Upon Animation Review

Interview With Joaquim Dos Santos.

2009-12-07T11:46:00.000-08:00

Animation Director and all round nice guy Joaquim Dos Santos director of 'G.I.. Joe Resolute' answers a few questions about the film. He lets us in on some really interesting details about his career, and the production behind 'Resolute' and teases us with some NON information about upcoming top secret Warner Brothers Productions. Check out the interview behind the break.

UAR: First and most importantly, who's your favorite Joe or Cobra character?

JDS: WOW. That really is the most important question isn't it? It actually changes depending what version of Joe we are talking about here. And I don't mean era, because I am an 80's kid through and through. I mean weather we are talking about the toys or the cartoon or even the comics. As far as the comics and the animation go, Snake eyes always was and always will be the man.... In my opinion, He is the "ninja commando" prototype by which all other ninja commandos have been ripping off since the 80's.... I mean I love Metal gear solid as much as the next guy but c'mon it does not take a genius to see how far the influence has permeated. As far as the toy-line goes, Snake eyes a close second only to Zartan! I'll probably get killed by hardcore Joe fans for saying that but I just have so many nostalgic feelings connected with that toy. From the first time I saw his image in the little fold-out booklet that came with the toys to sitting out in the hot LA summer heatwave and watching him slowly change colors and then running him back into the shade to watch him slowly (and I mean slowly) change back to normal. He was awesome!

UAR: What inspired you to pursue animation as a career?

JDS: Since I can remember I just always loved art and movies and comics. I'm sure it's a bit of a cliché but it's the truth. I was an only child living with a single mom and I spent summers with my father in Portugal (which as a kid I hated because I could not speak the language) so when I visited him, if I was not at the beach swimming I would entertain myself by drawing all day while watching star-wars, Raiders or ghostbusters on our old betamax vcr. Back home in the states I would just get on these kicks where no matter how much fun my buddies were having outside playing I just wanted to be left alone to draw for hours and hours. Shows like Robotech and Joe would play on the TV and I would just try and draw what I saw. Comics were also a big part of the equation, Weather I was looking at Tin-Tin in portugal or Spiderman here I just loved the stories and the fact that I didn't really have to understand the language (in the case of tin-tin) to get what was going on.

UAR: How long have you been in the animation game? what was your first gig? how did you land it?

JDS: I guess I've been in for about ten years now. My first gig was on a CG Starship troopers tv series for Sony called "Roughnecks: the Starship troopers chronicles". As for how I landed it?.... It was pretty much just dumb luck actually. Growing up, if you couldn't already tell by my awesome grammar, I was a horrible student. So after high school college, let alone art school was not even a remote possibility. I did picked up some small indie comic gigs after submitting samples at the San diego comic con for companies that folded before the work could ever get published (or finished in one case) It was nothing that ever paid the bills so I was also working at the local Coffee-Bean and tea leaf and pretty much just being a jerky/slacker 20 year old on my time off. Eventually I got kind fed up with not going anywhere so on a suggestion from a buddy of mine who was also a struggling artist, I enrolled in a small technical art school that had opened in our neighborhood. It was run by a bunch of pros who were all working in the animation industry. The classes were kind of pricy but I could just barely swing it on my awesome coffee-bean salary. While I was taking these courses me and my buddies would frequent a local comic book shop and after some time we became friendly with the owner. One day he asked if I could draw something in his Sketch book so I did and didn't really think much more of it. I just kept taking these classes and working so I could pay for them and the supplies needed. One day I walk into the comic shop and the owner tells me one of his customers, who just so happened to be a hotshot animation director working at Sony saw my sketch and asked about me. I freaked out, Gave him all my info and the saddest excuse for a portfolio you could imagine and two weeks later I was hired! Looking back they must have been pretty desperate. Once I was in, I just burrowed in like a tick with lime disease and never let go. In case any kids read this let me just say: "Don't do what I did.... Go to school.... You'll be better for it."

UAR: Including 'Resolute' I noticed you've worked primarily on comic book based, or more action oriented properties. Was this an intentional move on your part? or are you just really lucky?

