Cartoon Brew: In telling a true-ish story, you have been confronted with the duty of animating actual folks from historical past. How did you strategy that problem?
Kajsa Næss: All the primary characters, many of the Norwegians, and the airship crew are based mostly on actual folks. It was necessary for us to maintain some reference to them. I needed them to be recognizable. That’s the reason I labored with Siri Dokken as character designer. She is a well known cartoonist right here in Norway and her caricatures are wonderful. Her drawings have lots of character and emotion. She makes characters with quantity and life and a visual story. She has a wonderful eye for flaws and small emotional delicate spots in a personality. A personality is rarely just one factor. She had by no means labored in animation earlier than, however I used to be certain she can be nice and had little doubt she couldn’t do it.
The characters have been truly the very first thing we developed and we used them to get funding and financing. It labored very properly. Then our artwork director Emma McCann did a wonderful job creating the model of the characters. Her skinny strains and exquisite swirls matched Siri’s characters very properly, and I feel their integration feels fabulous.
As you say within the video, it’s arduous to say how a lot of the story is fact and the way a lot is delusion. What sorts of concerns did you make when deciding learn how to inform this story?
We needed to inform this classical heroic expedition story from a brand new, feminine perspective. I needed to make a heat, but in addition sharp and enjoyable, story about this unusual and fairly unhappy story. I needed to play with the concepts we’ve about historical past, ambitions, and characters from different cultures, about what we’re advised about heroes, villains, and odd folks. We’re used to the heroic or the unhappy story, however we needed to combine the 2 and attempt to query the heroic story a bit. (In Norway Roald Amundsen is one in all our greatest heroes…. Nobody messes with him!) The fascists needed to be enjoyable, but in addition evil. We would have liked them to really feel a bit harmful too. Not solely silly.
Have been there any components of the movie that have been significantly troublesome to animate?
As at all times, some components we anticipated to be troublesome have been carried out simply and a few components we anticipated to be straightforward turned out to be fairly painful. We’ve a fairly subtle split-screen scene that wanted lots of planning, and I used to be very nervous concerning the timing and if we might get it pretty much as good as I hoped. However the structure division and posing ready and solved the technical components very properly so when the animators began the scene stunning animation simply poured out. We additionally had lots of excellent references from the actors to encourage the animators. I suppose good planning seems to be very useful.
Different components may very well be harder. Like scenes with little or no motion, however that demanded lots of appearing and emotion. We requested the animators to do very small changes and take away massive actions, and to belief the viewers and the temper within the scene. Generally it’s troublesome to see the humor within the small, underplayed tales earlier than you see it with sound and in context. I really feel that it’s in an animator’s blood to maneuver the characters so to start with, they needed to be satisfied that it could work.
May you discuss a bit extra about that? The movie is grounded in actuality, however nonetheless has a fantastic sense of playfulness and humor that’s typically finest expressed by means of animation.
I labored with animation director Marie-Laure Guisset, and we got here up with this model collectively. After I began creating the movie, I used to be impressed by live-action filmmakers like Wes Anderson, Jacques Tati, Federico Fellini, and Yasujiro Ozu, in addition to animated movies like Porco Rosso and Ernest & Celestine. For my part, all these filmmakers combine sensible storytelling with magical moments and human conferences. They use framing, tempo, and colours to tug the viewers in.
I’ve at all times preferred the combination between realism and comedy/cartoon animation. I would like the animated movies I make to have some connection to actuality, to make us really feel just like the tales are about actual folks, about us, the viewers. I would like the folks within the viewers to acknowledge themself within the tales I inform. I like the concept of the fragility in us and the characters. That we’ve small flaws that we attempt to disguise and overcome, however typically these actions can’t be hidden.
