speaking

Character designs in Santiago of the Seas, provided by Nickelodeon.

33

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

households and they’ve been hesitant to speak theirlanguage. They are seeing a hero that looks likethem and represents their community and is speaking in Spanish, so they feel confident to embrace
their culture and language. Having that effect is socool; you’re giving them the confidence they need torealize it’s okay to be you and to be proud of where
you come from,” says López.
She continues, “There’s no need to hide any of thatand I wish I would have seen more of that when I
was young because I remember watching American
television productions and I never saw a character
that reflected me or where I came from or was empowering in the way of them speaking Spanish. I was
like, ‘Oh, okay. Well, maybe English is the way to go.’I’m trying to pay it forward and change the gameso little kids don’t have to go through that journeyof self-doubt like I experienced about speaking mylanguage and embracing my culture.”
Having recently received a second season order,
López’s bilingual, multicultural message has clearlyresonated. Looking ahead, she hopes to explore theSantiago of the Seas universe further through a film
or even a spin-off series for Bonnie. While those possibilities have yet to be discovered, more empathetic
children can now be found across the world — nopirate’s map required.

How Black fans andcreators are redefining
anime
by Edward Hartley

There were always Black fans who identified with anime, including in the 1980s, when in-the-know
Americans would meet up to buy and discuss Japanese animated titles such as Akira and harder-to-findbootleg OVAs. The movement was rooted in a grassroots scene that relied on word-of-mouth andphysical spaces like video shops to sustain itself. Comparisons can be made to the mixtape culture ofearly hip-hop that was developing contemporaneously. This should come as no surprise, given how
hip-hop so often serves as, to quote Nerds of Color writer Kendall Bazemore, “the vehicle for the Japanese understanding of American Blackness.”
Fast-forward to 2020, and the two worlds are more
entwined than ever. Black artists are increasingly
looking to anime for inspiration and collaboration,
as BIPOC representation has become increasingly important to audiences and makers alike. A new wave
of Black creatives are now in the genre, making spacefor diverse crews and characters. We spoke to someof these artists about their perspective on diversity inthe industry today, and the influence Black creators
are having on anime.
Through her writing on Black anime characters, But
Why Tho? Podcast host LaNeysha Campbell provides
Black audiences with valued resources for finding representation in the genre. Characters such as Berserk’s
Casca and Atsuko Jackson of Michiko to Hatchin, shesays, make Black women such as herself feel seen.
“As a Black woman, I feel like our representation inanime has and continues to improve over the years.
It is not perfect by far, but we are there, and it isgetting better. While there are characters that I canclaim as Black, that doesn’t mean the anime acknowledges them as Black. But now I feel like we have alittle more representation of characters confirmed
or clearly identified as Black. It is important to me
because, as a long-time fan of anime, I can’t help
but want to see a character that looks like me. In
general, people want to see themselves reflected and34

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

represented in the mediums they love, respectfully.
When our characters are made with that intention
instead of stereotypical or racist caricatures, then it isa fulfilling thing to see.”
The feeling is shared by Joshua Toussaint-Strauss,a video producer in the U.K. whose work for The
Guardian charted black representation in the genre.
“I guess I don’t really expect to see myself represented in anime, because the shows I’ve watched over
the years have so rarely included Black characters. So
when I do see a Black character I’m instantly drawn
to them. This might be partly why I grew to love
Naruto so much, because it has quite a few respectfully drawn black and brown characters. Representation is incredibly important to me, but with anime, it’scomplicated by the fact that I have such low expectations for Black representation. I don’t expect it, and I
try to ignore the bad examples, because I don’t want
it to affect my enjoyment of the genre. But I think it
has, to a certain degree.”
Joshua Toussaint-Strauss’s video for The
Guardian, Anime gets blackness wrong,here’s how fans are fixing it.
Joshua and LaNeysha can point to examples that,
unfortunately, show a negative side to anime’s treatment of blackness. Characters such as Mr. Popo inDragonball Z or Sister Krone in The Promised Neverland are regrettable examples where the genre has resorted to stereotypes and caricatures that, to Joshua,“evoke the racist tropes of the 40s and 50s.”“The worst examples of Black representation in anime are characters who are drawn with exaggerated
features. This kind of imagery is incredibly hurtful forBlack people. It’s certainly not what a fan wants tosee when watching their favourite show” he explains.
It is on today’s animators, writers and industry leaders
to avoid making the same mistakes. Studio Grackle
founder Spencer Wan, puts diversity at the fore of his
studio’s philosophy. “Unless you make an effort to include, you’ll unintentionally exclude. That’s something
I think many people in our industry could still take toheart,” says Spencer, who is now heading his own
studio. “But I do think it’s getting better. I see moreof a push for diversity than I ever have, especiallyfrom peers around my age, and we’ll continue topush. I definitely intend to.”This push for diversity in anime could lead to better
representation for its PoC audiences. “I would like to
see a more proper and respectful illustration of People of Color in anime” adds LaNeysha. “I want to see
Black features used on characters respectfully and notdrawn as racist caricatures to make Black characters

35

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

the butt of jokes. I’d like to see more real effort fromillustrators when drawing, animating, and coloring
various skin tones and shades.”She continues, “I think anime is making some great
progress when it comes to diversity and inclusion. The
fact that there are Black anime creators, more Blackvoice actors, and even a Black-owned anime studioin Japan like D’ART Shtajio is amazing! Additionally,
western studios like Powerhouse Animation are doing
great things to improve diversity in anime as well. Allof this helps.”
D’ART Shtajio, a Black-owned business, is the first
American animation studio in Japan, founded by twin
brothers Arthell and Darnell Isom. Having recently
appeared in the music video for Jay Z and Pharrell’s
Entrepreneur, and after being featured in a leading
lifestyle magazine, Arthell set some of his schedule
aside to share his experiences. He was more than
happy to talk about making it Big In Japan as a person of colour and an American.
As well as his own journey getting into the Japaneseindustry, Arthell explained the relationship between
Black identity and anime, in a conversation thatcovered everything from Kung-Fu movies to Caravaggio. I ask him how it feels to be representing Blackanimators in a traditionally Japanese industry:

“There are new eyes on us. I feel a bit more pressure.
We have to be more conscious of these things. Initially, we didn’t think too much about it. ‘Okay, we’re
American, and we’re Black’ or whatever. We were
just making content and that was enough for us.
But as we’ve gone forward, things like that change.
People expect more things from you, and that affects
the content that you make. I think initially we justwanted to fit into anime! But now we’re trying torepresent both things. We have to think about ourown cultures, too, and make sure that representation
is in there.”
Diversity is benefitting from increased demand inwestern entertainment, and Arthell describes theJapanese landscape as being open to, but somewhat
apart from that. Diversity and differentiation is more
inherent in Japan, he believes, with a broader rangeof characters, themes and storyline than is foundwestern or North-American animation.
“They’re not closed-minded here. They’re open toviewing anything really, particularly looking at thelandscape of anime in Japan in general, there is justso much differentiation. The different charactersfeatured, the different storylines they tell. So I feel likenow, how diversity is being pushed in entertainment
in general in the West, Japan is very open to that.
They did Afro-Samurai and it wasn’t a big deal forthem. It’s a story about an African-American Samurai
and no-one was against it. There was actually a Samurai from Africa in Japan, I think he worked under
Emperor Nobunaga. It’s a really interesting story.”
Trailer for Netflix’s Yasuke, created by
LeSean Thomas
Having watched Tom Cruise play an American who
earned the title of The Last Samurai, it was, perhaps,
unsurprising to find out that fiction had overlooked
reality. In truth, the honor had belonged to Yasuke,
whose story at the time of this interview had been
green-lit for its own anime series on Netflix. He wasan African man who travelled to 16th Century Japan
with Portuguese missionaries, becoming close to
Daimyō Oda Nobunaga and eventually becoming histrusted Samurai retainer. Yasuke’s story neatly foreshadows the cultural intersections, and sometimes
mutual obsession, that would come to be between
Black and Japanese culture. Netflix’s production of
Yasuke will be a harmonious meeting of the twoworlds. The lead will be played by rising star Lakeith
Stanfield (Sorry To Bother You, Uncut Gems) andthe show is produced by LaSean Thomas, himself an
important figure when it comes to the influence Blackfans and creators have had on anime.

Arthell’s own origin story is also fascinating. He opens
up a little about what life was like and traces theroots of his creativity back to childhood:“So I grew up in Patterson, New Jersey. My family
was poor and I grew up like any other kid in an urban
environment. But one of our escapes was drawing.
Both my brother and I would draw from as early as I
could remember. It was a way to get away, because
we didn’t have toys and things but we always had
paper, not always sketchbooks, but like newspapers,
you could draw on anything. So that was always
fun. The cartoons I would’ve grown up with at thetime would be the normal Looney Tunes and Warner
Brothers, and so like everyone else in the West I really
liked all that, and Disney and stuff. I was drawn toanimation in general, and comic books. I was just into
art and I wanted to get more into that world. The
entertainment world I guess. The thing that switchedme over to anime… I think if I hadn’t watched Ghost
In The Shell, I’d probably be in the western industry
right now.”
Arthell has made no secret of the influence thatthe 1995 cult-classic had on him, a film he says hewatched almost every day on VHS during his college
years. Ghost In The Shell, with it’s dystopian atmospheres and cyberpunk background art, compelled
him to look into who had created it, and how. Realising that the artist behind it was also the art director
on other favorite anime titles, such as Last Exile andNinja Scroll, Arthell set out on a quest to meet him.
He sent letters, then emails, and eventually turned
up in Japan in person to receive mentorship from
Hiromasa Ogura, an experience he says was highly
influential in his development:“It was a great experience, I got to work with him
and learn so much. He didn’t care that I was Black,or American or anything like that. Of course it wasa talking point. He’s not blind! But it was never like,‘you can’t be here.’ He was super excited to workwith me and he was interested that this American
had come all the way to work with him in Japan. He
couldn’t speak English but he wanted to try to figureout how to make it possible to learn. I could speak
Japanese but they still had the patience to speak
slowly to make sure I could learn properly. It was agreat experience. You should have a realistic ideaof your heroes. They’re not deities. I never expected
more from Ogura-san than just for him to be a great
artist who was doing great things. I just wanted tolearn that and I gained a great friend from that. Not
only did I learn to paint but I met my hero and gained
a friend.”
There are parallels between Arthell’s own journey ofmentorship by Hiromasa Ogura and the journey ofa classic anime protagonist. In many ways he is the36

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

main character, voyaging to a distant land to learna rare skill from the elusive master Ogura-san. It
was during this mentorship that Arthell ‘studied theblade’, absorbing lessons and techniques in light,
form and stroke to become an accomplished background artist.
“One of Ogura-san’s major focuses is; he really feels
like light and shadow is really important, so he reallypushes his darks. Also, his colour palette is quite
muted, he doesn’t use bright colours where everything is pink and purple. That was one of the things
that helped me gravitate towards Ogura-san because
it was more realistic. One of my other favorite artists
is Caravaggio. His whole movement was tenebrism
which was also about light and shadow. I felt that
there was a really huge parallel between their approach to art. For me, I think I try to do that as well.
Having really strong darks, and really paying attention
to how light affects things in the artwork. That’s
something that Ogura-san always impressed uponus, that light is really important, what does the lightdo?”
As Arthell was starting his journey in 1990s America,
the anime landscape looked vastly different to how it
does today in 2020. It was very much underground,
as the internet was barely a thing. He explains; “atthat time there was no anime on TV, so you would
have to kind of be in the know about it already, toknow to go and rent it from the video shops — andnot all the video shops had anime to watch.” Fansand followers of the culture would venture to Chinatown, or to niche videocades to find coveted Japanese anime videos among the pirated rap albums,
bling and bootleg designer goods.
“There’s always been these subcultural movementsthat happen between anime and black culture thatare interesting. Kind of the same with Hip-Hop earlyon when that was all underground. In the black culture we had Kung-Fu movies, and we had anime, andit was all this underground thing. The black culture
was really pushing that. I had a talk with a few of myfriends and we were talking about why anime andKung-Fu resonated with black people, and we cameup with the idea that there’s usually an underdog.
Most have a theme that there’s a weaker character
who becomes stronger and then excels..”
He continues: “With black culture in general, from ourhistory and where we came from – sometimes without
a sense of culture or belonging – we are always trying
to search for something, and do better, and do greater
things. So I think we identify with the characters inanime and gravitate towards it. It’s an escape. People
find their favorite characters, see things through theireyes and see a better future. I think that’s why anime
resonates with our culture so much.”37

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

This uniquely black form of bildungsroman, a familiar
underdog character overcoming disadvantages inorder to ultimately succeed, may hold the key to thespecial appeal anime has to its Black fans. A collective
compassion for underdog characters who overcome
odds and prove themselves to be formidable, like theflamboyant Mugen in Samurai Champloo, condemned to a tough life by being born in exile — acharacter clearly drawn as being Black.
Joshua Toussaint-Strauss elaborates: “I think there’squite a few reasons anime resonates with Blackaudiences. Looking at narrative themes, there’s
the escapism, themes of loyalty, comeradery andpersecution, and an abundance of non-white heroes.
I would agree that there are a lot of parallels withblack people’s affections for Kung-Fu films which had
similar themes.”
LaNeysha Campbell agrees; “I think the appeal comesfrom seeing characters that might face discrimination,persecution, or challenges that have to work hardto overcome them. I am a sucker for characters that
don’t give up in the face of adversity, or an underdog
that people doubt achieving the impossible, because I
see myself in characters like that.”
This appeal has led to a genuine courtship between
anime and the Black community. Fan networks have
exploded around anime cosplay, and Hip-Hop artists
continue to give their co-sign to the genre. Back in
March of this 2020, a viral video showed popularrapper Lil Uzi Vert in an Audi R8 that was customised
all-over with vibrant manga print. The XO Tour Lif3
hitmaker makes no secret of his love for anime, citing
it often in lyrics and making it a big part of his artistic
identity. This crossover between audiences is pushing
the worlds of anime and rap music into a healthy
period of symbiosis. D’Art Shtajio’s recent video for
The Weeknd’s Snowchild, led by Arthell, is the latest
example of this bearing fruit.
Music video for Snowchild by The
Weeknd, animated by D’ART Shtajio.
“They approached us, presented the song and said
that essentially this was what they wanted to create.
It just went from there, we were just super excited
to work with them. He’s a massive artist and he hasamazing ideas. We were trying to figure out how
to get his ideas into it. The interesting thing was, ofcourse The Weeknd is exploring lots of visual avenues
with animation and his recent videos and stuff, but
we were also concerned about his fans. We didn’tknow if all of his fans were anime fans, because theimage is so different. We wanted to make sure thatthe thing that we created was something that his
fans would like as well, and not be alienated by it.”Appealing to the star’s lifelong fans, and bringing
traditional anime into The Weeknd’s musical world,
known for being dark and brooding, presented
unique challenges that the D’Art Shtajio team embraced.
“We had to do our research and try to figure out
what the body of his work looks like, and how it
feels, and yes, his work is often very dark. Trying to
get that same feeling with the anime, which is something I really liked about working with XO [Weeknd’slabel]. One of our tenets here at D’Art is to makeanime accessible to everyone, we really do feel like it’sa genre and anything can be done within it.”
“In a way, it feels very validating to know that someof these celebrities and artists grew up loving anime
just like I did” says LaNeysha, with words that will
resonate with many of her generation of anime fans.
“Whenever I hear an anime reference in a song or
see streetwear influenced by an anime, I love it. WhileI think the popularity of anime has always been there,
more people know about it now, and now they aresharing how it influenced them through their own
crafts.”38

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

“It’s one of the greatest, most sophisticated formsof storytelling in the modern age,” adds Joshua, “soI think it’s fantastic that anime is becoming moreacknowledged as a serious genre in arts and entertainment, worldwide, and I love to see it referenced
in popular culture.”
This period of cultural crossover has Arthell feeling
optimistic. “For us at D’ART Shtajio, we’re excitedabout it and we really like it. Particularly with who weare, of course we love hip-hop, as well as everything
pop-culture. For us, anime is a medium and I think itshould be in all avenues of entertainment.”

How streaming
video changed adultanimation
by Philip Mak

Adult animated comedies have dominated the North American primetime and late-night time slots
for the last three decades, driven largely by traditional broadcasters like Fox, Adult Swim and Comedy
Central. With the arrival of SVODS in the 2010s, the tone and tune of toons began to shift — case inpoint: the multifaceted, unflinchingly raw portrayals of mental health and addiction on Netflix’s BoJack
Horseman.
Having premiered in 2014, BoJack Horseman galloped so a new cohort of non-comedic, niche adultanimated productions could run – series that are
increasingly putting the “stream” into the mainstream zeitgeist, from musical-inspired shows likeCentral Park to the horror-action of Castlevania to theuniquely insightful and pan-dimentional podcastingof Midnight Gospel.
In each show, animation is integral to the storytelling;
BoJack Horseman heart-wrenchingly captures internal
processes from BoJack’s mother losing her memories
to Alzheimer’s disease to the titular character’s opioid-fuelled descent into psychosis. Not only does themedium lend itself to depicting tragic situations, butsoftens them while adding a sense of suspended disbelief. Similarly, this allows for pubescent teenagers
on Big Mouth to suddenly burst into song with theirhormone monsters or for horrifically bloody prehistoric violence on Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal.
Trailer for the final season of Bojack
Horseman, produced by Tornante
Television, Boxer vs. Raptor andShadowMachine.
It is a fact that streamers are driving the adult animation boom, comedic or otherwise. Research by industry expert John Evershed of High Concentrate LLC,
who produced a widely circulated white paper on
the topic, shows that of the 103 upcoming original
39

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

animated series, 25 have been ordered by Netflix anda further 17 by HBO Max. The latter SVOD is not only
producing content in-house but also purchasing existing IPs, having famously bought the streaming rights
to South Park for a reported $500 million.
While comedy does well with the ever-elusive 18 to
34 demographic domestically, Evershed notes that it
is very culturally-specific and can be hard to translate
for global audiences. He says, “A show like Rick andMorty will work in English-speaking markets, but it’sa fairly specific style of comedy that doesn’t translatethat well into a lot of other markets, whereas when
you start to get into genre stuff and that’ll really start
to fly internationally.”
Amongst comedies, those with a sci-fi slant seemto be especially trendy at the moment — riding aninter-dimensional, inter-generational interest begun
by Rick and Morty. Hulu’s Solar Opposites became thestreamer’s most-watched original comedy premiere,while CBS has blasted off with Star Trek: Lower Decks
and Fox has the upcoming series X-Files: Albuquerque. Reboots are also in high demand, with a newclass of Clone High coming to HBO Max, whilerevivals of Beavis and Butt-Head, Run & Stimpy and a
Daria spinoff are also in the works.