JDS: I don't know if early on it was intentional. I would have worked on anything that paid the bills as long as I was drawing. I was just lucky to land at a studio that focused on action oriented animation. But as time has gone on and I've managed to get my career to a place where I could pick my gigs I'd say I tend to lean toward action/adventure work. As far as "comic" related stuff goes, I was a huge fan of Bruce Timms work on Batman the Animated series and I applied to Warner Bros when I heard they were starting up a justice league cartoon after Batman Beyond was finished. I'm pretty sure they hired me while I was still relatively "green" because they figured it would be easier to train me in a more cinematic "Live action" kind of style and the action/adventure related jobs that followed were due in part to the skills I learned during my early days at Warner bros. I don't think I so much choose comic related projects as much as I do projects that allow me to design and stage stories that really keep my artistic interest. Comics just happen to lend themselves to action/adventure stories..... Does that make sense?

UAR: When did your relationship with Titmouse begin?, what drew you to the company?

JDS: When Resolute was officially green-lit Sam Register (the Producer) myself and Hasbro began looking around for smaller indie studios that could handle a production of this size. we looked at a few places in Hollywood and Titmouse just had the right vibe. Plus the owners Chris and Shannon Pyrnoski were really excited about the project and we hit it off really well. Titmouse is primarily a flash based studio but to their credit they didn't even blink an eye when I lobbied for the show to be animated overseas traditionally.

UAR: Where was 'Resolute' conceived? was it developed in house or was it brought in by Hasbro or some other source?

JDS: Sam Register who was at the time working as an independent producer had partnered with Hasbro to create animated content. At the time they were looking specifically at creating Joe content that spoke directly to the hard core fan, you know the guys who had grown up with the franchise and now had kids but were still collecting. And also build up some buzz for the new film.

UAR: 'Resolute' was released on DVD in November 2009 to coincide with the home video release of the live action film, but when did production begin on 'GI JOE Resolute'?

JDS: Man I am so bad with dates..... I want to say January of 08. But don't quote me on that... Or do, but just don't hold me to it. all in all, from concept to finished product it took about a year.

UAR: Though it ended up airing on Adult Swim there was some scuttlebutt on the net about it being a web series. Is there any truth to that? what inspired the format change?

JDS: Initially it was just pitched as a web miniseries that would air on Hasbro's site. A one time deal that was just meant to help re-familiarize people with the franchise while giving the hardcore fans a more updated contemporary joe that still paid homage to the original ip and I think the format really lent itself well to that concept. There was never any real talk of resolute spinning off into an ongoing series. And realistically I think it would've been a risky investment for the company especially if they wanted to try and maintain a certain level of quality with the animation. Anyhow, somewhere along the way Hasbro began shopping it around and it wound up on Adult Swim. Honestly for me... And this is just my personal artistic opinion here, I wish it had remained solely a web based mini-series. I think the format of these little five minute set pieces released every couple of days that connect a very simplistic but iconic storyline work much better that way. It's like the old serialized radio plays from back in the day where kids would tune in to hear what had happened to the hero but with a modern twist. It was never intended to be viewed as one movie. The pacing is all off and quite frankly, it cheapens the experience (again, my opinion).

UAR: What was the schedule like for a 5 minute segment? How long did it take to go from script to Final product?

JDS: Man, again with the schedule based question..... Jeez, I suck at these. I should put you in touch with our line producer and she could tell you how we blew all of our deadlines HA! Honestly it's pretty much a blur for me now.

UAR: Could you describe the production process of a scene, who is involved at each stage? What is your level of involvement?

