“We were originally going to try to do the whole thing in 2D, but for a number reasons it did not work,” reveals Lasaine. The combination of these three things helped us to come up with a presentation that felt new and exciting on the outside just as much as the stories were in the inside.” What If…? combines 2D and 3D animation. Leyendecker who have an elegant and broad- shaped language. The third element is the classic American illustrator vibe of people like J.C. All of our stories are born in the MCU when it comes to revisiting certain moments where life turned out a bit differently for a character. The comics have a special kind of magic in terms of their power, energy and excitement there’s something mad and unique about them. “The ability to create collectively a unified performance is one of the defining traits of animation. Placed in charge of overseeing the animation provided by Blue Spirit, Squeeze, Flying Bark Productions and Stellar Creative Lab was Animation Supervisor Stephan Franck ( The Smurfs: The Legend of Smurfy Hollow).
It’s a challenge and a fun little puzzle.”
The background has to go slightly out of focus, otherwise we won’t be able to see the pod. How are we going to see all of those layers? We put a layer of atmosphere behind the pod to get the right silhouette. There’s the railing in the front, the pod, and the back wall with all of the computers. We’re going to break things into three layers. We needed to simplify things down because we wanted it to have an illustrative style that alone starts creating its own rules. The rebirth lab set in Captain America: The First Avenger was lit differently from how we did it in Episode 101. We’re always trying to push stuff to get it to look cooler or more dynamic. We’ll put atmosphere behind a character, make them darker and put a rim light on them. We’re constantly making sure that a character or object or environment is placed where you can see it. “What we are trying to do differently from the live action is to play up the concepts of silhouettes. “There is a responsibility to pay tribute to the movies, which is cool and hard,” states Lasaine. “What happens is that it’s such a fundamental element of the franchise that if you’re a director wanting to tell a Star Wars story, of course you want to play with that toy!”Ĭollaborating on the world-building with Bradley and director Bryan Andrews was Production Designer Paul Lasaine ( The Boxtrolls). “There are some things like the lightsabers usage that people have mentioned, but nothing was ever prescribed from us on that,” he adds. “If someone wanted to use a crawl, we would have happily had that discussion.” Recurring elements do appear throughout the shorts. “We tend to use the crawls more for the continuing saga storytelling,” Waugh explains. Frankly, we wanted it to be a celebratory expression of Star Wars.” No text crawls appear. We want you to make up your own characters, tell your stories, and when it comes to timeline, if that was warranted, we could help you solve that, but that shouldn’t drive the creative process.’ It was really that thin. “ ‘Don’t lean predominately on known characters as the lead. “We wanted them to tell their Star Wars story using whatever elements from the galaxy, or reinterpret elements that inspired them,” remarks Waugh. Loose guidelines were given to the anime studios. Different artists are doing different things.”
“A big part of selecting the anime studios was that we were fans of a lot of their work and also wanted to make sure this anthology showcased all of the different styles and storytelling types that are being done in the medium,” explains Waugh. The anime styles are diverse, ranging from the film-grain-ink illustrative quality of “The Duel” to the ‘Jedi Astro Boy’ in the Disney Pinocchio hybrid “T0-B1,” to the Studio Ghibli-flavored “The Ninth Jedi.” With the exception of “Tatooine Rhapsody,” which features Boba Fett, Bib Fortuna and Jabba the Hutt, the characters are making their Star Wars debut, whether it be a roaming and masterless samurai in the vein of Yojimbo, portrayed by Toshirô Mifune (who was the first choice to play Obi-Wan Kenobi), or a lightsaber-wielding, furry-tailed creature, or a singing padawan who wants to keep rockin’ across the galaxy. Hired to do the animated shorts ranging from 13 to 22 minutes are Kamikaze Douga, Geno Studio (Twin Engine), Studio Colorido (Twin Engine), TRIGGER, Kinema Citrus, Production I.G and Science SARU.