Trailer for the fourth season of Big
Mouth, produced by Danger Goldberg
Productions, Good at Bizness, Inc.,
Fathouse Industries and Titmouse, Inc.
As Big Mouth creator Andrew Goldberg points out in
Los Angeles Times, streaming has changed not only
the type of animation people consume, but also how
they consume it — specifically, now they can bingeit. He says, “You’re really making 10 episodes at once
that are meant to be watched in a row, which is cooland different. And the ability to serialize relationships
is really exciting and is one of the ways that we findeven more emotional stories, because we track therelationships across different episodes.”While animated sitcoms like The Simpsons and American Dad have typically featured 22-minute episodes
with self-contained plot-lines and salacious punchlines that appealed to both regular and occasionalviewers on linear television broadcasters, streamers
can host series with complex storylines sprawlingacross entire seasons. In the same article, Hulu’s SVP
of Originals Craig Erwich notes that many viewers
watch episodes more than once, while Amazon Studio’s COO Albert Cheng points out that adult toons
appeal to younger Millennials.
Reaching this demographic is increasingly shaping
content strategy. Among upcoming original adultanimated series, Evershed’s research finds that the 60
percent are still comedies — with the next biggest
groups being drama, sci-fi and action. Slightly overhalf are original IPs (52.2 percent), while 12.2 percent
are based on existing television shows and 11.1 percent are sourced from video games, such as Witcher
and DOTA.
“The video game generation has grown up watching cutscenes, CG and characters in very expansive
worlds with complex stories. Video games are thebiggest IP franchises for the 14 through 34 demographic — they’re bigger than movies. That trend willgrow the overall adult animation category as well,”says Evershed.
This comfort with a wider variety of content may be
why younger audiences are open to adult animation.
With hundreds of millions of video game fans globally, it is easy to see why studios are expanding thosestories beyond consoles and computers.
Trailer for Castlevania season 4, produced
by Frederator Studios, Shankar
Animation, Project 51, Powerhouse
Animation and Mua Film.
Amongst the most widely celebrated video-games-turned-animation is Castlevania, produced

40

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

by Powerhouse Animation in Austin, Texas. The
studio is led by Brad Graeber, who also serves as
supervising producer on the aforementioned Netflix
adaptation. When his crew was pitching Frederator
to work on the series, they used a trailer they created
for an original IP they would also come to make:Seis Manos.
Powerhouse was founded 20 years ago, launchedwith a passion for traditional animation at a time
when 2D films were still in vogue and on screensdomestically — working on Adam Sandler’s Eight
Crazy Nights. However, as 3D became de facto at thebox office, Graeber and his team shifted to doing
everything from educational to video game content.
While doing the latter, he began to develop his crew’s
action animation skills.
“The animation industry has been reticent to do
action-oriented adult content for a long time andso when the door was open, thanks to productions
like Castlevania, we went all in to take advantage ofthe opportunity and show folks that it can be done.
We’ve been thinking and talking about it for almost
two decades and finally got the chance to do it,” says
Graeber.
The type of hand-drawn animation required to create
action-based adult content is more complex than theflat staging on series like Family Guy. For instance, toachieve the fluid motion of a fight scene, artists needto do detailed in-betweening as characters move inperspective. Once that pipeline and those skills havebeen developed, the possibilities are limitless.
On top of Castlevania, Graeber and his crew are busy
working through lockdown on their aforementioned
original IP Seis Manos — an action adult animation
following Mexican orphans trained in martial arts
— as well as Kevin Smith’s Masters of the Universe:
Revelation series, rebooting He-Man for a new generation. Unsurprisingly, all three are for Netflix.
Trailer for season 1 on Seis Manos,
produced by Powerhouse Animation
Studios and Viz Productions.
To sharpen his crew’s action animation skills, Graeber
has martial arts experts come in to answer questions
and do fight choreography sessions filmed by his storyboard artists. That said, when it comes to combat
and gore, he believes it should only be included tofurther storylines. With wider possibilities in animation, how far is too far?
“As long as you’re adding to the story, almost anything goes. We’re not a torture porn sort of studioso we’re not ever going to do anything just to beoutlandish, but there is a difference between violence

in animation and violence in live action. Also, there’sa bit of cognitive dissonance that we play with inthese pieces — mostly that domestic audiences are
not used to seeing the level of violence that is in
animation overseas,” says Graeber.
As Graeber points out, adult animated action is already widely popular outside of North America, withthe most prominent example being Japanese anime.
He believes that Millennials growing up watching
dubbed versions of this non-comedic cartoon content
may have paved the way for homegrown series like
Castlevania and Seis Manos.
So where is next for adult animation? Evershed thinks
it will only continue to get more specific. He says,“Where I see it heading longer term is a pure action
or pure drama or pure horror. You’re going to getsome of these more straight-up genre pieces that you
would otherwise see in Japanese anime being written, produced and created by Western storytellers.”
Given the evidence of the last year, if the streamers
distribute it, viewers will come.

41

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Animating Latinx
culture and characterson The Casagrandesby Philip Mak

It started as a rumour. The first time Miguel Gonzalez
heard about The Casagrandes, it was barely more thanhushed speculation after a Mexican-American family
had been introduced on The Loud House. Keeping his
ear to the ground, eventually his friend, director
Miguel Puga, told him the rumour was becoming
reality — and he knew he had to be a part of it.
Flash forward and Puga is now co-executive producer
and director on The Casagrandes, while Gonzalez
serves as art director on the groundbreaking Nickelodeon animated series. The Loud House spin-off
follows Ronnie Anne, her multigenerational Mexican-American family and their multicultural community in the fictional Great Lakes City (based on Chicago, with hints of New York City and Los Angeles).
The show has been celebrated for its diverse, inclusive
perspective.
“I don’t want to build walls; I just want to build
the table longer so we can all have a seat. I have adaughter and I want her to see herself and have arole model in a character like Ronnie Anne and say, ‘Iwant to be like that when I get older,’” says Puga.
Having premiered to widespread praise in October
2019, The Casagrandes has already won an Emmy
and was renewed for its third season before its
second even launched. For Mexican-American artists
like Puga and Gonzalez, the series is a dream cometrue — not only to help create a cartoon where theirculture is focal and authentically shared, but also tohave that representation both on-screen and behindthe scenes.
The Casagrandes began while Puga was a storyboard
artist on The Loud House, and he quietly transformed
42

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

a new character from a redhead into a Latinx girl:Ronnie Anne. Catching the attention of the show’s
producers and writers, he was asked to help themdevelop a show idea they had for Ronnie Anne andher brother Bobby.
Puga pitched a concept based on his own life’s story
growing up in a multigenerational Mexican-American
family. That was in 2014. Not long after, the project
got greenlit and he has subsequently built out a crew
he describes as a family that works together andsupports each other.
“One of the first things that I pitched to my producers was let’s make our cast and crew reflect the characters that we’re working on. I reached out to over
300 Latinx artists and I’m very proud to say I think
we’re one of the most diverse crews in Burbank. A lotof our artists reflect themselves into the show — theypull characters and designs off of people they knowor they grew up with,” says Puga.

It’s very important for kids
also to see themselves
reflected on TV
Miguel Puga

Gonzalez estimates at least 30 percent of the show’s
team is Latinx, which helps contribute to the authenticity of the animation and art. He was brought onto
the team by former The Loud House creative director
Amanda Rynda and, while he was aware he couldnot change the style massively, he knew he had tobring in a more Mesoamerican colour palette — andNickelodeon agreed.
The series’ palette draws inspiration from homes in
Gonzalez and Puga’s families to artist Frida Kahlo’s
house in Mexico City to luchador masks to pottery
and textiles. Each source is brighter and more vivid
than the last — a contrast to the more muted Michigan colour story of Loud House.
While statistics for toons are scarce, according to the
TV portion of UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity report,
Latinx actors represented only 6.6 percent of broadcast, 4 percent of digital and 5.5 percent of cablelead roles. Strides are being made in animation, withThe Book of Life director Jorge Gutiérre attributing
this to the Dora generation — a cohort of creators
who grew up seeing a Latinx central character as
normal, according to Variety. The proof is in the
productions — Elena of Avalor, Victor and Valentino,
Onyx Equinox — as well as rapidly growing industry
groups like LatinX in Animation, founded by Magdiela Hermida Duhame in 2018.
For Gonzalez, representation is foundational to his
work now: “On The Casagrandes, I can represent myculture — growing up, we didn’t really have that. I
knew it was important for me to somehow be partof this so that we could be honest with our culture; I
feel like a lot of people take on these cultural-themedshows, but they don’t bring on the talent that
represents that culture. People can see right throughit, so I want to make sure we’re being represented
honestly because if you can’t relate to us, then what’s
the point?”
The team is supported by cultural consultant andcartoonist Lalo Alcaraz, who served a similar role on
Pixar’s Oscar-winning, Latinx-centred animated film
Coco. Puga has been a long-time fan of his and hehelps to ensure that Mexican-American traditions areshown in a way that can be universally understoodand enjoyed, without ever making fun of them.
Puga notes that while the cultural context is different
from The Loud House, the pipeline is quite similar— albeit with adjustments currently to adapt to theongoing pandemic. He aims for the production to be
as stress-free as possible, with a floating storyboard
artist and designer available to ensure nobody ever
becomes overwhelmed or overworked. With pride,
he tells me everyone loves to work on the show.
Artistically, Gonzalez integrates drawing styles thatovershoot lines, uses black fields to contrast all thevibrancy, and takes direct inspiration from Mexican
folk art and culture — from Papel Picado and Sugar
Skulls to food to winks to famous wrestlers like El

43

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Tigre. As he explored these kaleidoscopic facets of his
culture and its shades, he created reference sheets forhis painters and colour supervisors.

mother dragged him and his brother to stand in line
for hours at a department store to see the famed
Puerto Rican astrologer and actor.

“I know we’re doing really well compared to otherproductions at Nickelodeon. [Our animation has] areally simple style, but we just make it look easy. Our
stuff is comparatively pretty minimal. I think that’s
one thing that’s cool about Casagrandes is that you
don’t really need all the bells and whistles — juststories with heart that people can relate to,” says
Gonzalez.

“We finally saw Walter Mercardo being carried inon a golden throne, and my brother and I were so
confused. I think my mom felt embarrassed, andeveryone was going crazy. Also, the line didn’t evenexist anymore because it was just like a zombie horde
going towards him so my mom was like, ‘Alright, let’s
go home!’ after three hours. I pitched that idea andwe had an episode loosely based off of it,” says Puga.

Looking towards Sunday comics strips, many American cartoonists also shaped The Casagrandes’ animation style including Walt Kelly, Hank Ketcham of
Dennis the Menace and Charles Schultz of Peanuts aswell as Spanish-Mexican illustrator and writer Sergio
Aragonés. Blending contemporary film and televisionreferences like the work of Quentin Tarantino and Samurai Jack with old-school toons was also elemental,
with The Casagrandes’ matriarch Rosa having black
dots for eyes similar to The Flintstones.

Enriched by thoughtful sound design and music,
the world these stories and characters live in wasof paramount importance. The Casagrandes differsfrom The Loud House in that it is set in a city, andGonzalez had to make it look safe so that children
audiences would want to spend time there. A trick
he used was adding lots of foliage and greenery, as
well as the aforementioned bright palette and Sunday
comics style.

Rosa was inspired by Puga’s own stoic mother andsofter grandmother, with most characters being
amalgamations of his real-life relatives and childhood
growing up in Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights neighbourhood. Now, with his crew, it has truly become afamily affair.
“A lot of these things start with a nugget of a real
story and then we try to elaborate and embellish
them, and turn them into a universal story that is
relatable to everyone. The show launched off the way
I grew up and now, with everyone on the crew, I feellike everyone pitches their own little nuggets and we
get all these amazing stories,” says Puga.
These nuggets include moments from Puga’schildhood that ended up in The Casagrandes. The
character of Ernesto Estrella, for instance, is based on
the flamboyant Walter Mercado. As a child, Puga’s

Sprinkled throughout the city and series are Eastereggs that are winks to the crew’s families, Mexican-American culture and pop references — fromcandies they grew up with to Gonzalez’s wife’s nameon signage to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo by
the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. While these may
be easy to miss, The Casagrandes’ positive impact
for diversity, inclusivity and representation of Mexican-American families is clear to see.
Looking ahead, Puga hopes The Casagrandes will encourage other artists to pitch and produce shows thatreflect their own childhoods — Latinx or otherwise.
He says, “I want any kid that’s growing up right now
to see me and say that their dreams are attainable.
Just have an idea and go out there and make it —that’s always been my main goal. And if that’s the
positive impact I’m giving, then I love it. Someone
influenced me growing up, and I hope to influence
one or two other people.”

Hopefully, my daughter will
follow in my footsteps; I’m
kicking the door open for her
so she can come sit at thetable too.
Miguel Puga

44

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

How animation festivals
were reinvented during
the COVID-19 pandemic
by Mike Schnier

Each year, festivals around the world bring artists, audiences and studios together to celebrate thecraft of animation. For professional and aspiring filmmakers, these are opportunities to get recognized
for their work, to foster connections with peers, and be inspired by screenings that they might not
be able to see at any other venue. These festivals also serve as avenues of outreach and connection
between studios and emerging talent, with portfolio reviews and professional development sessions.
Animation festivals were among the many in-person events cancelled, delayed or transformed by
COVID-19, which was felt by the community as well as event organizers.
“We were right on the cusp. The pandemic was firsthitting California when we were about to launch,”said Einar Baldvin, co-founder of GLAS Animation— an annual festival held in Berkeley with a focus on
independent and underrepresented voices in animation. “All the prep was done, which is essentially ayear’s worth of work.”

The planning starts right after
the previous festival finishes.
Einar Baldvin

wwIn early February, GLAS Animation reached out
to public health officials. Their team was initially toldthat COVID-19 outbreaks would not disrupt events in
mid-March. The situation changed as the pandemic
spread through the United States.
The signal film for GLAS 2020, directed byLénaïg Le Moigne and featuring sounds
by Skillbard.

45

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

“The festival scaled down from ‘It’s happening,’ to‘We’re going to get everybody hand sanitizer,’ to‘The international guests and speakers are no longer
coming,’ to ‘We’re just going to have the screenings
and no speakers’ said GLAS Animation director andco-founder, Jeanette Jeanenne. “Eventually we had
sent out an email telling everyone the festival was going to be stripped down, with no parties or anything.
And the next day, we realized that we can’t do thisand put a stop to it altogether.”Yvonne Grzenkowicz, executive director of Animation Nights New York (ANNY) shared a similar
experience from the East Coast: “We suspended our
events the same day that Tribeca suspended their
festival. It all sort of happened at once. On the day
I was making the decision, I think there were 100
announcements being made in the city.”“I initially thought, ‘There is a bathroom right there.
We will do a PSA and make sure attendees wash theirhands.’ If I had a huge grant, we would see what we
could address with drive-in theatres,” Grzenkowicz
said. “But we could not in good conscience bringpeople together deliberately in a space, if there’s adeadly disease that could potentially kill attendees.”A still from Animation Night New York’s virtual event space, provided by Yvonne Grzenkowicz.

Poster design for OIAF 2020
designed by Christy Karacas.
Due to the circumstance of when festivals fell on acalendar, some event organizers were given moretime to prepare and adapt. Managing director of the
Ottawa International Animation Festival, Kelly
Neall, told us that the OIAF’s film operations team
had opportunities to learn from other festivals andfind solutions for screenings and panel discussions.
“Initially we were thinking we could do a couple
in-person events, but because so many of our delegates come from the States and abroad there wasjust no way.”

We were not going to hold aninternational super-spreader
event in September.
Kelly Neall

Yvonne Grzenkowicz used the time between her
festival’s cancelled monthly event and ANNY’s annual
showcase to build custom online platforms for their

46

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

screenings, due to concerns with automated moderation and policy on popular video streaming services:“I just didn’t want to get hit with piracy or content
flags. We’re showing films that are really targeted
to an adult audience, sometimes with nudity or
language. There aren’t people making those decisions— the videos are crawled by algorithms.”
Each of the organizers wanted to bring the experience of their festivals to audiences sheltering inplace, but they all had to solve important problems
in a limited amount of time. They needed to consider how to convert in-person screenings, panelsand events into a worthwhile day or week of online
programming that meets the needs of filmmakers
and audiences. To completely reinvent their festivals,
the organizers needed to consider why attendees
return to their events each year — and how much ofthat could translate to a computer monitor or tablet
to begin with.
The Ottawa International Animation Festival has
been hosting screenings, exhibits and workshops
since 1976, in partnership with its parent organization, The Canadian Film Institute. The festival brings
an international audience to Ottawa, a city with arenewed animation industry — and is now home to
new studios, such as Mercury Filmworks and Atomic
Cartoons. In a typical year, OIAF is a five-day event

held alongside The Animation Conference, whereartists and industry pitch, network and participate inpanels. The event also includes the Night Owl Party,
an Animator’s Picnic, and the student-focused Animation Exposé, among its packed schedule.
“What we hear is that OIAF really energizes students
and gets them inspired. We get these huge groups
coming up from the east coast of the United States
and across Ontario. They get to see work fromaround the world that might be completely different
from anything else that they’ve seen before,” said
Neall. “Azarin Sohrabkhani always puts together anamazing series of professional development talks. It’sa chance for animation students to see some of theiridols. In our last live event, we had Rebecca Sugar,
and it was just so uplifting to the students, some ofthem in tears.”

OIAF sketch drawn by Pilar
Newton-Katz.
“I have been attending the OIAF since 1994. They
used to skip years, so this past year was my 20th festival, I believe,” said Pilar Newton-Katz, an accomplished freelance animator and educator based outof Brooklyn. “The first thing that I noticed about thefestival was the camaraderie. Of course the animationand panel discussions are amazing, but being able
to go to a screening and see the filmmaker standing
right next to you order a beer at the party that nightis always so amazing to me.”
GLAS Animation was founded more recently, firstscreening films to attendees in 2016. GLAS usuallytakes place over four days at theatres, galleries andinstitutions across downtown Berkeley, a university
town that is a welcome change of pace for attendees from the Bay Area. The festival showcases workfrom American and international artists in a curated
competition showcase and also features retrospectives, special-curated programs, workshops, panels,
performances, and art installations. Each year, GLAS
also provides animation grants to help support two
independent animation artists within the UnitedStates.
“We have the younger generation at the helm,” said
Jeanenne, speaking about GLAS Animation’s appeal.
“And I think our different experience leads to a different curatorial perspective which works as a great
accompaniment to other festivals.”

47

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

“The big attraction, apart from the work, is thecommunity,” Einar Baldvin suggested. “There’s a lotof interesting people in a rather small space, becauseof the way it’s set up. In Berkeley, everything’s aroundthe same corner.”

You can walk to the theater,
to the parties, to the different
venues, constantly bumping
into the same people andreally getting to know them.
Einar Baldvin

The importance of location was a common theme
for event organizers: “Coming from out of town,
everything’s in walking distance. You can’t reallyavoid each other in downtown Ottawa,” said Neall,
speaking about OIAF.
For Animation Nights New York, Grzenkowicz told
Animation From Every Angle that their city has adifferent strength: “The best thing about New York
City is it’s a hub. Every event had been packed withpeople, like sardines in a can — sometimes uncomfortably. It’s just kind of neat to have everyone in thesame room together in real life. There’s an energy
there.”For Grzenkowicz, that energy could be felt when theaudience reacts to a film: “It ties us all together in a
way that you can’t quite replicate when there’s lagand stuttering.”
Since 2015, the small team at Animation Nights New
York have curated monthly screenings, an annual Bestof Fest conference, and ANNY Exchange networking events, which connect animation talent to AR,
VR and animated projects. ANNY also works with
Cannes Marché du Film and Short Film Corner toshortlist qualifying films for the ANNY Cannes Program. The venues the festival screens at include 180
Maiden Lane, the One World Trade Observatory, theArts Brookfield Terrace at Brookfield Place, and The
Gutter Spare Room in Williamsburg Brooklyn.