JDS: Again, It's been a while so I'll do my best to remember.... I will say that because of the smaller indie studio that we were at and because money was a little tighter than other productions I've been a part of we had to employ a little bit of "guerilla warfare" tactics to get the job done, which was cool but usually meant that most of the artists had to be able to do a little bit of everything. The process went something like this: When Warren (Ellis) was done writing an episode, I'd meet with our background and prop designers and discuss concepts. For the next day or so they would start sketching really loose images of weapons, vehicles, locations (etc) that pertained to the episode. While they were plugging away I would sneak away to my office and start on character designs, again really loose drawings just to get the ideas across. I'd also meet with our line producer to discuss who was available to do the storyboards for each episode. In a couple of days we usually had enough concept art to hand out to the story artist who, for the most part worked freelance. I'd meet with the story artist and talk about tone and shot choices. The story artist usually had between a week to two weeks to turn around a rough storyboard at which time I would meet with them again to go over the staging and make revisions. By the two week mark we had some more finalized designs so when the story artist had to clean up the board they had final (Hasbro approved) designs to work with. Around then we'd usually receive another script from Warren so it became a bit of a juggling act between getting one episode in and prepping another one to go out. with an episode's storyboard finished it would then get handed over to our editor who would build a tight animatic. Sometimes the episodes would still need a little bit of tweaking and those revisions would be made in "real-time" during the edit. I was lucky to have my own cintiq in the edit bay and if a shot needed tweaking or a scene needed revising I would just sketch it out right then and there and the editor could just plop it right in! Some episodes needed more work than others so these nights could get pretty late. Luckily everyone was willing to put in the hours. At some point during the juggling act I would meet with the background painters and make revisions on their work if needed. God bless photoshop because it allows me to make revisions on these amazingly rendered backgrounds that I could never paint on my own by sliding bars and applying filters HA! Once the BG color was finalized I'd do a loose color guide on the characters for our color stylist to make pretty and that was pretty much it for the art. At some point we recorded the dialogue with only four, count em' four very versatile actors AND snuck in a couple of trips to Korea to oversee the animation that was being handled by the amazing JM animation, a studio I had built up a relationship with since working on Avatar: the last airbender. When the animation was finalized we'd call retakes for small inconsistencies and animation flubs. When an episode was around 90% complete I'd meet with the composer and we'd discuss music composition, and in a week we'd meet again and he would spot the music at which point I'd give him my thoughts and he would take another week to finalize the score. by this time the animation retakes were in and it was time to do the final sound mix where the picture music and sound effects were all brought together! And that was about it. Now keep in mind that these episodes were all staggered so all of this happened in a sort of "overlapping" process. It got kind of crazy.

UAR: On a scale from "Jungle clear cutting, mountain of paper" to "Entirely paperless, Praying the server doesn't crash" How digital was the production on 'Resolute'? what software was used?

JDS: I'd say Resolute was about 90% digital. We still had some freelance guys that were turning in boards on paper but all that stuff got scanned and eventually became digital. Titmouse was really one of the first studios that I worked for that that provided cintiqs to every in-house artist and really championed for a paperless production. Now it's pretty common place but they were on the cutting edge as far as traditional animation goes. As for the software, We used photoshop, 3d studio max & cinema 4d (for a lot of the vehicles and props) and some after effects for the tech graphics playing on the screens in the background.

UAR: Did Titmouse work with an overseas production company? What won them the contract? Have they worked together with Titmouse previously?

JDS: I know I said it earlier, But I lobbied for JM animation in Korea to handle the actual "animation" of the show because they are an amazing group of artists who were eager to work on action related content like Resolute. I really cannot express how amazing that studio is. To my knowledge they had not worked with Titmouse in the past.

UAR: Warren Ellis wrote the movie, but he said he was hesitant at first because of an unfamiliarity with the original material. Were there issues adapting Warrens script to any expectations that Hasbro had? Or were they fairly hands off during production?

