Interview With Joaquim Dos Santos.

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!