Considering how important those locations havebeen, what happens when attendees are no longer able to experience everything that comes withattending an event in Ottawa, Berkeley or New
York City? Newton-Katz told us she was pleasantly
surprised by how much OIAF’s online events still
felt like the festival she had experienced in previous
years. The highlights for her included, “the talks,
the screenings, the meet the filmmakers [sessions]and the Zoom hangs. We were given ample time toengage.”“The staff really went the extra mile to make things
seem like it was a regular OIAF,” Neall added. “We
did pre-recorded videos with all the filmmakers taking
a bow and edited that into our official competition
screenings. Chris Robinson [OIAF’s Artistic Director]
was doing Q&A’s afterwards. We’ve never done that
before.”While all the organizers acknowledged tradeoffs withnot being able to hold their events in-person, providing all of the sessions online created new opportunities. For the first time, attendees who were not able
to travel or access the space could fully participate.
“A lot of people can’t normally afford to come up to
Ottawa every year or they’re held back by budgetary
restrictions or mobility issues, so it was nice for them
to be able to experience the festival. It depends on
our capacity, but offering some of the programming
online can be great to help, [and continuing thisfor] future live events is a definite possibility.” Neall
added, “Our Meet-the-Filmmaker sessions, which
also happen at the live event, were fantastic this year.
Usually we can only interact with the filmmakers inattendance. This year, we were able to bring in all of
the filmmakers,”“We embraced a bit of Twitch’s gaming side for the
opening ceremony,” said Baldvin, describing GLAS
Animation’s 2020 showcase stream. “We actually
started our ceremony off with a game of Warcraft 3.
They got excited once they figured out it was a joke.
We’re just kind of embracing that we’re on Twitch.”

Instagram promotion for GLAS
Animation’s 2020 Online Showcase.
“We felt that Twitch was a community-centric
platform and is something that we could continue
to nurture for a much longer period of time, beyond
the pandemic. So we’ve been hosting regular events
there.” At the time of writing, GLAS’ interviews
were seen by 10,000 attendees, comparable to theirin-person audience in 2019.

48

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Overall Jeanenne reported that sponsors, filmmakers
and audiences were receptive: “People are just very
understanding and supportive, and the whole worldis going through the same thing at the same time.”
Animation Nights New York resumed monthly eventsin December, with a Virtual Reality Mixer Spaceavailable for attendees following online screenings,
which can be accessed using dedicated VR headsets
as well as traditional desktop and mobile web browsers. Grzenkowicz said that she invited sponsors andpartners to tour their virtual venue over the summer:“All of this would have been a little silly if we were
having in-person events, but it was interesting to talkto them and have them seriously consider a virtual
reality event.”

I found it fascinating. People
can be resistant to change, buteveryone’s been very excited.
Yvonne Grzenkowicz

Why are creators andaudiences drawn toshort-form content?
by Edward Hartley

There is a behavioural shift happening between creators and their audiences, and along with it isa new focus on short-form content. The big platforms are placing their bets, with new services like
Facebook Watch, Snap Originals and YouTube Originals emerging. As more of our viewing becomesstreamed rather than programmed, we drift further away from the half-hour to hour-long blocks thatused to define television and into a more dynamic place. In response, broadcasters are experimenting
more with form and medium, opening up opportunities for a wider variety of voices and talent. Do
TV and film executives have their eye on short-form social media creators for their next generation of
showrunners?

49

If so, they would do well to start their search on TikTok. The video-sharing app, which allows for videos
limited to a minute long, is the most downloaded
App of 2020 and now boasts 850 million users. Its
appeal comes from the ability it has to host situational humour. We see real moments play out, as well as
real interactions and consequences. A myriad of scenarios limited only by the imagination of creators. Audiences find this relatable and accessible, creating aliving, breathing culture that traditional formats struggle to keep up with. For example, Quibi, a short-form
player which raised $1.75B, has since folded after achallenging launch. The platform’s all-star casting,high production values, and serialised content failed
to connect with audiences where community-created
content on TikTok succeeded.

that number in the millions. We spoke to some of
the artists finding short-form success on social media.
Discussing everything from influences to internet
humour, we hear how they leverage their platforms
into the wider world of animation.

What then, do modern audiences want? Consider
the year we’ve had, and some things become clear.
With human contact discouraged and live-action
filming near impossible for many months, a huge gap
has been left in the culture we consume. Collectively,
we craved distraction and entertainment to keep
our minds off the more serious stuff. Animators areamong the artists who have stepped up to the plate,keeping us captivated with small moments of fun andfamiliarity, and reminding us to laugh once in a while.
For their service, some have racked up avid followings

Science used his character to document parts of his
life: from everyday occurrences — disagreementswith your mother, or speaking to a crush — to more
serious subject matter, such as attending the Black
Lives Matter protests. Through this story-telling, Science found popularity rapidly, and reached his goal.
His TikTok reached the million follower landmark
in just two months before a rapid rise to 9 million
that has seen the 21 year old have talks with major
studios and be recognised while walking through hisneighbourhood.

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

King Science spent his time in the U.S. Military practicing discipline and drive. However, it wasn’t a careerin the field that he had his heart set on. “I knew towork hard as I could to get to the success I wanted to
get to”, he says over a video call. “When I joined themilitary, I knew that after my four years here, I would
be on about a million followers in something. Then
when I got out, I’d just do that”. For Science, his that
was animation, and he set about learning the art anddesigning a character to act as his centrepiece.

“When the animation community got my attention
on YouTube, it wasn’t necessarily the animation that
got me hooked.” Science recalls the channels andcreators he spent his teenage years watching.

The pace of YouTube comedy
was just funnier to me. They
were a lot more blunt. Internet
comedy is so different to what
you see on TV.
King Science

Like many in his digitally-native generation, Science
was enticed by the creative freedom that social media
offered. “YouTube leaves you with more creative
control, which means more risk-taking. I would see
things and think, ‘are you allowed to say that?’ But itwould be like, really funny.”
Having a platform to freely publish ideas and access an audience presented an opportunity wheretraditional TV had fallen short, which was enticing

50

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

to young creators, giving rise to a culture of snappy, short-form comedy now referred to broadly as‘internet humour.’ An ever-evolving canon whichhas played out across platforms like YTMND, Newgrounds, YouTube, Vine, Twitter, 9Gag Snapchat andthe now hugely popular TikTok. King Science, and his
friend network of animators, artists and comedians,
are among its new stars.
“TikTok has been working and it hasn’t failed meyet,” says Science. “If I had stopped at 2 million
and then returned to YouTube, then I wouldn’t havemade it to the almost 9 million followers I have now.
You just keep pressing that button that gives youwhat you need until it doesn’t work.” Science gives a
calculated answer as to why his content in particularresonates so strongly with his audience. It is not byaccident; he’s confident and concise about what eachpiece of content needs to have in order to work. “Ialways make sure I have an exact goal in what mycontent is, and I make sure that it’s better than what I
think anyone else can do, in a week. That timeframe,that sound, that trend. Executed in the right time
better than what anyone else is doing.”
While he knows what he’s doing, Science talks on thesubject in the kind of carefree, casual way that makes
it all sound easy. “I just combine things that I liked
and that I saw other people like every time I post!”

Science points to another, altogether more tried-andtested trick to explain his success: Based loosely upon
himself, Science’s character sports a trademark outfit
of cream hoodie, blue jeans, and cartoon crown. It
provides a relatable anchor that allows him to roamand explore other subject matter from his life, like
his insomnia, or moving out of home: “Following acharacter is super easy. From my years watching YouTube, it’s clear people like following a character. So I
decided to make sure I had a set character.”
Another artist who understands the appeal of thelovable character is Brooklyn-based artist, John McLaughlin. His “fuzzy dudes” inhabit stunning visualenvironments that he creates and shares with his
56,000 fans on Instagram. Often depicted dancing
to modern pop music and in glossy 3D environments,
his characters are shareable eye-candy.
“The world of Fuzzy Dude was born out of my interest and love of character design, but the inspiration behind my animations varies a lot and changes
often,” says John, who is quick to cite his lionheadbunny Pepper as a primary source. One reason Johnis drawn to short-form is his own attention span. He
is always, he says, “subconsciously catering” to thepossibility that he will get distracted and move on to
the next thing. He understands that his audience may
be doing the same: “You’re rendering for the smallest
screen, where people look at it for maybe half a second before scrolling away.”
John believes that, despite their alien appearance, his
characters appeal to people due to a feeling of familiarity and humanity. He likens watching them to the
feeling of watching reruns of Sesame Street, tapping
into the undercurrent of nostalgia that drives manysocial media trends. Asked if social media has opened
doors for him as an artist, John is quick to praise its
power to connect people to his work.
“Big time. My first major artist collaboration was
through Tumblr. I partnered with them as a creatorfor New York Fashion Week. Since then, a lot of work
has come through Instagram Direct Messages andgeneral discovery from the platform.” Through thesechannels of discovery, John has worked for major
brands like Nike, an experience he’s grateful for: “Myexperience has been nothing but positive when it
comes to working with larger brands.”
Navigating social media, by and large, is becoming
more complicated, with many platforms having
unique formats and codes. One has to be able toadapt across different channels.
“The big thing is adapting,” says King Science. “Thisis new to me, I’ve never typically made super shortvideos, so it’s actually really helping with comedic tim-

51

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

ing and it’s helping with visuals. When I do go backto making long-format videos, it’s going to be reallyhard to click that off.”
With our modern ‘feed’ culture, and content that we
can simply swipe away, it’s unsurprising that timing
and delivery take on utmost importance for him andother creators on the platform. “On TikTok, they canswipe. If they can do that and go to a whole othervideo, then you need to get their attention or theyleave.”
Each platform brings unique technical problems, too.
One of the biggest issues John McLaughlin encounters is, “dealing with and learning to embrace filecompression,” and accepting that, while you may
have render something, “on a large monitor where
you see every little detail and get it perfect,” thatsame level of detail isn’t always going to be noticed
by the audience on their smartphone. “Sometimes I
don’t like the aspect ratio,” King Science describes of
his experience scaling for mobile screens. “Because
there’ll be some scenes where I’m like, ‘Why does theceiling have to be so high?’ or ‘I don’t know how toframe this with two characters.’ But I’ve gotten used
to it.” For him, his choices often come down to thepractical. As a one-person animation outfit, the shortform format of TikTok just makes sense at this stage
in his career.

I’m a one man animator until
I get a team, so, it’s just themost logical thing.
King Science

To really understand the modern culture aroundshort-form video, it helps to rewind back to Vine.
The 6-second video sharing app was short-form in anutshell. Internet-humour bottled up into its purest
essence and disseminated at lightning speed. Vine
has been defunct since 2017, but it is commonly accepted that the platform walked so that TikTok could
run. With such a narrow time limit on clips, concerns
about context, narrative and detail took a back-seat.
Timing, delivery and energy were the drivers. Vine
produced new viral moments seemingly every day,that caught on like popular playground trends. It
gave birth to a style of humour so distinct that eventoday, some viewers on TikTok will brand the mostsatisfying or irreverent moments of humour ‘Vineenergy.’ Understanding the DNA of a Vine could be
instrumental in unpacking the huge popularity ofits successor, and might provide some clues as towhy we’re increasingly moving toward a short-form
culture of entertainment.
“This area of social media is unique from otherconventional media, like full-length movies,” Wahyu
Ichwandardi, known to his fans as Pinot, tells meover email. “So when Vine released in 2013, with its
limitations, like 6-second durations and the ability
to only post video recorded within the app, I saw anopportunity to create a new audience with a newkind of storytelling.”
Pinot’s work on Vine incorporated hand-drawn
sketches, animated then placed alongside real-world
scenery. The interaction between sketched and lifelike elements creates a satisfyingly short hit of actionin each Vine. “With these new video platforms like
TikTok or Byte, I can now create short animation
myself, in a short production time, for an audience of
hundreds or thousands.”
Today, Vine is a thing of the past, and Pinot is mostactive across Instagram and TikTok, where he shares
mixed-media works and experiments with nearly halfa million followers. He shares interesting thoughts
about how the visual language of the internet haschanged, since the time of Vine and before. “Instagram and other video platforms are a place where
we can see how content and its audience evolve overtime. All the animatic content we see, like memes,
emojis and GIFs, are the conversational tools of themodern audience. Every animatic content and every
pixel art animation I make also serves as a conversation tool for that audience.”
Pinot’s newer work explores a range of visual languages, and has recently incorporated pixel art using
a variety of retro hardware devices such as Macintosh
computers and Nokia handsets. In this era of Future
Nostalgia, his usage of beige corporate desktops and‘brick-phones’ exudes the kind of retro-factor thattranslates well in today’s heavily aestheticised social
media culture. Like the ‘old tec’ of Phillip Reeve’s
Mortal Engines, prized for its lost scientific andtechnological knowledge, the tech of our own pastoften serves as a treasured cultural artifact to those
discovering it new. Pinot calls this style ‘low-tech.’“The pixel art content is basically all my unfinishedchildhood projects and ideas,” he explains. “Now I
have a chance to continue those projects, because
the old low-tech style becomes a new aesthetic, andgains a unique appreciation.” In his animation, Pinot
creates a kind of trickery where we see modern pop
culture and memes shown through the pixelated
screens of these early internet-era devices.

For me, the project is not justa nostalgia journey but also
a tech history lesson for mychildren.
Pinot

52

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

For Pinot, looking backward is an important part ofmoving culture forward. “They joined me as a teamwhen we created a lyric video for Twenty One Pilots
with old software on a Macintosh computer.” Another low-tech Macintosh piece Pinot did in homage
to Childish Gambino’s This Is America went viral in
2018.
Despite all of its advantages, it is possible to view
this explosion of short-form as a symptom of the ageof over-information. Theories abound of shortened
attention spans, and on average, a person will scroll
through 300ft of online content every day. One
would be forgiven for wondering if we are losing
our ability to concentrate on things meaningfully.
Should animators be conscious of this in their work?
The creators we spoke to gave optimistic answers in
response.
“Animation delivers imagination better than othermediums,” Pinot suggests. “Short animation on social media has the whole package: expression, visual,audio, motion, story, color. Even in this short-attention span age on social media.”
For King Science, much of it comes down the medium of delivery. “I don’t think people’s attention spansare shortening,” he assures us. “The way I would
start a TikTok is not the way I would start a YouTube
video, nor is it the way I’d start a Netflix series. Because, people’s attention spans are different on eachplatform. On each medium, our brain realises what
it’s doing and we respond to that.”
John McLaughlin ends by addressing another big
issue of the social media age: Mental health, and theanxiety that can often come with sharing work andcomparing your career against others online. “Trynot to get too caught up in what others are doingby comparing your experience with theirs. No matter
what you see, everyone is dealing with their own
struggles and had to start somewhere.” This is sageadvice for anyone looking to share their journey andbuild an audience online. The importance of goingat your own pace, and not being put off by starting
small.
“Often, even if an artist looks like they made it andare doing huge projects, they are struggling behindthe scenes or grinding super hard to keep up,” John
continues. “Look at work, be inspired, but in the end,
do you.”The pandemic’s impact
on working parents andcaregivers in animation
by Erin Hynes

Women today make up the majority of the American workforce, which has resulted in a notable shift
away from the tradition of single income families
with a stay at home mom. But working mothers
face serious challenges in finding balance between
parenting and their careers. Now, the most pressing
challenge is the pandemic.
Studies show that in families with two working
parents, women continue to take on more of theirhousehold’s responsibilities. This reality has been
exacerbated by the pandemic, which brought theclosure of daycares and schools. In recent decades,
early childhood education has encouraged women’s
participation in the workplace by providing options
for daytime childcare.
However, the loss of this support system during thispandemic has been a major setback for working
mothers, potentially undoing 10 years of progress
in workplace gender equality. In the animation industry, in which only 20% of creatives are women,
the impact of the pandemic has certainly been felt. To
understand how mothers in animation have handled
the challenges of lockdowns, we spoke with some ofthese women.
Beth Sleven is a busy supervising director and amom of two, ages 3 and 6. Her husband is a stayat home dad, which has allowed Beth to focus onher career full time. “I have always been adamant
about keeping my work life and home life separate.
But in switching to remote work, that separation has
become nearly impossible,” she says.

53

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Beth explains that the collapse of the separation between work and life has been a difficult adjustment,
but that she’s grateful for one particular aspect of it.
“I don’t have a commute anymore, and there are nolonger networking events to attend. Having that timeback means I can have lunch with my family every
day, and I have more time to spend with my kids afterwork. I’ve had time to really hang out with my kids,
and that’s been special.”
Beth shared with us that in the past, she has felt theclassic working parent guilt of feeling like she doesn’thave enough time to spend with her kids. Before
lockdown, long and hectic work days, traffic jammed
commutes, and networking events made it difficult to
fit in quality time with her children.

“without help it’s unlikely that I would be able towork full-time.” Hiring a private caretaker has been
immensely helpful for Megan’s family, but this may
not be a solution that is accessible to all workers.

Research shows that this feeling is common
amongst parents, with 20% of working mothers
reporting that they find balancing work and family
very difficult. For Beth, the silver lining is that her
husband is a stay at home dad. “We know that for
many families this isn’t an option, so we feel so very
fortunate and privileged to be able to do this as longas we can,” she says.

The experience of women in the workforce canvary depending on the ages of their children, too.
Jeanette Moreno King is an animation director,
President of The Animation Guild, and mom of
two children, ages 11 and 14. She says that her kids
are old enough that they can be mostly independent throughout the day as they attend their virtual
classes.

For two-parent families in which both are working
full-time, remote work and remote learning has
required complex solutions. Megan Kreiner is an
animator at Walt Animation Disney Studios. She
and her husband, who also works full-time, shareparenting responsibilities for their two children,
ages 7 and 10. Even before the pandemic, Megansays balancing motherhood and work was tough.
“There’s definitely a misnomer about the possibility ofbalancing both a career and parenting,” Megan tells
us. “In my experience, something’s always gotta give.
Having a career and children together requires a lotof sacrifice, especially when both parents are working
full time.”