JDS: Not really, there were some liberties we took with minor story points such as the scene in episode 2 where Snake eyes glides into ninja island. In the script he was written to be wearing a jet pack but we knew that there would be an episode in which Duke and Scarlett would be using jetpacks to infiltrate the siberian missile silo coming up, so we decided to make it the squirrel suit. I also think it works for the stealth aspect of that story. Hasbro was pretty hands off for the most part. For the most part Hasbro was pretty hands off and allowed us to do our thing although We did have a little bit of an incident when animation came in for episode eight (the big ninja fight). It was bloody as hell! and while all of us artists loved it, Hasbro was kind of creeped out and understandably so I suppose. After all, they were about to release a big budget popcorn flick that was relaunching this franchise. So you know when you see Stormshadow get his arms cut and there is nothing but two little scratches? Well originally there are rivers of blood pouring out. And the scene where Snake Eyes gets the sword through the hand? Well that had a ton of blood too! we even mixed sound for it and you could hear it spilling on the floor. But my favorite was the close up on Stormshadow right after Snake Eyes hits him with the final step. In the original take Storm's eyes cry tears of blood and you can see a pool of blood begin to seep through his ninja mask where is mouth and nose are! Like his head was about to explose from the pressure! It was awesome! Maybe one day they'll release an extended "Bloody" cut.

UAR: What motivated the decisions about what to keep from the original series and what the 're-imagine'? Did Hasbro play a part in theses discussions?

JDS: Hasbro did play a part early on and gave some pretty loose guidelines as to who was expendable and who was not but that was about it. They just wanted to make sure that some pillars of the franchise were in there. Stormsharow vs Snake eyes, Cobras world domination plot etc.

UAR: In the same vien, was there a concept that guided the redesign on the characters uniforms and equipment? Who was behind the redesign?

JDS: I was a huge fan of the original series and sort of knew what, at least visually as a fan I thought would be OK to re-imagine and what iconic elements had to remain. And Hasbro, to their credit trusted us with a lot of those decisions. Honestly the original designs were pretty badass so I wanted to keep as much as I could. As long as the characters could pass the "squint test" I knew we'd be ok. I handled the redesign in the character department while Dave Johnson and Dan Norton worked their magic on the weapons vehicles and locations. those guys are magicians as far as I'm concerned. They really did an amazing job of doing what G.I. Joe did best back in the day and that is, creating military tech that is equal parts fantasy and reality. I remember as a kid saying, "why doesn't the army make a trouble bubble?"

UAR: Due to the toy line tie in there was a heavy focus on vehicles in the original series. Aside from the USS Flag, 'Resolute' seems to focus more on characters, was this intentional?

JDS: Yeah, we tried to cram in as much as we could, but these episodes were so short that we barely had time to fit in what we did. There was a hiss tank, a trouble bubble drone thingie and a few others. I really loved all the vehicles when I was a kid and wish we had more time to focus on them in Resolute.

UAR: Four Voice actors: Steve Blum, Grey Delisle, Charles Adler and Eric Bauza provided all the characterization in 'Resolute', were these actors who had worked with you or Titmouse before?

JDS: You know I'm not really sure if they had previously worked with Titmouse. But I thought they did an awesome job on Resolute especially considering that they had to play so many characters.

UAR: We had our own theories about this on the podcast, but I'd like to ask you about the lack of a blu-ray release.

JDS: You know I honestly don't know what the reasoning was. Maybe they will do an extended "bloody" blu-ray edition if the DVD's sell well enough.

UAR: So despite my co-hosts and I howling for more blood, we really enjoyed the feature. Any chance we'll be seeing a regular 'Resolute' series?

JDS: Not to my knowledge but you never know with these things. And I feel you on the blood thing..... But we did try.

UAR: If your able to discuss it, what are you working on currently? Anything your excited about down the road?

JDS: I'm actually back at Warner Bros. working on some rad top secret stuff. Some of it DC based and some of it not..... I know you're raising that eyebrow.

UAR: Finally, if you got to choose a property to re-imagine for animation what would it be?

JDS: Man, I'd love to tell you but its actually one of the super top secret things I'm developing at WB. I CAN tell you it's one of the big ones from back in the day!

UAR: Thanks for your time Joaquim.

JDS: My pleasure man!

Podcast Episode 2 (WARNING: Adult Language is in effect!)

2009-11-05T08:57:00.000-08:00

HEY! We're outta the bucket, good news. This episode we discuss
G.I. JOE RESOLUTE From Hasbro and Titmouse Studios. The show is kind of a cluster bomb, with Poopies Cinnamon and Gravy. We harsh on the ocean and reveal the disturbing bloodthirsty nature of our true selves. Let's get these snow cones gang! Cross-dresser out!