Jeanette explains that it’s difficult to cope with theemotional toll of the pandemic. “It’s been hard to
keep my kid’s morale up, and to keep them motivated,” she says. “They’re used to having a social
component in school, and they’re missing milestones
that are so important at that age.” Jeannette tells
us it’s a struggle to assure her children that things
will get better, because they are old enough to fullycomprehend the impact of the pandemic. “As a parent,” Jeanette says, “you want to make everything
better for your kids, and when you can’t do that, it’s
painful.”Megan says that when the pandemic lockdowns
started, she and her husband quickly realized that it
would be tremendously difficult to keep up with theirwork while also juggling remote learning for theirkids. For them, the solution was to hire daytime help.
Their family’s caregiver comes to their home during
school hours to provide an extra hand in keeping thekids on task so Megan and her husband can focus on
their jobs.
“I’m still involved with supporting the kids during
remote learning, so it can be very difficult to stay
focused on creative tasks for work,” Megan says,

54

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Having been in the industry for over two decades,
Jeanette is well aware of the varying obstacles thatmothers in animation face. She says that when she
started out in animation, parenting wasn’t talked
about at work. “When I first got pregnant, I felt likeI needed to learn the secret parenting handshake toconnect with other parents. Everyone was so quiet
about their family lives.” But over the years, she’s
seen this change.
Jeanette says that with every new generation thatenters the animation field, the traditional workplace
norms shift. “I’ve noticed that younger generations ofparents are much more open and honest about theirdifficulties in balancing work and family. There usedto be a martyrdom attitude to work in this industry,
but it’s fading. Instead, we’re having more conversations about how the animation field can support notjust mothers, but all parents.”
According to Jeanette, this shift is reflected in The
Animation Guild as well. The Guild is a labor organization that represents animation and visual effects
artists. Historically, unions have focused on traditional
work issues like safety on the job, wages, and healthcare benefits. In recent years, Jeanette says the Guild
has recognized the importance of offering support
beyond those traditional issues. “We’re realizingthat the Guild can be a hub of communication that
supports people with all types of workplace related issues, including ones having to do with parenthood,”
she says.
One initiative in support of this shift has been thecreation of a Discord channel for Guild members.
Discord is an instant messaging and digital distribution platform designed for creating communities.
On the Guild Discord, members can discuss anything
and everything. “It’s an accessible space for members
to connect with each other, share their experiences,and offer advice and encouragement to each other,”says Jeanette. She explains that initiatives like this arechanging the way people communicate in the workplace by normalizing vulnerability. When Jeanette
started her career, she felt that she couldn’t evershow vulnerability.

Although the committee is known as the “family”
committee, it isn’t exclusively for parents. According
to Kristin, the committee exists to provide a supportive community for members in any stage of life. “Wefeel that it’s important to acknowledge diverse formsof family and different dynamics of caregiving. Someof our members may not be parents, but they may
be caring for an elderly loved one, or supporting asick partner or friend. Regardless of how you define
your family, or what kind responsibilities you have inyour personal life, you can find support in the FAM
committee.”
Kristin says that she believes the work from homeconditions spurred by the current pandemic might
result in positive changes that stick around post
pandemic. And the other women we spoke withthink so too. When animation teams begin returning
to working in the studio, Megan Kreiner hopes thatflexibility is maintained, as well as broader conversations about the perceptions around parenting andfamily support. “In my experience,” she says, “there’s
a perception that parents are less dedicated to theirwork. We need to continue to challenge this perception, because it’s not true.”

Jeanette Moreno Kingon normalizing vulnerability

Across sectors, these perceptions can perpetuate
the motherhood gap, also known as the motherhood penalty. When men and women first enter theworkforce, they’re typically paid equally. But a pay
gap begins to appear when women get married andhave children. While some women choose to work
less once they have children, many don’t. Regardless,research shows employers pay them less because
they seemingly assume mothers will be less committed to their work. This might further explain why
in the animation industry, only 10% of leadershiproles are held by women.

Another Animation Guild initiative that is encouraging new approaches to workplace support is the Family and Membership Committee (FAM Committee).
Kristin Donner, Chair of the committee, tells us that
her team quickly realized there wouldn’t be a one size
fits all solution for the challenges that the committee’s members were facing with remote work.

The initiatives of the Animation Guild and the FAM
Committee show that it is gradually becoming
normalized to have open conversations about thechallenges of balancing work and life. This signals
a changing approach to workplace culture within
the animation industry. By listening to the diverse
experiences of women, parents, and caregivers inanimation, we can begin to lay the groundwork fortangible change.

“If I did, people might
attribute it to me being
a woman. I’m happy to seethat changing.”

Kristin says that this is because every member’s needs
are unique. For example, the parents of an infant
need a different kind of support than the parents ofteenagers. “Moreover,” Kristin says, “obstacles aren’t
always directly related to parenting. Since the startof the pandemic, the FAM committee has put extra

55emphasis on the importance of wellness and mental
health. We’ve created a safe space for members toshare their stories and experiences.”

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Lackadaisy shows
how crowdfunding
opens new genres foranimated filmby Erin Hynes

When Tracy Butler and Fable Siegel approached studios with the concept of an adult animation series,
they were met repeatedly with the same response. The idea of Lackadaisy, a series that follows boozedrinking cats as they indulged in crime against the backdrop of 1920’s Missouri was captivating. But
according to producers, the project was too risky to finance. In Hollywood, studios believe that when it
comes to adult animation, only the sitcom format sells.
Published online, Lackadaisy Cats has been a webcomic since 2006. Set in prohibition-era St. Louis, thenarrative revolves around the fortunes of a prohibition-era speakeasy called The Lackadaisy. After the
speakeasy’s founder is murdered, his widow mustclumsily continue her husband’s legacy of conspiracy,
murder, and crime to keep the bar afloat. And all of
the characters? They’re anthropomorphic cats. Lackadaisy immerses readers into a world of sepia-toned
crime, adventure, and occasional laughs.

After pitching to some networks who said that the
project was too risky, Tracy and Fable turned to Lackadaisy’s dedicated audience. They decided to launch a
crowdfunding campaign to fund a proof-of-concept,
short animated film. They knew that if they weresuccessful, the campaign would demonstrate not only
an audience interested in seeing Tracy’s booze-lovingcats on screen, it would demonstrate that audienceswere ready for adult animation genres to diversify
beyond sitcom comedy.

Tracy says that when she first imagined Lackadaisy,
she pictured the project as an animated film. She’dgrown up watching Disney films, Looney Tunes, andDon Bluth features, and she dreamed of breathingthat same animated and musical life into the story of
the The Lackadaisy speakeasy. With her backgroundas a game developer, graphic designer, and illustrator,
Tracy knew that such a project would be complex and
expensive.

Crowdfunding campaigns have successfully funded
an array of animated films and web series. In 2018,
Vivienne Medrano’s Hazbin Hotel was launchedthrough an ongoing Patreon campaign. An adult
themed, dark comedy musical, the animated series
has since published to Youtube a pilot episode thathas amassed over 40 million views. More recently,
the proposed animated series The Legend of Vox
Machina raised over 11 million dollars in pledges on
the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. The fundingis enough to cover the production costs of the entire
10 episode series, which is set to be released in thefall of 2020.

It wasn’t until recent years that Tracy noticed an influxof independently-made animated films. She knewthat there were modern animation tools and techniques available, the ability to fund projects throughonline campaigns, and a community of viewers eager
for independently-created media. This combinationof factors compelled Tracy to think seriously about
adapting her established webcomic into the format
that she always dreamed it would be.

56

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Examples like these demonstrate the potential oftapping into established audiences while working
simultaneously to draw in new supporters. With theright PR and marketing, a crowdfunding campaign
can broaden the reach of a project. Tracy and Fable
knew that with a well-crafted campaign they could

bypass studio financing and instead, create Lackadaisy through independent funding.

Spike’s name behind the campaign, contributors wereassured that Lackadaisy would be completed.

Tracy and Fable recognized that they had little
experience with Kickstarter campaigns. So, they got
in touch with, as Fable says, the “Queen of Kickstarter:” Spike Trotman. Spike is the cartoonist behind
long-standing webcomic Templar, Arizona, and is
the founder of comic publishing house Iron Circus
Comics. Spike was an early adopter of Kickstarterand is considered a pioneer of the platform. Spike,and Iron Circus, have funded 24 projects throughcrowdfunding to date. Tracy and Fable knew that
Spike’s involvement could be the key to a successful
Lackadaisy campaign. When they pitched the concept
to Spike, she agreed to come on board, and the teambehind the campaign was complete.

In early March, Tracy, Fable and Spike had put together the proposed production team, voice actors, schedule, funding goal and stretch goals. The campaign,
Lackadaisy: The Animated Short Film launched,and in less than 24 hours they achieved their primary
funding goal of $85,000. One month after launching,
the campaign came to an end having reached nearly
all of the team’s stretch goals. In total, they raised$330,000 in funding.

Spike was an invaluable addition to the Lackadaisy
team. She provided the campaign expertise that isessential to capturing the interest and support of an
audience. She helped structure the pledge levels, set
a funding goal, put together a marketing blitz, andgot in touch with a publicist to help spread word
about Lackadaisy. And, Spike attached her name tothe project. According to Fable, Spike is a trusted
entity on Kickstarter. Twenty two of the projects that
Iron Circus has funded through Kickstarter have been
fulfilled, and the other two are in progress. With

57

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

The wild success of Lackadaisy’s campaign has
empowered Tracy and Fable in more ways than one.
By independently funding the film, the team behind
Lackadaisy has preserved their artistic authority overthe project. Fable says that without the involvementof a network or Hollywood producer, they have thefreedom to control every aspect of Lackadaisy, fromthe storyboarding to who they hire to animate or
voice act. For example, Fable explains that the story
includes Creole characters. It was important to the
Lackadaisy team that the characters be represented
by Creole actors. With full artistic control, this detail
was one that they could ensure was fulfilled.
The animation style of Lackadaisy is another uniqueaspect that Tracy, Fable and their production teamwere able to choose thanks to their artistic freedom.
They chose to animate the film in a style that mimics
Xerox line animation, or xerography. Xerography isan animation tool that was notably used in Disney’s
101 Dalmations (1961), and The Secret of NIMH
(1982) from Don Bluth Productions. The technique isknown for its ability to transfer pencil lineart directly
to animation cells and create a textured look. It wasused consistently up until the 1980s, when studios
replaced it with CAPS, an early computer-based
program developed by Pixar that replaced inking andphotocopying entirely.
Fable explains that they’ve chosen to composite theirdigital animation in the style of xerography because
the technique has a look that reflects the nostalgia of
Lackadaisy’s 1920s Saint Louis setting. This compositing technique makes the animation feel like a living
drawing, which furthermore references Lackadaisy’s
origin as a hand-drawn webcomic. Fable says thisanimation style gives the film more texture, life, andmood. It is reminiscent of the darker tone of Xerox
era films, particularly from the 80s. This allows fora perfect mix of the setting’s dark atmosphere andnostalgia to be reflected on screen.
Now that Lackadaisy is funded and production isunderway, Tracy and Fable are looking forward to
sharing the finished film sometime in 2021. The film
will first be premiered to the backers behind their
Kickstarter campaign, and will then be made available
to watch for free on Youtube. Tracy says that theimmense response to the crowdfunding campaign,
combined with the viewership numbers on the final
film, might be the key to earning the attention of
Hollywood studios. With the success of their Kickstarter and the film as a proof-of-concept, they’ll
have proven that Lackadaisy is a risk worth taking.
The dream is that the concept would then be pickedup as a network series.

58

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Although sitcom format has been the tried-and-truestyle of adult animation to date, audience expectations are changing. Films like Anomolisa (2015) andtelevision series’ like Bojack Horseman demonstrate a
growing interest in genres outside of comedy. Audience-driven successes like Lackadaisy, Hazbin Hotel,
and The Legend of Vox Machina further reinforce thediversification of genre and storytelling that audiences want.
Regardless of whether Lackadaisy is picked up by a
network, Tracy and Fable emphasize that this opportunity to make the short film is rewarding enough.
They explain that the process of making the film witha passionate production team has been inspirational.
And, they have the added bonus of sharing the film’s
progress with a dedicated community of Kickstarter
backers. When Lackadaisy premieres on YouTube,
sometime in 2021, Tracy says it will be a testament
to the opportunities that young creators have today.
Thanks to technology, the internet, and online communities, animators, artists and other creators canbring projects to life by tapping into the power ofcrowdfunding and audiences.

Arthell Isom and Henry
Thurlow on being moved
by animeby Mike Schnier

Have you ever been moved by an animated film?
Arthell Isom was so deeply moved by the background paintings in Ghost in the Shell that he studied
Japanese, bought plane tickets, learned the craftof background painting at the Yoyogi Animation
Technical College, worked at Ogura Kobou (Hiromasa
Ogura’s studio), and later founded his own studio:
D’ART Shtajio.
His colleague, Henry Thurlow, could relate: Having
been employed in the American animation industry,
Henry felt dissatisfied with the productions he wasworking on. He wanted to create animation that wasmore like the horror OVAs he watched as a teenager,
and that was not what the US animation industry
was producing at the time. For Henry, the only way
to work on that kind of project was to travel to theother side of the world, and eventually that led him
to work with Arthell.
Based out of Tokyo, D’ART Shtajio is a 2D animation
studio which specializes in the production of anime. If
you are a fan of One Piece, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure,
and Attack on Titan, D’ART Shtajio was one of theservice studios which contributed to those productions. The studio also animated original shorts for
Sturgill Simpson’s Sound & Fury anthology, the music
video for The Weeknd’s single Snowchild, and Shojono Piero (The Doll).
We spoke with Arthell and Henry to understand
why anime had such an influence on their careers
as artists, how it led them to Japan, and what thatexperience was like.

59

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

In the first episode of your vlog, you
describe the origin of your studio’s
name, derived from ‘shtaji’ — thejapanese term for the rough underpainting — and ‘studio.’ Why was
this important to you?
Arthell: My original role in Japan was background
painting, which is more of the fine-art side of animation. While I was working for Ogura Kobo it was
really driven into our heads that the underpainting
is really important. During that stage is where you
should design how the painting looks: that’s where
you decide what the lighting is going to be, you decide your base colours, and at that time we were still
painting on paper.

Now everything’s digital, so you can change it — you
don’t have to think that far ahead.
Henry: I was just going to throw in that I don’t haveanything to say about this because this is one-hundred percent Arthell’s original word.
Arthell: And then we mixed the word studio withshtaji, so that’s how we got Shtajio.
Henry: I think it’s easier to explain in Japanese, because everyone here knows the english word studio,
and when Arthell brings up shtaji to represent underpainting, it’s a Japanese word. Here it’s a one-or-two
sentence explanation, while in English you need to
explain it over the course of a paragraph.
Layout from Sturgill Simpson’s Sound and Fury by Takeshi Shirato,
provided by D’ART Shtajio.

When you were speaking about
productions that you had
more creative control over, youmentioned Sound and Fury, Indigo
Ignited, The Doll, and your studio’scommercial work. What did thatcreative control allow you to dodifferently?
Arthell: Between the two types of productions:
There’s one where the client hires us to do a specificjob for them and then there’s one where we havecontrol — where we do everything and decide essentially what we’re going to do.

Still image from Sturgill Simpson’s Sound and Fury, provided by
D’ART Shtajio.

Everything you wanted your painting to look like, you
had to decide before you put your first brushstroke
on a piece of paper. That stage is the shtaji — or theunderpainting, essentially the most important part.
When we were defining our company and what
we stand for, that is the most important part: thefoundation of what we’re making. If we’re directing
or animating or creating a character, that first stage iswhat audiences — even if they don’t see it, it’s what
they’re perceiving.

It’s how much work we put
into the design or the baseof our production. It’s what I
want our studio to stand for.
Arthell Isom

60

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

For the first kind of production, the client will provide
us with a story, and essentially their vision of what
they hope to see, how they want the pacing to go,
and what they charge us with doing. They give us avery detailed map of what they want, where we’re
providing more of a service. With the other case,because we have creative control over that map andeverything we create ourselves — we get to tell ourown story.
Henry: I am the main director so often — not always— a project will get passed to me. My role is to takecare of the project and make sure it gets produced
correctly. During the first meeting when I am hearing
about the project, whether the client has full control
and they’re just telling us what to make, or whether
it’s an artistic project that we get to have creative
control over — that makes all the difference in theworld to me.
I am going to deliver something good either way. But
for me, if I hear the client just wants this commercial
and they’ve already figured out how they want it
to play out, and the timing and absolutely nothing
can change — a part of me is relieved because that

means I don’t need to think too hard while making
this thing.

I prefer this kind of project,
but admittedly it is a lotharder.
Henry Thurlow

The other projects that occasionally come in, where
we have full creative control — say we need a shortfilm to participate in an anthology, like Sound & Fury
— in that case it’s a lot more work for me. I am going
to be working non-stop and completely stressed out
for the next year or however much production time
we have. The flip-side of all that hard work and thenon-stop thinking about making everything connected, is that at the end I feel that we have a D’ART
Shtajio original.
Arthell: I am going to add, because it’s where Henryand I differ a little: Even with productions where we
don’t have creative control — I am an art director, so
my job is to think about what the world looks like.
Perhaps because of that, I still have a little more control. I get to design the world, so for my role theseprojects are both the same creatively.
Either way, I still try to find ways where I can make aproject fun for me. I can put myself into it, like what
can I make this world look like, what colours am I
going to use, and how is the lighting going to look.
For me both projects still are fun. Directing and art
directing is a bit different. With Sound & Fury, I also
got to write the story, so I was taking a different tack.

What kinds of misconceptions or
misunderstandings do you mostoften hear about Japan’s animationindustry?
Henry: You would think I would have a ton ofanswers, because I did work in the American industry
for a few years, and still have a lot of friends who
work in studios out there. I don’t think they think
about it very often.
I think there’s a handful of artists now who really want to work in anime-styles, and maybe they
do think about it: “How can I get freelance work?
What’s the status of the industry out there?” But I
think the people working on American shows are justthinking about the industry in America. “How can we

61

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

get better contracts here? How can we make better
projects here?”
Arthell: I follow it from a different perspective, moreof the art side. One misconception I hear, from peers
at schools I graduated from — for some reason —artists in the states think that Japanese anime is easieror a lesser art form.
I have to explain to them that Japanese anime is reallydifficult. It’s not just putting big eyes on a characteror making their hair blue. You can see the end result
doesn’t look like anime at all, it just looks like a character with big eyes and blue hair.
Henry: I see that whenever a series tries to parody
anime. I haven’t been in America for 10 years — so I
actually don’t know, but I feel like this happens lessnow because anime’s gotten so popular.
If you’re talking about art school people or art teachers, I totally agree with Arthell, because there weretotally teachers in my art school who said: “You’regoing to make that? Well you’re not going to have achance to make that in America — and besides, it’s
not even animation because they don’t even move.
Where’s the good acting if they’re not even doing
anything?”
I have to believe that they’re just lying to themselvesbecause they must know that Akira looks better thanwhat they’re making. They must know that. Even if
there are still frames in anime, the cinematography,
the mood, the backgrounds, the stunning detail level,
the depth in the story… you know it’s amazing.

In what ways can art and design
impact a film? How does yourexperience designing the way a
world looks influence how you
approach projects?
Arthell: I feel that the world and design is often
forgotten. Of course people focus on the characters — the story is about the characters and theirrole in the plot. But without the audience realizing
it, design adds to the story and characters. It’s up to
the world designer to fill in details about where thestory is taking place, who the characters are, how thecharacters are feeling. Design actually gives you moreof the story.
You can tell a lot of the story just through the way theworld looks. If there is a poor character, or if a character is in a war, just by designing the world. That’s
the importance of world design: In some cases we aretelling more of the story than the characters do.

Production art from Shojo no Piero (The Doll), provided by D’ART Shtajio.

Colour, the way you approach a style, brush strokes— that all impacts story. Colour affects the way wefeel. Blues are somber, warm colours make things
excited. It all affects viewers as they’re watching.
If we can tell more of the story with just the environment, which I feel anime does a good job with,sometimes you’ll see cutaways where it’s just thebackground. Sometimes there are no characters on
the screen and you’ll just see trees slowly moving.
Henry: Or the cityscape…
Arthell: For example, in my Sound & Fury episodes,
I tried to use mostly backgrounds. You didn’t see themain character. There were a few city characters in
the environment. I tried to use the world to tell theaudience what was happening. It starts off in analley. It’s dark, there are dark colours, it’s a little dirty.
It tells us that this character is not part of the world.
The main street was much brighter — and there wassomewhat… life happening there. I wanted to use
the alley to express how the homeless character felt.
That was one use of environmental storytelling.

Your recommendations on YouTube
sent me down a spiral through anumber of OVAs, including Unicoin the Island of Magic. How do you
feel that the anime industry has

62

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

changed since you were watching
the OVAs that influenced you?
Henry: That one I saw as a kid, even before I started
getting into all those OVAs. Unico in the Island of
Magic was unique in that Osamu Tezuka, the godfather of manga, could get productions done however
he wanted. So Unico in the Island of Magic is outrageously fluid in its animation.
To talk about the OVAs that I used to like, I think thatthe industry has changed a lot, and to be honest not
in ways I love. Change is always going to happen, but
the kind of stuff that I always used to watch and rent
from my video store really isn’t produced anymore.
When I thought of Japanese Anime in the early years— for me middle school, high school, college —anime represented that super serious animation thatno one else was making, with outrageous levels ofdetails and shadows.
Yes, series with more simple character designs did
exist, but when I thought of anime I wasn’t reallythinking of that.
When I was thinking of anime I was thinking of Record of Lodoss War OVA, Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust, Twilight of the Dark Master, Bio Hunter. Lookup screenshots from any of these. It must have taken
three-to-five hours to do one drawing correctly, because there are so many layers of shadow. They had

teams of people just slowly making these unbelievably detailed animation. And it was super dark, andscary. Nobody else was making scary animation.
When I was going to a video store on a Friday, I went
to get, essentially, a horror movie: “I am going towatch a scary cartoon. That’s going to be fun!” They
don’t really make that anymore.
Arthell: For me, the background designs in the 80s
were phenomenal, and background designs now are
just as good. There’s a different approach to it now,
because of digital tools. They still look good and insome cases are even better than they used to look.
Henry: The backgrounds didn’t get simplified in theway that the characters did. Maybe on some individual productions, but not overall.
Arthell: Our approach is still the hand-painting way,
but we use digital tools.
Henry: Studios still hand us paper sequences, will tellus that they need to be finished on paper, and ask if
we can do it. Every now and then I’ll get something
like that, and as I’m drawing a line with my righthand, I definitely notice my left hand wants to go tothat Ctrl-Z. And it can’t.

What led you to work as animation
artists in Japan?
Arthell: I decided to come here because I watched
Ghost in the Shell. That’s what made me realize that
I wanted to be a background artist, and that thiswas the place I wanted to learn and study. I came toschool out here, and that’s essentially what led to me
moving here and deciding that my future in animation would be in Japan.
Actually, it was very easy for me. I guess I should havethought more about it, probably. I was still young, at
the age where I was like, “Whatever, I am going todo this.” -Arthell IsomHenry: I have the same story, almost, as Arthell. One
day, I moved out here.
I worked in the American industry, in New York, for a
few years. I worked on Superjail!, I worked on a few
Dora the Explorer video games, commercials and music videos. I didn’t have any plans to move to japan,
because I thought, “Oh, we’re going to start producing amazing Ghost in the Shell-type things here
in New York — any day now.” Anime was becoming
popular. That’s how I felt.
After working there for a few years, I realized: No,
we’re not. It was very depressing. So I just kept myeyes and ears open to opportunities to get to Japan,
which was the only country producing content I
actually wanted to work on. I saw an opening for an
English-teaching job out here, and they essentiallyflew me over.

63

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Was it a hard decision and was it
different than you expected?
Henry: Our goal is kind of the same, but everythingis also quite different. The work ethic, the attitude ofcareer versus personal life, the way of producing theanime. It’s changing a bit now because the world isgetting globalized and everyone is learning different
processes, so Japan has adopted some of the West’s
practices, like working in software instead of on paper. The west is also adopting some of the ways theydraw layouts here…
Arthell: I’ve actually never worked in America. I’ve
only worked in the industry here in Japan. I can’t really compare the two, though the mindset is very different. That did stand out to me when I moved here. I
think it made me work harder and made me moreinvested in the craft. Everyone was so focused andloved their jobs. You could see that it was hard, wewould be at the office for two or three days straight,
because we would have crunch time or something,
but no one was complaining that they were going toquit. Everyone enthusiastically came to work, stayed
all day, and tried to do the best thing they could do.
That really made an impression on me. Where I was
like, “This is crazy, I wanna be just like them. I want
to love my work just as much.” I felt this is what I
needed, and I don’t know I would have the same
feeling if I was in the States.
Henry: Nowadays I see more ‘foreigner’ names in thecredits of Anime. They might not recognize exactly
what they are signing up for like how many hours for
how little money, but for us we moved to the otherside of the planet, and then both of us didn’t get into
the industry immediately. We had to work for over a
year before finally breaking in. During that time wewere doing tons of research.

Do you have advice for animation
students in, say, New Jersey whowant to follow a similar path?
Arthell: It’s different if they’re in college. If they’re inhigh school, I say really buckle down. Definitely focus
on studying, where you’re going to go to college andhow you’re going to improve on your current level ofskills in art.
I do think that if you’re in high school, you shouldhave an idea of where you want to work. That way
you can then decide what’s necessary to get into thatcompany: “What colleges I should be going to?,” or,“Where should I focus?” If you’re in high school andyou want to work in Japan, then definitely you wanta head start on learning Japanese, so by the time you
graduate you’ll be more prepared to come out here.
Henry: I feel like I kind of did this the long way. I
feel like I was the hardest worker in my classes, but
I feel like I should have worked harder in hindsight. I
worked to be the head of my class and get noticed by
my teacher, but in hindsight nobody in that class wasgoing to get jobs, professionally. I needed to compare

my work with professionals and try to get my work attheir level earlier on, as opposed to trying really hardto get the A.

How would you like to see theindustry grow and change?

You mentioned that you wanted
to create a company that can telldifferent kinds of stories, different
perspectives, grounded in reality.
What would you like to see next for
D’ART Shtajio?

Arthell: Everyone’s essentially creating anime andeveryone’s trying to tell different types of stories —which is good. I think that’s what’s going to happen.
I think the industry’s getting broader and broader.
There are going to be more people moving out toJapan. But even now, I’ve been in Japan for fifteen
years, Henry’s been here…

Arthell: Even when we were in college, getting tohere, I felt like there were all these baby steps we still
had to take. I feel as a company we haven’t found
what we want to be yet.

Arthell: When we first got out here, I think character animators, there were a few more sprinklings offoreigners. Background art was maybe number two.
Now when you look at the credits there are many animators — tons of foreigners. I think as the industry
gets broader, there will be more countries trying to
produce anime, trying to tell stories within this genre.
I think Japan as a whole will also be telling different
kinds of stories. I hope our studio will be one of thosestudios leading as a vanguard.

Henry: Not at all. We’ve done a sprinkling of the creativity that we wanted to make in our first few years
here. The Doll short film, the Indigo Ignited pilot,
Sturgill Simpson’s Sound & Fury anthology — all of
those shorts are mostly what we want to make, but
that’s it. The other stuff is all client-based, delivering
what a client needs. Certainly not D’ART Shtajio
originals.
At the end of the day we’re not even looking to be astudio that produces just short films and pilots. What
we want to be is a feature film and series producing
studio. If you look at it that way, we haven’t created
one project we really wanted to make.
So what we’d like to see for D’ART Shtajio? For us toland a high-budget project with a good schedule to
finally produce what we are looking to do.

Henry: Coming up on eleven.

Henry: I would like to see all the animators and staff
members get treated with respect and get the salaries
they want, of course. Hopefully that’s the direction
we’re headed in.
In terms of what gets produced? I just hope we getopportunities to produce what we want here. What
the industry does is almost of no concern to me, solong as our company gets the chances we hopefully
will have. I wouldn’t mind if it grows completely separate from us, because then we would stand out.

Arthell: Like Henry said, our goal from here is to
produce our own feature film or series. Definitely
not what you’re seeing on TV now. I think for us, we
wanted to push the industry, push the storytelling.
There’s so many more types of stories that can be
told.
Henry: It breaks my heart a little when we get people
messaging us to say, “I have an original idea for an
anime I’m looking to produce: It’s Hunter x Huntermeets Cowboy Bebop.”
Then it’s not original. It’s a world and set of powersthat already exists. And a set of fight scenes that you
want to emulate.
That’s not truly a story from a different perspectivewith a different set of characters that you completely
don’t see. -Henry Thurlow

64

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Production art from Shojo no Piero (The Doll), provided by D’ART
Shtajio.

Echo Bridge is making
adult animation workin Florida
by Philip Mak“Great storytelling.”
Echo Bridge founder and veteran animator Esteban
Valdez keeps steering our conversation back to theimportance of quality entertainment. His St Petersburg-based 2D animation studio celebrated its 10th
anniversary this year and has seen business boom, inspite of the pandemic.

tion is able to take us to a completely different realmof thought than any other medium ever could see as
we’re combining every artistic discipline from music,
poetry, architecture and more, to our technologicaladvances, cultural experiences and values to express
an abstract ethereal idea visually.”

The team at Echo Bridge has grown, doubling to 60
staff in total — all working remotely. The studio is
looking to double its 2019 workload and is alreadybooked out through 2022, producing everythingfrom television series to commercials to music videos
to educational training. How has Valdez managed to
not only survive, but thrive during uncertain times?

Where the Echo Bridge story
startedWith an entrepreneurial spirit, Echo Bridge is broadening the scope of traditional 2D animation studios— both in terms of a diverse range of high-quality,
adult-oriented productions and forward-thinking
business practices. (And, yes, great storytelling.)
In doing so, Valdez has attracted a wide swath ofprojects that are enabling him to develop a new kindof production company that refuses to be limited inwhat it creates.
“Animation is supposed to be the pinnacle of ourartistic achievements when you take into consideration how far we’ve come, from cave paintings tomotion pictures, and we like to say that it’s about ‘thestory’. It’s about our connection to ideas, our culture,
ourselves as human beings and the simple fact of theartist connecting with the audience,” says Valdez.
He continues, “If we look back far enough, art has
and always will be a form of communication. Anima65

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Valdez grew up in Boston, raised in a family that did
not necessarily understand earning a creative living
but supported his journey. His entrepreneurial spark
ignited in high school, when he started a small illustration and design company with friends. He started
his animation career in 2000, mentored by James
Houston and Academy Award nominee Daniel Sousa.
Joining the industry as it was making the transition
from pencil and paper to digital animation, Valdez’s
own life was also in flux — living out of suitcases
going from city to city, state to state, production to
production. Eventually, he landed an episodic director

role at FatKat Animation Studios in Canada and wasable to enjoy the benefits of settling, albeit not for
too long.
“I returned to the US in 2008 during the economic
crash with several directing deals on the table which
never came through, so I decided to take the last$200 I had to my name and produced an animatedshort film that got the attention of clients, ultimately
launching Echo Bridge,” recalls Valdez.
“The name is actually the street my parent’s house
was on. Because I spent so much time jumping
around the globe, I wanted to have a place that I
could plant my metaphorical roots in. The idea wasalways remembering that home is where it all started
from and that no matter where I am in the world,
I would always have a place to go. Echo Bridge ishome for me and a creative haven for others too.”
Having set up shop in St Petersburg, Valdez would
like for Echo Bridge to exist there for at least 40 to 60
years — allowing his animators to work in one place
for their entire careers and actually build lives in thecommunity. Part of the appeal of the city is its highquality of life, low taxes and affordable cost of living,
particularly compared to industry hubs like Los Angeles and New York City. However, Florida does notoffer the same sort of tax incentives for animation
productions that other states do.
After lobbying for incentive programs for over sevenyears, Valdez launched one of his own — the only of
its kind on the East Coast. The cash-back incentive
program allows Echo Bridge to offer a much morecompetitive rate, both for domestic and internation-

66

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

al productions, without having to meet strict state
audits and parameters. By Valdez’s estimation, thishas been massively beneficial for his business during
lockdown and will help future-proof it for the world
afterwards.

Maturing as a studio
In a North American film market dominated by 3D
and CGI, committing to being a 2D animation studio
can in and of itself be seen as a disruptive act. Yet
for Valdez, it was simply the only option for the sortof stories he wanted to tell — those that createdemotional connections with audiences in an artistic
and authentic way.
“We have a longing to connect socially, emotionally,physically, spiritually, and mentally to one another,
now more than ever, and while CGI has its place inthe world, no one is going to connect with a grapheditor. Here is where I think 2D animation is a superior medium as we know, consciously or subconsciously, where and who it came from every time we see
the artist’s hand,” explains Valdez.
He continues, “Adult animation is the most authentic— animation was never really meant for children. The
idea that we use this medium as ad space for plastic
mostly, that’s the industry side of it. And while it has
some merit, it’s an oversaturated industry. I’ve always
wanted animation to grow. We have only scratched
the surface of what it can do, but we never explore
the topics that would really make an impactful project.”“With adult animation, you can explore areas that are
too risqué or taboo or whatever the case would be.
It’s very interesting that nobody really saw the valueof that 10 years ago. Maybe the Asian and European
markets, but in the North American markets it’s still a
foreign concept,” Valdez says.
And while he notes that many of today’s emerging
studio executives are fans of anime and foreign film,
it may take some time before adult animation finds
its footing in North America. That is not stopping
Valdez from continuing to take steps in that direction,
however. Echo Bridge has broadened the scope of 2D
animated content by working on a variety of projects— often with total or near-total creative control.
“We’re missing out on tremendous opportunities toreally flex our creative muscle, push the limits andboundaries of our teams and pipelines. From a business perspective, mature animated productions are
incredibly undervalued and the marketplace for themis massive — there is a multi-trillion dollar global audience potential that no one in North America is evenbothering to look at!” exclaims Valdez.
Among his team’s recent adult productions is thefirst season of Fuse Media’s Sugar and Toys, an adultcomedic take on Saturday morning cartoons geared
towards multicultural Millennial and Gen Z audiences.
Created by Carl Jones and Brian Ash, the show hasreceived widespread acclaim and was renewed for asophomore run this past April. Jones also introduced
the Echo Bridge team to Malaysian singer Yuna, andthey would go on to create the music video for her
Pink Youth single.
Valdez wrote, edited and directed the Pink Youthmusic video himself, set in a dystopian where Yunaand Lil Simz, who features on the track, must restore
colour to the world. Though the video seems to carrya message of diversity and self-expression, Valdez
hopes that audiences interpret what they want tofrom the visual storytelling and highly detailed background art.
He explains, “We always try to create something thatwill give the audience something to think about or totalk about with others, to have a conversation withthe audience, not to talk at them.”
The entire Pink Youth production was created in three
weeks using Toon Boom Storyboard Pro and Toon
Boom Harmony — speaking to Echo Bridge’s agility
and nimbleness in a digital pipeline. Though it was
created before lockdown, the reason why more record labels and artists are turning to animated music
videos remains the same: they don’t need a big set,
they can bring together singers on opposite sides of
the globe and the only limit is imagination.

67

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Still from Tropkillaz’ music video for Quem Mandou Chamar, animated by Echo Bridge.

A bridge to the future of animation
Looking ahead, Valdez feels the industry will remain
oversaturated — across both the studio and independent scenes. With demand for original animatedcontent continuing to boom during lockdown, henotes creators need to stop treating animation like acommodity and focus on long-lasting productions.
“For both large and small studios, it’s a great time
to be in animation in the short run, but it’s the longterm where I can see larger studios destined for troubled times. A pending financial crisis, potential stagflation, production budgets may continue to shrink as
wage demands increase, the workforce demographic
is aging and shrinking, and a lot of what I see issomething similar to the 1970s for animation wheremore independent productions will end up taking on
a much more prominent role,” Valdez predicts.
He continues, “The long term is probably going to
be much more favourable to artists and animators
who take the time to build a stockpile of their own
content, improve their production management
skillset and know how marketing works. The bigger
the marketplace grows and with the massive amountof content pouring into the streaming platforms, audiences are going to continue to look for something
more tangible and personal — places like Vimeo andother self distribution outlets will help create a space
for artists and audiences to connect much like apainter and a patron.”His personal hopes looking ahead? “If people areable to look at animation as they do, you know, aScorsese film, then we’ve really hit the money.”Animating HIV/AIDS
in the Love Me Like
There’s No Tomorrow
Music Videoby Philip Mak

Freddie Mercury was many things: a flamboyant fashionista, an ostentatious public personality andthe larger-than-life frontman of legendary British rock band, Queen. Paradoxically, he was notoriously
private; the singer had contracted HIV/AIDS during the heat of the 1980s crisis and lived with it for
years, though he could no longer deny how ill he was by the early 90s. On November 23, 1991, Mercury issued a statement announcing his status and calling on the world to join him in fighting the disease— he passed away the next day, aged 45.
Though Mercury has been gone for nearly three
decades, his rallying cry against HIV/AIDS lives on.
Following the success of the Bohemian Rhapsodyfilm and in celebration of what would have been the
vocalist’s 73rd birthday, a 2D animated music video
for his solo single Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow
was released on November 24, 2019. Proceeds fromthe song supported The Mercury Phoenix Trust, acharity founded in Mercury’s memory.
The Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow music video
was conceptualized, produced and directed by Esteban Bravo and Beth David. Queen’s label, Universal
Music Group (UMG), reached out to the creative duolast March after seeing their viral LGBTQ animatedshort, In a Heartbeat. When speaking to the band’s
managers, Jim and Tilda Beach, the pair wanted toget as much information about what Mercury was
like in order to envision the music video.
The directors are lifelong fans of Mercury and Queen,
and identify as members of the queer community.
“As LGBT people, seeing someone as legendary andrevered as Freddie Mercury —so proud and flamboyant and unashamedly queer— is incredibly inspiring.
He was so unapologetically himself,” says David.
For Bravo, Mercury’s music took on added relevanceas he became more comfortable with his sexuality,“My mom was always a big fan, but for me Freddie
68

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

was a bit of an abstract figure until I came out incollege — it put all his music into context. It helped
me a lot in my whole coming out process. As wewere doing [Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow], we
looked into the 80s and Stonewall and the history
and felt so much appreciation for what [Freddie] hasdone for visibility and acceptance; he helped change
minds about LGBT people.”
After researching the science behind HIV/AIDS, Bravo
and David envisioned a gay love story between two
white blood cells. After one of their protagonists
contracts the virus, the video depicts their subsequent
struggles — with each other, society and the disease
itself, all styled in the 1980s garb as a nod to thecrisis and Mercury’s own life.
“We knew early on that we wanted to do a story on
HIV, but it was only after researching the science of it
that we decided to look at it from the point of viewof the blood cells — to personify the spread of thedisease,” says David.
They needed to research HIV/AIDS in order to represent it — what it is and how it works. They poured
over expert websites, podcasts and blogs catered
towards people who have been diagnosed, learning
both about what it was like during the outbreak of
the 1980s crisis as well as the modern day.