Upon Animation Review by Stephen Sloan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

Interview With Tom Klein.

2009-11-03T04:37:00.000-08:00

As often as possible I'd like to supplement the Podcast with extra's that relate to the animation being discussed. After talking about El Superbeasto I contacted Film Roman and asked if there was an outside chance that anyone associated with the production would be interested in being interviewed regarding the film, I didn't get just anyone.

Animation Producer Tom Klein has had an exceptional career which has seen him working with big names in alternative animation and on projects which have shaped later generations of animators. He's continued that trend with his work on El Superbeasto. Tom was nice enough to take some time out of his week to answer a few questions about his early career and about the nuts and bolts of the Superbeasto production.

UAR: Hello Tom,

Thanks again for taking the time to answer some questions about The Haunted World of El Superbeasto.

If it's okay with you I'd like to introduce you to the audience by asking a couple of questions which relate to you and your career.

UAR: Was working in animation something that has always interested you?

TK: Yes, ever since I first saw the Flintstones as a kid.

UAR: When did you get into the animation field? what was your first gig? How did you come about it?

TK: I was working in New York doing live action production and met Ralph Bakshi who was trying at the time to make a live action "Mean Streets" type of movie and he asked me to help him produce it. That project didn't go, but the next project he did was the Rolling Stones Harlem Shuffle music video, which I ended up producing with Ralph. It had a few minutes of animation done by John Kricfalusi, Lynne Naylor, Bob Jaques, etc. So that was my first project with animation, and that led directly to doing Bobby's Girl and then Mighty Mouse.

UAR: You are credited as a Producer on El Superbeasto, Producer is a very flexible title in showbiz, especially in animation. What was your level of involvement in the production, how hands on were you with the creative teams? Was there an element of your job during the production that you were especially fond of?

TK: Yes, the job description for Producers varies wildly. On El Superbeasto, I was brought in after the project had already started: the initial concept was to do a very low budget version of the project, but Rob Zombie felt the story had gotten off track, and Film Roman actually shut down the production at that point. IDT owned Film Roman back then, and an IDT executive (Jerry Davis) had the idea that the project could be resuscitated and potentially released as a theatrical feature. He brought me on to re-configure the production plan, and run the show: I was directly involved with all aspects of the production from that point on to completion, working closely with Rob, the animation crew, the cast, the Korean Studio (Big Star) the Post Production team, and the studio executives. I was directly responsible for all aspects of the production: financially responsible to the studio and creatively responsible to Rob. I am also credited as an Additional Director on the movie, and for additional story: I was very hands on with virtually every shot in the picture, working to achieve Rob's vision for the movie.

The aspect of the job I was most fond of was working with Rob in the Edit room: he's very smart and very funny. A lot of the material in the final cut was re-worked in editorial: for example Rob's idea to bring in Hard 'n Phirm to cover the Suzi chase scene and the Catfight scene: both those sequences were originally cut as straight ahead action sequences. The songs really put them over the top.

UAR: How does Superbeasto relate to some of your earlier work? How did you find the experiance? was it a nice break from the norm? do you look forward to working on something of a similar vein in the future?

TK: It seemed like a natural progression from my earlier years working with Ralph Bakshi to work on R-Rated, adult material. But I've done a lot of family and children's projects over the years too, so it was a real pleasure pushing the limits where Rob wanted to go on this. I'm hoping to do more projects in this vein soon.

UAR: Finally, I see that you've been working as animation producer on this season of the Simpsons, would you mind quickly commenting on that?

TK: It's an incredible honor and a real pleasure to work on such a hugely successful, iconic animation production: the level of talent, professionalism and dedication on the crew is astounding.

A few questions about El Superbeasto.

UAR: Directors can sometimes "Direct" a production without ever entering the studio, Others can be as overbearing as a mama grizzly bear. What was Rob Zombies level of involvement in the production? Did he hang around the studio much? Did he make any suggestions or revisions directly WITH the animators?

TK: Rob was extremely involved in every aspect of the production and regularly handed direction/suggestions/revisions directly to the animators during the stints where he was in house. However, the movie was in production for almost 5 years, and during that time Rob finished Devils Rejects, wrote, directed and produced Halloween, recorded and released his last CD, and went on tour multiple times. When he was not here in the studio we would do everything via email/FTP. He'd review stuff, get direction back to me and I would take it on the floor to the artists.

UAR: Paul Giamatti and Rosario Dawson gave great performances, Tom Kenny and the other voice actors also delivered some stellar and memorable lines. Can you talk about some of the differences if any, between working with celebrity voices and working with traditional voice actors.

TK: They're all great actors and really got into the roles--and everybody really enjoyed the idea of doing this crazy material. The only real difference is that with the "celebrity' voices we tend to use them for just one part, and for the voice actors we would often have one actor do multiple roles. Except for Tom Papa, we recorded virtually every actor in just one session: there was a lot of ad-libbing and the actors had a lot of freedom to build their character. Another standout was Rob Paulsen who did quite a few roles on the picture: everything from the Nazi Leader to El Gato.

UAR: Anyone who's been following the production knows that the film has been a long time coming. Production began in 2006, and was stalled on multiple occasions because Rob Zombie was involved with other productions. Kudos to Mr. Zombie for wanting to focus on each project individually, but I can imagine that situations like that can put a crimp in the animation process. Were there any difficulties with the production because of these pauses? If not, how did you keep things moving along?

TK: No, there were more delays caused by the changing of the guard (several times) in the executive ranks at the studio than by Rob working on other projects. Rob always seems to have 9 things going on at once and he was very good about getting us the direction we needed when we needed it. The only real production difficulties arose when the story veered off track from what Rob was after: first when the initial story reels were done, and again when new executives came in and felt the story should go in a different direction.

UAR: Were you partnered with an overseas studio during this production? Who were they? Has Film Roman worked with them before? How did they handle such a bawdy production, was it outside of the usual material they are used to seeing from the west?

TK: We weren't really 'partnered' with them, but Big Star Animation studios in Seoul Korea did all the animation production, as a sub-contractor. We did the production the way typical TV episodic animation is done: we did all the pre-production elements at Film Roman, and delivered Storyboards (and layouts for most scenes), designs, color keys and detailed x-sheets to Big Star where they would animate the scenes, paint the BG's, ink & paint, composite and render scenes that they shipped back to us. I had worked with Big Star in the past--and so had Bob Jaques, our timing director--on the Baby Huey show for Harvey/Universal. Both Bob and I had been over to Big Star in the past and we knew they could do a great job with the style of animation we wanted.

UAR: The animation direction was spot on and snappy, there wasn't a wasted frame on the screen. Could you talk briefly about the process of animating a scene on El Superbeasto?

TK: Thanks, we wanted a fast paced, snappy style: our first step was cutting really tight reels, there was no fat in the cut from the get-go--we were often cutting the animatic drawings on 1's and 2's, virtually animating some of the scenes in storyboards. We put a lot of poses in the reels and cut tight. Some scenes were done as storyboards, some as full layout. Some done on paper, some digitally, using a few different softwares. In the early days of Production Mr. Lawrecne was directing and he would go over every scene with the artist in detail, along with Carey Yost who was co-directing at the time. Then the drawings would go down to editorial where we'd cut the reels, and add poses as necessary. After Mr. Lawrence left, I took over the handouts, going over every scene. Then, on a sequence by sequence basis, we would send the track reading and animatic Quicktime to Bob Jaques and his team at Carbunkle who wrote out the detailed timing on the x-sheets following the timing from the reels: as a rule we wouldn't open up a scene unless absolutely necessary. Only a few scenes were fully animated here at Film Roman, to set a style, but many were heavily posed out in layout or storyboards.

UAR: More and more productions are going full digital. Most notably Disney's "How to Hook Up Your Home Theater" Goofy short, and "The Princess and the frog." which were both animated in a "paperless" process. How much of El Superbeasto was handled digitally.