“It was really hard to represent what the processof being infected by this virus was like, and what
this virus does in taking over and debilitating yourimmune system until it impacts the T cells and thenreproduces within the T cells and then kills the T cells.
Even though that’s at a microscopic level, we wanted
to represent what the disease does to the body,”
notes Bravo.
Though they both specialize in computer-generated
animation, Bravo and David knew from the beginning that Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow should
be done in 2D. With production starting in May
2019, this allowed the directors and their team of 12
animators to create the music video in three months— on top of their full-time gigs at Blue Sky Studios in
New York City.
David says, “Our 2D animators did absolutely breathtaking work; we’re really happy with everything
we got back from our artists. I think working in 2D
allowed us to do more because we didn’t have toworry as much about the technical side of CG.”The results were as bold, brave and beautiful as Mercury himself, explored through an evocative depictionof an authentic gay love story. Though the two main
characters are T cells, their relationship and challenges are undeniably human — and heartbreaking.

69

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

By leveraging animation’s ability to suspend reality
and create powerful visual metaphors, the directors
produced something that could not be realized inlive-action.

With animation, you alreadyfocus much more on the ideaof a certain situation rather
than the reality of it. In ourcase, the notion of the virus
can be simplified into thislittle particle that’s taking
over our main character’slover’s body. By putting it intosuch simple, primal terms, it isfelt so much more loudly thanit was in a live-action setting— without using words andbeing universally understood.
Esteban Bravo

“The human versions were the real versions and we
wanted to be able to show them in the present day.
Hopefully people would connect with that. There’s
a small detail that grounds it in reality: they’re both
wearing wedding rings in the end. That means they
lived long enough, at least until 2015, for gay marriage to be legalized,” explains Bravo.
With a subject as sensitive as HIV/AIDS, the directors
wanted to ensure they were communicating the rightmessage. UMG asked GLAAD to review the content,with the LGBTQ non-governmental organization
giving the Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow music
video its full support. The response from the public
has been equally positive as well, with many YouTube
viewers commenting they wanted to learn more
about HIV or praising its efforts in de-stigmatizing theillness.
He continues, “We wanted to develop a metaphor
for what HIV and AIDS does. We created this wholeworld of what the inside of a blood vessel would look
like and a story between two white blood cells, andwe gave them human shape, form and emotions. The
power of that imagination and the ability to stylize it
is what elevates the medium.”
One of the most powerful elements of Love Me Like
There’s No Tomorrow is its happy ending. (SPOILER:
both characters have long, loving lives together.)Transforming the characters from young blood cells
into older humans, this is a departure not only from
Mercury’s life, but from the narrative that often surrounded HIV/AIDS during the crisis of the 1980s and90s: that having the disease was a death sentence.
This was a touching tribute to the fighting and suffering many had to and continue to endure, as well as
further helping to de-stigmatize living with HIV.
“That was our intention from the beginning: for thisto be the happy ending that a lot of people fromthe era didn’t get. Together, through their fight andlove of one another, they were able to overcome thedisease,” David tells us.

70

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

I’m just so relieved whenpeople say that we would
have made Freddie proud.
Esteban Bravo“After [the Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow music
video] came out, I checked the YouTube comments
and it was overwhelming that so many people wereso moved by it. Even just the story itself —two people
who love one another who are almost pulled apart byan illness— was something people really responded
to positively,” says David.
Be sure to watch the full music video for Love Me
Like There’s No Tomorrow.

Broken Being: Prequel isMature, Unmistakably
Vietnamese Animation
by Philip Mak

Humid mangrove forests along the Mekong Delta,
pristine beaches, impossibly vast fields — just a handful of Instagram posts Westerners have shared ofVietnam. While those postcard-perfect pictures may
be great for tourism, in actuality an influx of foreign
capital has propelled the country’s economy to being
one of the fastest-growing in the world. Vietnam’s
population is also rapidly shifting towards urbanization and the majority of the nine million people in its
largest metropolis, Ho Chi Minh City, are under theage of 35.
Normally, these factors —large-scale foreign investment, a young population, a relatively inexpensive
workforce— are fertile ground for a nascent animation industry. Yet for a variety of reasons, ranging
from government censorship to a shortage of training
centres, Vietnam remains largely outside the global
animation market across creation and consumption,
service work and original IPs.
Other countries in the $52-billion Asian market likeSouth Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan have transformed themselves into service work hubs for Western and Japanese companies. The continent accounts
for up to 90 percent of American television animation
production, by some estimates. Given these successes, Vietnam could also see huge economic benefits
by participating in the market — and empower its
homegrown storytellers in the process.
One award-winning 2D studio attempting to establish
itself on the global stage is DeeDee Animation.
Founded in 2015 and based in Hanoi, its mission is
to bring high-quality, made-in-Vietnam animation toboth local and international audiences. It has a team

71

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

of 30 including story artists, concept artists, character
designers, animators, background artists, writers andeditors.

I think it’s important for
Vietnamese studios todevelop their own IPs in orderto grow the local industry. Our
market is huge and has lotsof potential that has yet tobe fully explored. In order todo so, we need high-quality,
locally produced Vietnamese
animated films.
Minh Ha, production manager
at DeeDee Animation

While it has done productions for Western studios,
DeeDee Animation is best known for its original 2D
animated short Broken Being: Prequel. The 15-minutefilm was animated using Toon Boom Harmony andgarnered worldwide acclaim on the festival circuit,including winning the Jury Award from the Vietnam
Film Festival (Golden Lotus Award) and Best 2D Filmat the Khem Animation Film Festival. DeeDee is distinguishing itself from other studies by not only creating
service work that’s being seen, but getting Vietnamese-made stories heard.

“We wanted to create something that translates andcommunicates traditional Vietnamese culture throughanimation — something that has never been done
before at a high standard. That is why the film resonates with the Vietnamese audiences, both throughits art style and story elements,” says Ha.

“The story comes from the hypothetical question:‘what if the reality we’re living is not real, but a mere
simulation created by higher beings?’ This was manifested within the film as the main character discovers
that his wife was a clone and his whole world is an
artificial product,” says Ha.

According to the South East Asia Animation Report, Vietnamese animators make only around $800
USD per month. In the region, 57 percent of studios
are less than six years old and 81 percent of their staff
are aged 35 and under. Only 31 percent are developing their own IPs, which makes DeeDee’s work on
Broken Being truly exceptional.

Art director Hoang Ha explains the animated aesthetic of Broken Being, noting the character designs
were inspired by Genndy Tartakovsky’s iconic Cartoon
Network series Samurai Jack, while the work oflegendary Disney artist Eyvind Earle and traditional
Asian folk art influenced the backgrounds with theirlarger-than-life scale.

As proven by blockbuster productions like Ne Zha and
The White Snake in neighbouring China, a burgeoning middle class could also create local demand for
Vietnamese animation — whether it be in cinemas
or on digital streaming platforms. On top of government censorship, one of DeeDee’s biggest hurdles isovercoming perceptions about animation in Vietnam
itself: that it’s only for kids.

Despite being largely Vietnamese themselves,
DeeDee’s crew explored their culture and worked toanimate it authentically in Broken Being. Ha elaborates on this point: “The sequence in the film that
we are most proud of is the village’s festival at the
beginning.”

Ha says, “While animation surely does have a strong
impact on children, we believe it is a storytelling medium that can open imaginations and tell stories thatconnect with all kinds of audiences in ways live-action
never could dream of.”
Broken Being: Prequel took three months to produce
though the concept was in the works long before.
Made entirely in-studio, the short follows a maleprotagonist in a utopian Vietnamese village seeking
answers about his deceased lover — and discoveringthat his picturesque reality may not be real at all.

72

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

The scene was inspired by traditional Lunar New
Year’s festivals held in Vietnam, particularly in rural
areas around the holiday season. These annual events
are a mix of traditional and spiritual beliefs andpractices.
DeeDee’s team focused on recreating the festivals’ atmospheres — researching their own culture in order
to better represent it through animation, from architecture to fashion to ceremonial activities. In doingso, Ha notes they got to the root of many Vietnamese
traditions they had known for their entire lives anddeveloped a deeper understanding of their origins.

Ha says, “Spirituality is something that stands out in
Vietnamese culture and underlies almost everything
we do — from how we live to how we eat. A lot of
our traditions are based on spiritual beliefs, with influences from various religions like Buddhism, Taosim
and Confucianism.”“When producing Broken Being, Vietnamese spirituality stands out as it creates such an interesting
contrast with the science-fiction genre. As different
as they are, they compliment each other and create
something truly unique,” he continues.
The combination of cultural research and visualdevelopment was time consuming, but the results
speak for themselves — a story told through small
details painting a larger picture. A stand-out scene
in the festival sequence is set in the shrine, where asacred Vietnamese spiritual ceremony is depicted. To
represent this, DeeDee’s artists studied the poses andmovements of traditional dancers.
To bring their creative vision to life, DeeDee’s artists
planned Broken Being in Toon Boom Storyboard Pro
before animating it in Harmony. By producing the
project in a seamless pipeline, the studio saved time.
Additionally, Hoang notes the intuitiveness and flexibility of the tools provided in both software allowed
them to refine, revise, reuse and repurpose assets
easily while maintaining quality.
Hoang says, “The Harmony features our team used
the most were the node view and the compositing
tools. We could composite our scenes within a 3D
environment and arrange our background, camera
and character elements in ways that better pushed
the depth. We elevated the look of the characters byadding shadows and highlights with the cutter andmasking nodes, and there were also a lot of different
effects provided in the program such as colour scales,
bloom, blur and particles that really helped us nail a
final look that felt very polished.”
He continues, “Since Storyboard Pro and Harmony
are both vector-based programs, we were able to customize our output files to fit our purpose. The working files don’t take up much space in the hard drives,allowing us to work smoothly without any hiccups.”
DeeDee’s team hopes to find a distributor or investor to turn Broken Being: Prequel into an animatedanthology series. Once this happens, the work it has
put into developing the universe’s rules, backstory
and visual language during pre-production will serve
as guidelines in the future. In the meantime, it isbuilding out the short’s universe through comics.
Producing work of this quality positions the studio togrow alongside the Vietnamese animation industry.

73

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

A challenge for both will be finding trained artists,
which is often difficult given that many in the country
simply cannot afford to purchase software. Fortunately, Ha notes that DeeDee Animation is happy to train
its crew in Toon Boom.
Looking ahead, Ha explains there will still be challenges connecting with Western and Japanese studios, but there has never been more hope — particularly if the growing Vietnamese animation community
works together.
“Vietnamese animation is unique in the same way
Vietnam is unique. We are a country with an interesting culture, influenced by both the traditions of East
Asia and the West via French colonialism. Vietnam
has a dramatic history that makes us unique and I
think this was translated well in the film: obviously
Asian, but there’s something in there that also speaks
to a wider range of international audiences.”

If there is anything to take fromBroken Being, for us it is proof
that Vietnamese studios cantell great stories with animation— in our very own way.
Minh Ha, production manager
at DeeDee Animation

He continues, “What makes Vietnamese animation
unique right now is the stories Vietnamese creators
have to tell. I believe our industry’s breakthrough will
come from studios collaborating to produce high-profile international projects. Those opportunities would
vouch for the quality and professionalism that weoffer, and position Vietnam as a production hub for
global clients.”
Watch Broken Being: Prequel on DeeDee Animation’s YouTube channel.

Taylor K. Shaw on
Building Community
with Black Women in
Animation
by Mike Schnier

In 2017, Taylor K. Shaw was developing an animated series about black women living in Chicago. Shaw
felt it was important to reflect her experiences, which informed her view that her project required
black women creators to not only write for and voice the characters, but also design and bring themto life as well.
Every detail matters in animation. Every thoughtlesscliche or recurring stereotype accumulates, and canalienate viewers that a show attempts to reach.
From her own coming-of-age watching Saturday
morning cartoons, Shaw understood firsthand how
important these details could be for viewers like her.

The lived experiences of black women in America are
distinct, and this just as much a reality in the American animation industry. In June of 2019, the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism,in partnership with Women in Animation, publisheda report about opportunities and challenges facing
women in our industry — including women of colour.

Shaw quickly encountered an obstacle: While she
knew that there were black women working as
animators, story artists and character designers, shefound it difficult to recruit black women to fill theseroles in her own production. At the time, there was
no formal network and no process for drawing inanimators who had lived experiences similar to thecharacters she needed to bring to the screen.

The report not only found that women of colour
were severely underrepresented both on-screenand behind-the-scenes in key roles — from 2007 to
2018, only three percent of the feature films sampledincluded a non-white woman as a protagonist, while
Jennifer Yuh Nelson was the only woman credited asa solo director during that decade — the researchers
also found that two-thirds of the women of colour

There would be maybe one
black girl in a series, and theway she was represented, theway she spoke, the way that
she was — it meant something
to me. It really mattered.
Taylor K. Shaw74

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

who participated in the study reported negative experiences while working in the animation industry.
These negative experiences included being tokenized
and needing to work harder than their colleagues— or see their contributions erased. Many of thoseparticipants expressed that while they understoodthat their own backgrounds were valued as an asset
by employers, those studios and networks are often
tone-deaf about issues related to gender and race.
In this environment, the participants said that being
identified for opportunities related to their identities
led to suspicion and negative feelings.
These findings rang true for Taylor K. Shaw, who told
Animation From Every Angle: “A unique challenge
for creator visibility in the animation industry is thatthe barriers to entry have been so high for women ofcolour — and for people of colour in general.”Outside of Annenberg, the American animation industry, as well as the broader entertainment industry,
have been under increasing scrutiny for their lack ofrepresentation. Recent public movements demanding
accountability for these issues in Hollywood include#OscarsSoWhite and #WhiteWashedOUT —which address inequities and imbalances of powerin narrative, casting, production credits, as well as
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’
membership itself.
Animation is reckoning with an additional issue
around on-screen representation. In 2017, comedianHari Kondabolu produced a documentary, The Problem with Apu. The documentary was critical of The
Simpsons for having Hank Azaria voice the role of
Apu Nahasapeemapetilon — linking the performance
to a history of blackface and brownface in the UnitedStates. The film ultimately led to Azaria stepping
down from that role. In an interview with the New
York Times, Azaria commented: “Once I realizedthat that was the way this character was thought of, I
just didn’t want to participate in it anymore.”
In the current environment, studios and networks arefacing two sets of pressures: First, they want to meetdemand for more on-screen representation; theyalso do not want to unintentionally caricature broadgroups of viewers. The most direct solution would be
to include creators from underrepresented groups at
every step in the production process, but it is easy fora studio to say that they want to be more representative — meaningful change requires persistent work.
Taylor K. Shaw saw that bringing in black women
to animate her project would take real work, so she
partnered with social entrepreneur and storyteller
JLove Calderón to form Black Women Animate — aproduction company built to help black women,

75

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

women of color, and nonbinary artists of color in
the world of animation obtain visibility and find job
opportunities — with input from experienced industry
veterans like Sidney Clifton.
“Now we have a community of over 200 black women, girls and non-binary creatives of color who areanimators,” Shaw told Animation From Every Angle.

veryone right now wants tobe more diverse and inclusive,
and they don’t have to do italone. Black Women Animate
is here to partner — on originalcontent, on commercial
projects— to really support
the entire industry in being apart of our mission of bringing
true equity to Hollywood andbeyond.
Taylor K. Shaw

As a young company entering into their third year,
Black Women Animate has been developing a reputation as a small-but-mighty production company. The
studio works with freelancers, pulling teams together
based on the needs of a given production. Black
Women Animate has completed commercial work forclients including Footlocker and Adult Swim, and wasrecently brought on for a project at a major network— in part, thanks to getting details and nuances incharacter designs right.
Cartoon Network partnered with the studio for the
past two years to run the Black Women Animate
Bootcamp. The aim of this bootcamp is to connect
animation professionals with Black Women Animate’s
community, while helping women and non-binary
creatives of color hone their crafts and find paths

76

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

into the industry. Last year’s event featured a portfolio-building workshop with Cartoon Network’s
recruiters, a conversation on owning the table withBrenda Gilbert of BRON Studios, as well as breakout
sessions led by industry creatives including Shawna
Mills, Halcyon Person, Stacey Evans Morgan, Kiana
Khan Smith and Lynne Southerland.
BWA’s sister company, Inspire Justice, co-sponsoredthe event and hosted a raw and unfiltered conversation about race, gender and equity in the industry
with actors of the likes of Matt McGorry and Karla
Souza (HTGAWM), Dawn-Lyen Gardner (Queen Sugar) and veteran writer Dayna Lynne North (Veronica
Mars, Insecure), among others.
For Taylor K. Shaw, it was a dream come true: “WhatBlack Women Animate is for me, and why thebootcamp training days are so magical, is I can see
the young people realize that ‘this is a job I can do’
in a room filled with people who happen to look likethem. Our bootcamp is a meaningful opportunity toinvite creatives to stay connected to their dreams andto their art.”
Managing Partner JLove Calderón adds, “One of
the biggest challenges facing women of color andnon-binary creatives of color is access to production
companies and studios who can employ them and/or whom they can pitch their orginal content too –our Bootcamp brings together industry execs, side
by side, with our artist community. We are breaking
down the walls that separate us: creating access;building bridges; getting people meaningful work
doing what they love.”“Animators are arguably the architects of our childhood. This art form provides so much space for allof us to escape and imagine more,” says Taylor. “Ilove the craft, personally, because it is beautiful tosee so many hours of work go in, and what comesout is a product that brings us further into the mindsof amazing creators. I am really inspired by all of theartists that we work with as Black Women Animate.
They inspire me to create and keep creating.”

Untangling diversity
in animation with Hair
Love’s Matthew A.
Cherryby Toon BoomLast year, sixth grader Faith Fennidy was sent home because her braids violated her New Orleans
school’s dress code, a week after six-year-old Florida boy C. J. Stanley was turned away from his classroom for the same reason. These are not isolated instances; African-American children have historically
faced institutional prejudice towards their hairstyles, which is reinforced throughout their lifetimes bya media and beauty industry that often fail to represent them and recognize their needs. Creator Matthew A. Cherry hopes to change narratives and inspire the next generation with his animated short,
Hair Love.
Hair Love was released in domestic cinemas aheadof Sony Picture Animation’s The Angry Birds Movie
2 on August 14. It began as a viral 2017 Kickstarter
campaign, which raised over $284,000 against a goalof $75,000 — setting a new record for short films on
the crowdfunding platform. It has also been turned
into a best-selling children’s book by Penguin Random
House.
The animated short follows a dad who is combing
through YouTube tutorials, brushing up on how tostyle his daughter Zuri’s afro, which seemingly has amind of its own. Cherry tells us that he wanted torepresent both African-American girls with curly hairand black dads, who often get portrayed unfairly by
the media. In Zuri, he also hopes to create a heroine
who looks like his young audience and normalizes
their natural hair.
The response has been overwhelmingly positive, withCherry recounting how people at the premiere told
him this was their story, bringing their copies of thebook and recreating poses from it on social media. He
says, “I think the main reason [Hair Love] has resonated so much with the public and media is because we
all can relate to having someone we love asks us todo something we don’t know how to do. The mereact of you trying to figure that out is a way for you toshow them how much you love them.”
77

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Cherry is a former professional football player turned
filmmaker, though Hair Love is the first time he’s tackled animation. He served as executive producer andco-director on the film, alongside Everett Downing(animator Up, WALL-E, Brave). Other EPs included
Frank Abney and Peter Ramsey (Spider-Man: Into theSpider-Verse).

As artists, we are
our own brands.
Matthew A. Cherry

Producers included Karen Toliver of Sony Pictures
Animation, who championed the project from the
beginning, as well as Stacey Newton and Monica A.
Young. Toliver tells us, “One of the things I love aboutSony is we’re very open to exploring because people
don’t know what to expect from us — and we likethat. I really do think Hair Love was a great exampleof finding a filmmaker who hadn’t been in animation
before and exposing him to it, and we’re going to doa lot more of that.”

Initially, Cherry was worried the story would be too
small for animation given it is set in a family home as
opposed to a fantastical world. To help him untangle the toon storytelling process, Cherry turned toRamsey. He says, “I sent [Ramsey] the script rightbefore we did the Kickstarter campaign and asked if
he thought it could work in animation. He told me,‘Animation is just a medium — I think the story could
work in any medium, but the fact that you have thisfantastical element about the hair having a mind of
its own, it does lend itself well.’”Though Cherry originally wanted to do Hair Love in
3D, he discovered he could achieve much more withhis budget using 2D animation. Plus, he wanted to
pay homage to the hand-drawn toons he had grown
up watching — particularly given the style’s resurgence in popularity thanks to streaming platforms
and adult comedic content.
When it came time to do the animation, Cherry andToliver turned to Los Angeles-based studio Six Point
Harness, who produced Hair Love in a Toon Boom
Harmony pipeline.
“It was a no-brainer for us — we’re always attracted to stories that are unique and new and sociallyrelevant,” says Greg Franklin, creative director at Six
Point Harness.
He continues, “There’s a huge market out there that’s
underserved for this kind of material and when something comes along like Hair Love, people are thirsty
for it. Bigger entertainment companies are realizing
there’s a hunger for diverse content that they may
have previously dismissed as niche.”78

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

From Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse to the live-action Black Panther, the correlation between diversityand dollars at the box office is getting bigger by theblockbuster. That said, even seasoned animators candiscover new challenges when creating something as
distinctive and unique as a semi-sentient afro.
Franklin recalls, “From a technical aspect, we had acharacter with voluminous hair that was very complex. As an animator, that’s a lot of details that you’ve
got to track. That itself was a big technical challenge:
finding ways to depict that while keeping the quality
high and the effort invisible.”“Also, as somebody who wants to bring authentic
stories, I kept my ears open and sat back and listened
to make sure I knew what was important to comeacross on screen,” he continues.
This is seconded by Six Point Harness technical director Alex N. Soto, who says, “Even watching the [HairLove] boards before any animation started pulled on
the heartstrings. Our job was to make sure that itcame through in the animation.”
Soto also notes that though this was Cherry’s firstanimated film, he was very interested and involvedin the production process, and offered a balance of
feedback and freedom. Because he and Sony wanted
a more hand-drawn aesthetic, Six Point Harness essentially had to animate Hair Love twice — all on an
extremely compressed schedule.
Six Point Harness’ team would traditionally animate
every single shot first on paper before doing it againin Toon Boom Harmony to get the essence of thescene and have everybody on the same page. From
there, they could assemble a rough-cut animation tobuild on.

“We were able to take that and use the Toon Boompuppets with really good rigs that were above andbeyond what we’d normally use for a short film. We
were even able to use rigged puppets as clean-up,
which helped us keep everything on model,” says
Franklin.
When Cherry’s heartfelt story combined with Six Point
Harness’ emotionally evocative animation, the results
were nothing short of magic. Hair Love had alreadyteased up a huge fan base going into theatres thanks
to its Kickstarter campaign, which had developed asense of ownership among its audience.

Bigger entertainment
companies are realizing
there’s a hunger for diverse
content that they may havepreviously dismissed as niche
Greg Franklin“It’s so hard in this marketplace to make noise andget attention — a lot of the time we have to spend
marketing dollars to get people to pay attention tosomething. Matthew already had that connection
with the audience; if he hadn’t done the Kickstarter,
I don’t think we would have had this groundswellof people feeling like it was everybody’s short,” says
Toliver.
When asked how he developed such a thriving
fanbase, Cherry tells us, “As artists, we are our own
brands. With social media, everybody that follows
you is a potential supporter for whatever it is you
want to do — be it selling artwork or making amovie. I made a conscious decision a year before
launching the Kickstarter that I wanted to organicallygrow my following so that if I did something bigger,
I’d have a bigger pool of people to pull from forsupport.”He continues, “I also tried to engage with everybody.
My advice is don’t ever think anybody doesn’t havea big enough following to support you and be very
conscious of building up your social media following,
because they go hand in hand.”
Clearly, all that engagement has paid off — fromForbes to Teen Vogue, the buzz has been been as
big and beautiful as Zuri’s curls. Does Cherry feel he’s
fulfilled his mission?

79

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

“Our goal was to inspire real change — to get young
women of colour, young girls with curly hair to embrace their natural selves. Media is so powerful andwhen you grow up seeing television shows and magazine covers and billboards of supposedly the mostbeautiful people in the world but none of them look
like you, that can do a lot to your self-confidence,”
he says.
He finishes with, “We wanted to provide a mirror
so that young people could see themselves and do
the same for black dads, who tend to get a bad rap,
and show that there are young men out there with
tattoos and their locks in braids that are among thebest fathers in the world. I think we have done a lot
to change the conversation.”

Found in translation:
Esther Cheung’s In
Passingby Toon Boom

Much like New York City in Annie Hall or Tokyo in Lost in Translation, Hong Kong feels like a living,emoting character in Esther Cheung’s animated short, In Passing. The film is as much a love letter to the
Cantonese port city as it is a prequel to her parents’ real-life romance — telling the story of how they
grew up in the same high-rise building in the 1970s without ever meeting, and set on the sweltering
eve of a typhoon.
Though Cheung was born in Toronto, the connection
she feels to her parent’s hometown is tangible. Set inHong Kong in 1976, her animation makes big statements in the small details, from the hints of Pepto
pink that are pedestrian in the Asian city to the miniature tiles, bamboo scaffolding and flapping laundryon the exteriors of the impossibly tall, densely packed
apartment buildings. Each is an Easter egg to those
who appreciate the bustling metropolis — when you
know, you know.
Her parents are among the tens of thousands ofHong Kong nationals who came to Canada in thedecades of uncertainty leading up to the territory’s
handover from Britain to China in 1997. Throughtheir journey, In Passing was a way for Cheung tocome into contact with her own heritage and culture.
Her mission was to create an animated short thatwould resonate with others in the diaspora, and also
everyone else.

Hand-drawn has a charm you
can’t get from CG
Esther Cheung

She conceptualized, animated and produced thepiece over eight months as the final project for her
animation degree from Sheridan College in the Toronto suburb of Oakville, Ontario. The film’s references
are less Warner Bros. and more Wong Kar-wai’s In the
Mood for Love.
Cheung tells us, “I look towards film from Asia [forinspiration] — from Taiwan or Hong Kong. I lookthrough a lot of those to get ideas for the ways thosestories are told in a way that’s not as formulaic.”
From a plane grazing the top of her parents’ building
to her grandfather’s reflection on a television screen,
Cheung masterfully plays with lighting, shadowsand colour, along with hand-drawn digital animation
made using Toon Boom Harmony. Her hard work has
paid off.
Her success bridges academia and awards, including
the Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF)
and the Taichung International Animation Festival(TIAF), among many others. Both inside and outsideof the toon industry, Asian creators in the West are
finally getting the recognition and representation they
deserve — whether it’s Domee Shi’s Pixar short Bao
or Kevin Kwan’s book-turned-romcom, Crazy Rich
Asians.
“I think representation in animation is 100 percent
important; I think representation in general is import-

80

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

— a term popularized by Chinese-American author
Amy Chua in her book The Battle Hymn of the Tiger
Mother. For Cheung, support has led to success.
Also, Canada’s thriving animation market is fertile
ground for a lifelong creative career in the industry.
Looking ahead, Cheung is already plotting her next
creative project: an animated documentary. While
she wants the film to be longer than In Passing, shedoesn’t know what the subject or style will be yet.
For now, she is reading the graphic novel Footnotes
in Gaza by Joe Sacco, which depicts two horrific incidents during the Suez Crisis, for guidance on how tojournalistically translate reality into illustration.
“I have a lot of ideas and they stay in my head for areally long time. I think [the animated documentaryis] going to stick around for a while,” says Cheung.

ant. There’s not a lot in animation. It’s predominantly
dominated by the same type of person, and so a lotof characters end up being the same too. It would
be nice if it reflected real life where there’s a lot ofdiversity,” says Esther Cheung.
As part of her research for In Passing, Cheung would
go back to Hong Kong to speak with her grandmother and the remaining aunties and uncles she has
there. She points out that while she does speak someCantonese, it’s a little rough due to a lack of practice.
Naturally, she’s learned some tricks for when she goesback.
“I definitely am not [perceived as a local in HongKong], but I try to fit in. I don’t know how to readmenus or any Chinese at all, so my parents had tohelp me a lot with the writing in the film,” Esther
Cheung tells us.
Her parents were hugely involved in the creation of In
Passing, helping Cheung with not only her Chinesewriting but also details only a local would think of —like Hong Kong’s constant noise. They also pushed
her to pursue animation in the first place. Having had
a lifelong love of drawing, she decided during highschool that a career in a related field like architecturewasn’t for her.
“My dad said, ‘Do art. It’s clearly one of your strong
suits so just go with it.’ A family friend works inanimation and is successful, so that also helped,”
Cheung recalls with a laugh.
Her father and mother buck the harmful stereotypeof Asian parents in the West, who are often associated with STEM education and strict “tiger parenting”

81

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

“For instance, with [In Passing] I had a mood andHong Kong in mind when I started — and that lasted
for two years. Eventually, I sat down and worked out
what it could be and even more so when I was in
Hong Kong.”
While the small details of Cheung’s animated documentary remain up in the air, a big one is certain:
it will give a platform to a topic that is not normallycovered and be done in hand-drawn animation.
“Hand-drawn has a charm you can’t get from CG, it’s
definitely going to be hand-drawn,” says Cheung.
She continues, “I think there’s a lot of possibilities
with [animated documentaries] to tell more specificand untold stories — and that’s what really excitesme.”How Creator X is closing
the opportunity gap inanimation education
by Toon BoomIn the post-digital classroom, some students are taught creative career skills, including animation,using state-of-the-art tools like Wacom Cintiqs and professional software. Crash course: while talent is
widely and evenly distributed, these learning opportunities are not.
Creator X was launched to bridge this gap between
talent and opportunity in arts education, enabling
students to pursue careers in Arts Media and Entertainment (AME). Based in Sacramento, California, thethree-day annual summer camp connects 120 likeminded youth to network with each other as well as
learn directly from industry professionals, workshops
and keynote presentations covering six disciplines:
story, music, traditional art, dance, performance andanimation — entirely for free.
Camp alum Kristin Schueller recounts how this
impacted her career, “Creator X gave me the confidence to explore different mediums to express mycreativity. The instructors helped me to find a better
direction for my future of attending art college. They
also gave advice from their personal experiences in
the industry that was extremely helpful to me.”On top of these priceless life lessons, the students
end up walking away from the camp with about$1,500 worth of tools and software. Much like theprogram itself, the story behind Creator X is almost
too good to be true.

The men behind the mentorship
Creator X was founded in 2018 by Sheldon HighSchool (SHS) animation teacher Shawn Sullivan andhis former student David Garibaldi, who has sincegone on to become an internationally famous speed
painter. His accomplishments include being a finalist
on season seven of America’s Got Talent, perform82

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

ing for the Obamas at the White House and he iscurrently touring with NBA half-time shows around
North America.
While Garibaldi has become the face of Creator X,
Sullivan has always been its heart. When he joinedin SHS in 1998, he launched the school’s animation
program — a feat that had never properly been done
anywhere in America before.
“The big push right now is STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. There’s an area being leftout, which is the arts and creativity. It’s great that we
focus on STEM, but if we don’t teach and encouragekids to be creative, they’re just going to regurgitate
what they’ve learned in a classroom as opposed tocoming up with new concepts,” explains Sullivan.
He continues, “Art isn’t the only way to teach creativity, but I feel it’s one of the strongest. So teaching
animation and creativity is very important, not justfor the kids, but for the world in general. If we’regoing to ask these kids to go forward and solve world
problems, we need to make sure that they have thecreative skills to do it.”Today, the SHS animation program covers techniques
across 2D, 3D and VR, teaching everything from thebasics to basically professional. Sullivan has madeit a point to incorporate talks and workshops fromindustry leaders into his K9 Studios, with the goal ofreviving apprentice-style teaching that educates andempowers his students to work in the real world.

Much like the values of giving back and knowledge
sharing he teaches his students, mentorship was essential to Sullivan’s own story. He graduated from UC
Davis with a degree in fine arts under the tutelage ofthe international artist Wayne Tebow. When he was23, he met David Feiss (creator of Cartoon Network’s
Cow and Chicken), who introduced him to animation as a career just as he was getting his teachingcredentials.
Instead of choosing between his love of toons andteaching, Sullivan resolved to marry the two. The
resulting program has received top marks fromstudents, parents and the industry. His pupils’ work
has been picked up by HBO, won National Television

Academy Awards and a Regional Emmy Award, andhis course was named the best high school animation
program in the world by the Walt Disney Family Foundation.
Sullivan says of the honour, “I didn’t know it was acompetition. [The Walt Disney Family Foundation]
kept showing up, bringing people to come see what
I was doing. And then later they announced I was in
the running against a program in China and anotherone in Southern California, and they declared mine
was the best. It was a huge honour.”Today, he is working with 13 different schools to
replicate the program for them. Going back to thebeginning though, Garibaldi was one of his firststudents in the late 90s — a core group Sullivan calls
his “old men.” In those days, the prof barely had any
equipment, software or hardware, and pupils often
had to work from his personal home computer to finish films. When he first met Garibaldi, the latter waswhat Sullivan likes to call an “aerosol artist.”
Sullivan told him, “‘If you keep doing what you’re
doing with the graffiti work, you’re going to pay forit eventually. But if you want to get paid for doing it,come see me.’ David followed me immediately into
my classroom asking, ‘What do you mean get paid?
What do you do?’ I told him, ‘If you want to work

83

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Together, they are leveraging arts education and animation to make a difference in the lives of students
in the Sacramento area, though they aspire to see
it replicated around the state, country and world,
eventually.
“If you go to my classroom, it’s outfitted like a professional studio with software like Toon Boom, and thenI have full-sized Cintiqs and students have all thishigh-end computer stuff to work with,” says Sullivan.
He continues, “But if I drive two miles in any direction, I’m in the boundaries of a whole other school.
And when I went to go visit those teachers whowanted to start animation programs, their kids weredrawing with a mouse and they didn’t have any animation software. So the idea was to start advocating
to ensure [proper] tools got into other schools and inother programs.”

with me, you need to stop doing the illegal stuff and
I’ll start showing you how to take what you’re doing
and put it in a positive direction.’ Everything I taught
him in my class, from animating to editing to soundto storytelling, is part of his show today.”
Sullivan continues, “He worked hard and eventually, when he graduated, he started trying to figureout what he could do with it. He kept creating anddesigning his work. Eventually, he started coming up
with how to incorporate all those things I showed
him and it’s in the show he does today. He would tell
you he’d probably have been in jail; he changed hislife by walking into an animation class.”

Taking Creator X from
X-tracurricular event
to X-traordinary impact
Over the last 20 years, Sullivan’s mentorship has
evolved into a partnership with Garibaldi — andthus, Creator X. In fact, as the program has grown, it
seems the roles have occasionally reversed.
Hesitant about taking a leap forward with the program, Sullivan recalls how Garibaldi used his own
words against him, “‘So what’s stopping you? What’s
holding you back? You need funding and what’s
stopping you? Why is funding stopping you?’”“He’s like, ‘Hey, if you really want to do this, you finda time, we’ll find the funding and we’ll make sure
this gets out to the kids.’ And so he came in and did
seed money for us and got us up and running.”

84

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Art isn’t the only way to teachcreativity, but I feel it’s one of
the strongest.
Shawn Sullivan

This classroom work is done under the Animation
Intern Program, a separate initiative Sullivan set up.
He aims to provide his fellow educators with training,
curriculums and lessons, workplace learning opportunities and access to industry professionals. Given the
red tape many teachers face, Sullivan has also foundloopholes to get his program into other school districts including creating a company to make it easierfor schools to bring in animation pros.
It’s this determined boldness from Sullivan and Garibaldi that’s given Creator X its X factor. And while theresults of the program speak for themselves, students
are always happy to say something as well.
Recent Creator X participant Aiden Petersen reflected,“Creator X helped me become more confident in myart. It taught me how to get more into character, andbecome more expressive so that other people could
appreciate my art — how to create a good story, thatpeople would understand and enjoy. I learned to be
loud and excited and to have a good attitude about
everything. I don’t think I just learned art skills at
Creator X, I also learned life skills.”

Five in Focus’ The
Butterfly Affect puts
women in key creativeroles
by Toon BoomFairness and equality are common themes in children’s animation — though you wouldn’t necessarily believe it if you looked at the industry. A widely circulated study by the USC Annenberg Inclusion
Initiative and advocacy group Women in Animation (WIA) found that in the last 12 years, women
represented just three percent of animated film directors and only one of those filmmakers (Kung Fu
Panda 2‘s Jennifer Yuh Nelson) was a woman of colour.
According to WIA, women occupy just 20 percent ofcreative roles in animation, representing 10 percent
of producers and directors, 17 percent of writers, 21
percent in art and design, and 23 percent of animators. The proof is in the productions: more efforts
must be made to turn our society’s principles into
progress.
Five in Focus is a year-long program improving gender
equity in the animation industry. Designed by Womenin Animation’s Vancouver Chapter and Women in
View, five women were nominated to represent key
positions in the market where women are traditionally underrepresented — aiming to advance theircareers through extensive mentorship from the WIA
community, exposure to a wide range of industry
activities, master classes, pitch training and more.

85

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

The women selected for Five in Focus include director
Stephanie Blakey, writer Jen Davreux, producer
Amanda Konkin, animation director Kaitlin Sutherland and art director Maisha Moore. The program
also provided them with the financing to create a 2D
animated short, The Butterfly Affect. The film follows
a worm trying to make its way in a world built for
butterflies — relevant, right?
The Butterfly Affect took its inaugural flight at theMothers of a Medium program on October 27 atthe SPARK ANIMATION 2019 Film Festival, with all
five women in attendance. We spoke to them aheadof the premiere to explore why they are passionate
about animation, their experiences in the industry
and in the Five in Focus initiative, and how they believe the market can be improved for other women.

Five questions with the Five in Focus

In your opinion and experience,
what else can be done to make theanimation industry more accessible
to women?
The simple answer is to hire more women! Having
more women or women-identifying people in theworkforce will ensure that they hire others and soforth. Also, if you’re a male in the animation industry
and women or women-identifying people approach
you with questions or concerns: listen to them — especially if you’re in a place to help out. The very least
you can do is listen.

Stephanie Blakey, director
Stephanie Blakey is a storyboard artist at Atomic
Cartoons in Vancouver, where she has worked on
the Netflix series Cupcake and Dino and The Last
Kids on Earth; the previous short she directed,
The Last Resort, was an animated comedy-horror that won the Audience Award at the Austin
International Film Festival and was screened on
the international festival circuit. After attending
Emily Carr University for animation, she obtained
her Master’s degree in Directing Animationfrom the National Film and Television School in
England and has television series training from
La Poudrière in France.