TK: We became more and more digital over the 4 1/2 years we were in production. Initially the far majority of the storyboards and layouts were done on paper. We would scan paper drawings to get them in to editorial, but ship paper to Big Star as they animated on paper. We used After Effects right from the start to do all of our effects, and some animation: we would create the EFX based on our storyboard animatic, and Big Star would integrate the EFX into the final animation. And we did all of our character color digitally from the start in Photoshop. BG paining started on paper for color keys but we switched mid-stream to doing all BG color digitally. About midway through we started doing storyboards and layouts digitally, using a few different softwares (Photoshop, Digicell & Mirage, depending on what each artist was familiar with). At the end of the day I'd estimate 40-50% of the movie was done digitally.

UAR: Animation often doesn't survive close scrutiny, we hide a lot of tricks and cheats in 24 frames a second. Could you discuss any challenges that were encountered having to develop an animated feature for high definition? Did you have to re-think any age old processes which may no long hold true in a 1080p world?

TK: We knew we were going Hi def from the start so we set up the edit room to support 24 fps 1080p early on. As a result we were looking at full rez images all the way through the process. We used standard 24 fps x-sheets, and a field guide that was full 16x9, but we protected for a 1:85 frame in case we went out to film (to date we haven't): 16x9 was the aspect ratio we designed to. The biggest challenge came in dirt-checking the frames at the end of the process. Big Star did a great job fixing the majority of the specks and noise that creeps in, and then we finished the process through our DI room at Fotokem.

UAR: I have to admit that the gang here were a little disappointed with the special features offered on the disc, chalk it up to the sense of entitlement we consumers have, bundled with the fact that traditionally Rob Zombies movies have had hours of commentary and behind the scene's features. I know most people never watch that stuff, but we're animation geeks and it always gets us down when we can't peek behind the curtain of something we like. Is there any chance we might see a special edition of El Superbeasto with commentary and some featurettes?

TK: We were disappointed too: we wanted to put more in but the distributor didn't have the budget to do more, plus they insisted they release by a certain date, which conflicted with Rob's schedule, so we didn’t get an opportunity to do a behind the scenes. The BluRay has a full length version of the work-in-progress animatic that shows the scenes in various stages of "Rough storyboard", cleaned up storyboards, layout, pencil test etc, but I wish we could have done more. We'll see how sales go--if they're strong enough we may be able to get a deluxe edition in the future.

UAR: Starz Media and Film Roman have release some GREAT direct to DVD animation in the last few years. "The Hellboy Animated" features, "Dead Space Downfall" and coming soon, the "Dante's Inferno" animated feature. Have these projects proven successful for the company? Can we look forward to animated releases aimed at a mature audience for years to come? I know you weren't involved in the production but... Any word on a third Hellboy animated movie? we're dying for more!

TK: Thanks! Yes, they've been successful enough that we want to continue doing them, and though I can't announce anything specific here, I think it's likely you'll see more in this vein. The next one up will likely be another EA related project--no specific plans on a third Hellboy at the moment. There are a lot of people here at the company that want to continue to push into this arena.

UAR: Is there any other part of the production or release of El Superbeasto that you'd like to comment on?

TK: I think the songs by Hard 'n Phirm are amazing, and brought so much to the movie: we ended up with 7 original songs in the picture, all done by them. Really funny stuff!

Thank you again for your Time Tom.
I truly appreciate you giving us a little info on the production process behind El Superbeasto.

Upon Animation Review by Stephen Sloan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

Podcast Episode 1 (WARNING: Adult Language is in effect!)

2009-10-23T17:54:00.001-07:00

We sound like we're in a bucket, stick with us it'll get better; YOU GOTTA WALK BEFORE YOU CAN SOAR! Rob Zombies "The Haunted World of el Superbeasto" get's discussed. The Sloan's are on board but Rony can't come to grips with all the boobs. Brian Posehn's our dog, but y'know every dog's got fleas. Uncle Jesse is lurking somewhere, just on the periphery.

Upon Animation Review by Stephen Sloan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.