Why do you love animation?
I love how you can tell so many stories in so many
incredibly different ways — I’m always surprised byanimation and what’s possible. I also love the amountof control one has over a film; every single thing is
tailored specifically in an animated film and every
decision has a reason. Animation is not a genre, it’sa medium. You can create the corniest of comedies
or the darkest of dramas and use every part of theanimation process to enhance the experience.

What’s your experience been like asa woman in the animation industry?
Overall, it’s been great! I find that there are tons of
women or women-identifying folks in the animationindustry, so it’s definitely not the boys’ club it used tobe. There are still times where I’ll have to point out
problematic things to men while on the job, but I’m
incredibly lucky in that they’ve all been kind, understanding and easy to approach. Sometimes you may
feel hesitation to speak up, but at the end of the day
if what you say or point out will have a positive effecton the final outcome, say it — chances are they’ll
listen and know better for next time.

86

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

What has been your favourite partof working on The Butterfly Affect?
There have been so many things. If I had to narrow it down, I’d say that it was being able to meet
and work with the other four women. I’ve learnedso much from each of them and have the utmost
respect for their work, and am so proud of how far
they’ve come and how far they’ll go.

How has been being part of Fivein Focus helped you advanceprofessionally?
I’m still submitting [The Butterfly Affect] to film
festivals around the world so there may be more
professional advancement to come. I’ve already beenoffered a promotion to the position of storyboard
supervisor [at Atomic Cartoons] and am absolutely
thrilled to have more creative input at my day job.
It was also mind-blowing to think that for years I’dbeen attending the Annecy festival as a hobby, but
this year my team and I were there as speakers at the
Women in Animation World Summit. I’ll be singing
praises for the Five in Focus initiative for years tocome.
Amanda Konkin, producer
Amanda Konkin has a masters degree from the
University of British Columbia and, after a decade producing in theatre and digital media, shetransitioned into film and television in 2013. She
is currently a production manager at RainmakerStudios, though her extensive credits list includes
Reboot: The Guardian Code for Netflix, Surfs Up
2: Wavemania (Sony) and The Switch for OutTV.

What has been your favourite partof working on The Butterfly Affect?
Working with the other women! We have a Google
Chat group that we all communicate through regularly and if I’m having a particularly stressful day or if
something really great happens, I have the impulse tojump on the chat and share with the team. It’s really
incredible to have built this sense of camaraderie andeven though we are working towards something tangible together, it’s these moments and relationshipsthat I will remember most fondly.

Why do you love animation?
After I started working in film, I found my way into
animation in 2015 and fell in love with the medium. I
grew up with Disney as a cornerstone of my childhood —the first movie I ever saw in a theatre was
The Little Mermaid — and those animated stories
were so formative in my early years. I’m so pleased
to be able to work in this industry now and help tellstories for young audiences, and shape their formative experiences.

How has been being part of Fivein Focus helped you advanceprofessionally?
The Five in Focus program has been great in helping
mentor us through our own IP creation and providing
amazing resources, sponsors and technology for us
to utilize during our film production. We have madesome amazing connections and the knowledge I havegained throughout the project has already had ahuge impact on my other creative projects. After thisproject is completed, I will be working towards thedelivery of a live-action short film called H.appinessthat was awarded the National Harold Greenberg
Shorts-to-Features Grant.

What’s your experience been like asa woman in the animation industry?
I feel very supported as a women in the animationindustry. Organizations like Women in Animationand Women in View help me recognize that there
are so many women who have come before me thatworked hard to form a supportive community that I
am lucky to be a part of. It’s nice to find similar stories
and experiences in such a male-dominated industry
and I am grateful to have worked with such amazing
people in my past projects.

In your opinion and experience,
what else can be done to make theanimation industry more accessible
to women?
Create a culture of acceptance and support. It’s
important that studios work to support women in
important creative roles. If you are a woman getting
into the industry, find a community, a colleague or amentor that will help you get through and find yourvoice. Support the success of your peers and realizethat we all have the power to raise each other up
through our personal accomplishments!

87

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Maisha Moore
Maisha Moore is a Vancouver-based designer
and illustrator, currently working at Cinesite as adevelopment art director. A graduate of Capilano University’s 3D Animation program, she has
switched her career’s focus from CG modelling,shading and texturing to design — now creating
everything from toy packaging to imaginary
worlds within feature films.

Why do you love animation?
I love to draw and was drawn to animation from anearly age. The art of storytelling through a hand-created visual medium is nothing but magical. I knew I
wanted to be in the industry in some capacity by thetime I was 14.

What’s your experience been like asa woman in the animation industry?
I have had a good, respectful experience thus far in
my career, but I know that is not everyone’s experience.

In your opinion and experience,
what else can be done to make theanimation industry more accessible
to women?
I think we need way more exposure of the non-drawing jobs for women who are talented in other areas
beyond purely visual art or animation. We so often
focus on art — people perceive the industry as being
for visuals artist only. Studios don’t run without
writers, accountants, IT techs, coders, coordinators,
producers and human resource managers, to name afew. I feel we need more women in these roles.

What has been your favourite partof working on The Butterfly Affect?
I loved working with our small team. Creatively you
can change direction very quickly, problem-solve on
the fly and chop up and redirect the pipeline at a
moment’s notice. This causes chaos on long-format
studio productions. It was very exciting to be able toswitch things up and work in this agile way.

How has been being part of Fivein Focus helped you advanceprofessionally?
The Five in Focus program has been great, I am now
a production designer. The program has made me
want to develop my ideas and art more. I want tocreate passion projects and spread more art.

88

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Jen Davreux, writer
Originally from a small town in the Okanagan,
Jen Davreux is a storyboard artist, independent
comic artist and writer in the big city of Vancouver where she is pursuing a career in animation. She developed a passion for drawing andstorytelling at a young age, and beyond her
writer role at Klei Entertainment, she currently
co-writes a webcomic titled Go, Titan X! and has
recently begun plugging her words into video
games.

Why do you love animation?
Animation is such a creative medium and I was always drawn to the idea that you could create worlds
and characters entirely from scratch. It has a unique
way of simplifying and amplifying movement andemotion to give you a feeling that you just can’t replicate in live-action. There was an incredible boom ofaction shows with awesome female leads when I wasa kid — Kim Possible, My Life As a Teenage Robot,
Sailor Moon — and I think they really sparked myimagination for the kind of stories I wanted to tell.

What’s your experience been like asa woman in the animation industry?
There’s been some happy surprises and some not-sohappy ones. The first happy surprise was finding out
there were actually many more women interested inanimation than I’d been led to believe when I’d been
applying for schools; in my program, we actually
made up the majority of the students. I also feel like
I’ve been very lucky to work with a lot of directors
and supervisors who actively wanted to help me andwomen in general grow and be a part of the industry.

The biggest frustration I always found animation actually caught me off-guard when I first encounteredit, and that was with the content we were —andweren’t— producing.

I noticed that whenever I’ddraw a female characterfrowning or showing
frustration, I’d get a noteback from the clients along
the lines of “she looks too‘bitchy’” or “please change
this to have her smiling”, withno such notes for the malecharacters.
Jen Davreux

people —including the four incredible ladies I got towork with— that I most likely wouldn’t have had thechance to otherwise.

How has been being part of Fivein Focus helped you advanceprofessionally?
It really helped to push me and change my mindset.
I felt my attitude change from, “I really want to be awriter, but I’m not sure if I’m ready or good enough,”
to: “I am a writer, I’ve already proven that I can doit and now I just need to find a job!” Knowing that
I had such strong support from everyone connected
to Five in Focus and Women in Animation also felt
like this gentle hand on my back keeping me moving
forward, without fear of stumbling. Having a credit
to my name gave me more confidence to go out
and apply for writing positions, and I found people
reached out to me as well after seeing my nameconnected to the program.
Kaitlin Sutherland, animation director

When I pitched an idea for a show I had, I was
thrilled to get called back to discuss moving forwardwith it until they told me that they thought the rolesof the lead girl and her sidekick male friend should
be switched to put the boy in the lead. I was told agirl lead in an action-comedy series wouldn’t sell andwas given an example of a single show with a female
lead that hadn’t done well the previous year. All I
could think of were the many female-led shows I had
grown up with that had inspired me to go into theanimation industry.

In your opinion and experience,
what else can be done to make theanimation industry more accessible
to women?
I’ve been seeing a push recently to see more womenand girls onscreen, and I think that’s definitely a big
step in the right direction. It was one of the things
that inspired me and made me feel like the animationindustry would be a welcoming place, and I know itwill do the same for a new generation of girls.

What has been your favourite partof working on The Butterfly Affect?
Early on, when I sat down to write my first draft ofthe script, I had a moment of, “Wow… I’m writing something that’s actually going to be animatedand turned into something” and I was just giddy.
I’ve also been able to meet a lot of really amazing

89

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Sutherland is a 27-year-old animator living andcreating in Vancouver, British Columbia. A graduate of Sheridan College, she currently works at
WildBrain where she has risen the ranks fromlayout artist to animation supervisor, overseeing
productions including Dorg VanDango and Netflix’s Chip and Potato.

Why do you love animation?
Animation is the very literal manifestation of myimagination — things that are impossible to achieve
in reality, scenarios and characters that could notexist outside the bounds of our minds are given life

through the art of animation. I grew up watching a
lot of cartoons. The stories, the colours, the movement, everything about them captured my attention
completely. It was while watching the making-offeature on my Lilo and Stitch DVD that I first realized
there were people behind the animation I loved andthat they got paid to make it! It was obvious to me
from that point on that working in animation was adefinite career goal for me.

What’s your experience been like asa woman in the animation industry?
Honestly, I don’t think there’s been a better time inanimation’s history to be a woman. Certainly there
are still areas where the divide between the genders
seems quite large, specifically the lack of female
directors or women in higher roles not relating to
production support. I’m currently working on Dorg
VanDango, a Cartoon Saloon and Wildbrain co-production with an all-female animation supervisor
team! It’s awesome having so many talented womenin one room working together to make a show,
however this is a 2D production and I believe theseroles are still fairly male dominated on the 3D side ofthings. I’m very glad that the Women in Animation,
Women in View and Five in Focus program exist to
help highlight talented women in this industry andhelp even the divide in leadership roles.

In your opinion and experience,
what else can be done to make theanimation industry more accessible
to women?
Continuing to support programs like WIA’s Five in Focus would be an amazing way to continue to highlight
up-and-coming female talent and give women theopportunity to move into the roles they may be overlooked for in their day to day jobs. I truly believe thatthe exposure from this program is going to go a longway in adding some extra support behind my desire to
move into higher roles in the industry. With or without
the program, I want to highly encourage the womenin this industry to go for the jobs they want.
I feel like a lot of young women are taught to beoverly cautious and hesitant about speaking up lest
they seem like they’re bragging or being overbearing in some way, but I’d really like to encourage
my fellow female artists to speak up and believe inthemselves.

90

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

What has been your favourite partof working on The Butterfly Affect?
The learning experiences and the travel opportunities
are definitely my favourite parts of working as part of
The Butterfly Affect team. Now that the film is done,
I can safely say I knew next to nothing about how to
put together a short film of this caliber. Of course I’ve
made a short film on my own in the past, but it’s awhole different story when you’ve got so many artists
to keep track of, a crazy amount of high profile sponsors and are planning on tackling the festival circuit
once the film is completed. The whole process has
opened my eyes to how many moving pieces there
really are under the surface of making a short.

It would be a shame not tosee more talented women
stepping into higher roles
because they were too shy to
say they could do it. You cando it, I believe in you.
Kaitlin Sutherland

How has been being part of Fivein Focus helped you advanceprofessionally?
The animation director title sure looks pretty on myresume [laughs]. Honestly, having worked as an
animation director on this film for the better part ofa year has made me question if this is the next step I
want to take in my career — I had to wear A LOT ofhats during this production, so many in fact that itreally lead me to question what exactly fell under thejob description of animation director and it definitely
wasn’t what I expected.
Being on such a small production team, we all had
to step into a lot of roles to get this film done; askingaround though, it really seems like the role is different
depending on what the production needs. I’d love
to be able to say that this film immediately launched
me into my dream animation director position, but
if the opportunity to do so arose, I’d feel a lot more
comfortable stepping into that role now than I would
have been before this project.

The Bravest Knight:
Daniel Errico’s quest for
LGBTQ children’s media
by Toon Boom

Once upon a time, generations of people of colour and the LGBTQ community grew up without seeing
themselves represented in children’s media — whether in illustrated books or on screen. Modern creators faced a challenge greater than any dragon: How to show more kids that they can be the heroesof their stories? New York City-based author and producer Daniel Errico had the courage to rise to theoccasion with his Hulu animated series, The Bravest Knight.
Based on Errico’s 2014 book The Bravest Knight Who
Ever Lived, the children’s television series follows Sir
Cedric (voiced by T.R. Knight) — a pumpkin farmer turned knight who has found his happily everafter married to Prince Andrew (Wilson Cruz) withwhom he has a 10-year-old adopted daughter, Nia(Storm Reid). The show has also attracted guest stars
including RuPaul, who is voicing a Big Bad Wolf in(traditionally) women’s clothing, and Wanda Sykes as
Mona the Mayor.

According to Hulu, Cedric is training Nia to follow in
his armoured footsteps by sharing “how he transformed from day-time farmer to full-fledged knight”
and in the process teaches her “important values
such as honor, justice and compassion.” The 13-episode first season of The Bravest Knight premieredwith five episodes on June 21, with the rest releasedon October 11.
Children’s media and animation play an essential
role in building empathy — particularly at a time
when diversity is met with divisiveness. A recent
GLAAD study found young people in the US weresignificantly more uncomfortable with LGBTQ individuals than they were a few years ago. On-screen
representation can play a large role in how groupsof people are perceived and how children see
themselves.

Why are we slowly tip-toeing
towards progress when we’re
fully capable of making great
strides quickly?
Daniel Errico

91

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

Aimed at a preschool-and-above audience, The
Bravest Knight is one of the first children’s showsin history to feature an openly gay main character.
Additionally, the protagonist and his husband are ina biracial relationship with an adopted daughter of adifferent ethnicity.
The GLAAD Where We Are on TV Report 2018
notes that LGBTQ representation on television hit
a record high last year, with 8.8 percent of series
regulars openly identifying as gay, trans or queer.
Among those mentioned, people of colour outnumbered white characters for the first time ever. While
many now celebrate this level of diversity, for creatorand producer Errico the quest to getting Sir Cedric’s
story told was harrowing — fraught with publishers,studios and broadcasters afraid to support children’s
media with LGBTQ-positive messaging.
“I spent a long time trying to get people to pick [TheBravest Knight] up and I honestly couldn’t even give itaway for free — people were so scared of having an
openly gay protagonist,” Errico tells us.
“Eventually I had a call with Hulu and it was like theclouds parted. They understood the importance of amessage like this and wanted more content like [TheBravest Knight] and were willing to publicly support it.”
Representation in series like Steven Universe’s
wedding between Ruby and Sapphire and The LoudHouse’s couple Howard and Harold McBride have92

Animation from every angle | Production 2022

been met with largely positive responses. While
this is proof there has been progress, there has also
been pushback. The marriage of Mr. Ratburn to his
husband on an episode of Arthur earlier this year was
widely celebrated on social media, though Alabama
Public Television refused to air it as they felt it was abreach of “trust” with their viewership.
Faced with similar barriers throughout the pitchingprocess, Errico thought: “Why are we slowly tip-toeing towards progress when we’re fully capable ofmaking great strides quickly? It is absolutely possible
to give proper representation tomorrow if we choose.
Why hold back when there are kids today who needto see those characters?”
While Errico himself identifies as a heterosexualcisgender man, he has compassion for the struggle of
the LGBTQ community and is passionate about storytelling. A mechanical engineer by training and former
investment banker, he quit his job to pursue his
dream of working in children’s media. Having noticed
a lack of diversity on-screen, he is especially inspiredby the stories that haven’t been told before.
“Children’s media was something I always wanted to
do but never thought was practical. Then, I reacheda certain age and realized it was what I wanted to
do with my life and also how much the things I had
watched and read growing up had affected me in ameaningful way,” says Errico.

He continues, “That was one of the most inspiring
thoughts I ever had: that a book I read as a childshaped my views as adult. This is a way to reachsomeone that profoundly affects them for the rest of
their life and I wanted to be a part of that.”
The Bravest Knight was partially inspired by two
gay friends of Errico’s who had a fairy tale romance,
though their love wasn’t represented in any children’sbooks. This led him to create the e-book The Bravest
Knight Who Ever Lived. Knowing the story didn’t end
there, he self-financed a short animation with thehelp of an artist in Denmark.
Errico is a lifelong animation fan and has dreamed oftelling a story arc across an entire season. Given the
fantastical nature of fairy tales, the medium also hasless limits than live-action when it comes to breaking
the rules of physics.
“I think animation is the most engaging form ofstorytelling we have right now, when it’s done right,”
says Errico.
He continues, “With animation, you get to spark kids’
imaginations in ways you otherwise couldn’t. Kids are
already primed and ready for their imaginations to
run wild. Animation makes it a little easier to bridge
the gap between what they’re seeing and what they
can think about in their heads.”
Eventually, he connected with the New York Cityand Vancouver-based Big Bad Boo animation studio,
who work on productions that promote messages ofinclusivity and diversity. They found the fact that The
Bravest Knight had two gay dads inspiring rather thanintimidating, and set out to redesign the charactersand prepare for the “Pitch Your IP” session at MIPCOM in 2017. From there, they got the green lightfrom Hulu and the rest is history.

“I get messages on a daily basis from kids, parents,
family members who just can’t wait for more episodes,” says Shabnam Rezaei, co-founder of Big Bad
Boo, in an interview with Animation Magazine.
She continues, “I think the loveliest messages though
are from same-sex parents who finally feel like they
have a place to take their kids where they feel normal
and all along, those were the people I thought about
and think about most. I am ecstatic about that.”
As streaming platforms like Hulu not only multiply
but also become more multicultural and inclusive intheir representation on-screen and behind the scenes,
one can hope LGBTQ-friendly children’s entertainment will be more the norm than the exception. Thisis thanks to the true knights in shining armour like
Daniel Errico and the team at Big Bad Boo, who have
paved the way for future creators to get their stories
told.
When asked if he had any advice for others hoping topitch their projects, Errico says, “If you tell the story
you want to tell, there’s a strong chance someone
else will want to as well. Also, always create. To haveyour dream fulfilled, you have to put yourself out
there — the better you get at that, the bigger advantage you have over everyone else.”
He finishes with: “My advice would also be to actively
seek rejections because each one gets you closer
to your goal and more immune to them. If you’rethe person who can take a ‘no’ and brush it off andmove on quickly, you will be a force to be reckoned
with. Something I learned early on is people who tell
you they don’t like something don’t speak for theworld or the market or your audience — they don’t
speak for anyone else other than themselves. There’s
something very comforting about that.”
While we aren’t quite at ‘happily ever after’ yet whenit comes to LGBTQ representation in animation,
creators are turning the page on a new chapter. For
the next generation, that is not only progress, but
promise.

93

Animation from every angle | Production 2022