Writer/Director Alex Woo, Production Designer Steve Pilcher, VFX Supervisor Nicola Lavender, and Head of Character Animation Sacha Kapijimpanga discuss their heartfelt sibling story that blends meticulous attention to detail with spontaneous ‘happy accidents;’ streaming November 14 on Netflix.
In Alex Woo’s experience, there are usually two kinds of siblings: one that’s free-spirited and one that thrives on structure.As the oldest of two, Woo was the latter.
And he shares that his upcoming animated family film, , was a way to process that need for control. “My brother was always the less responsible one,” says Woo.“He was always goofing off and never took things that seriously.I was always the studious, responsible one.
I'm a very typical older sibling.He's a very typical younger sibling.But he's also incredibly charming and so popular.
Everybody loves him because he's so chill.I'm the obnoxious type-A and I wish I could say that that was who I was and that I'm now so enlightened.But I think it's just always going to be a part of me.
It's something that I struggle with, this perfectionistic sort of desire.It's hard to let it go.I think this movie was very much me processing this part of myself.” , releasing November 14 on Netflix, tells the story of Stevie and her younger brother Elliot, who journey into the absurd landscape of their own dreams in search of the Sandman, who they believe can grant their wish of saving their parents' marriage.
Joined by Elliot’s snarky stuffed giraffe named Baloney Tony, the siblings brave zombie breakfast foods and the queen of nightmares in an effort to see their ultimate dream come true...the perfect family.But Stevie, a girl desperate for control, will need to find common ground with her free-spirited brother to make it through this epic journey without getting swallowed up by nightmares. Produced by Netflix Animation and Kuku Studios, the movie stars Craig Robinson (Baloney Tony), Simu Liu (Dad), Cristin Milioti (Mom), Jolie Hoang-Rappaport (Stevie), Elias Janssen (Elliot), Omid Djalili (Sandman), and Gia Carides (Nightmara), as well as SungWon Cho and Zachary Noah Piser.
Woo directs, with Erik Benson serving as co-director.Gregg Taylor and Tim Hahn produce with the screenplay by Benson and Woo from a story by Woo and Stanley Moore.Check out the trailer: “It's going to be awkward when my brother sees the film,” shares Woo.
“We're two Asian men, so we don't talk about our feelings to each other very much.But my friend saw the movie and told me, ‘You know, this is a really circuitous way for you to tell your brother that you love him.’” He continues, “My brother didn’t take traditional paths, but he found his own way and now he has three successful restaurants.And he found a way to make his love of socializing and enjoying life into a career.
That made me have a deeper respect for him and I started seeing how he was so much better at so many things that I was really bad at.I think when we work together, we make up for each other's weaknesses.” Both the discord and harmony that comes with being siblings is not only one of the foundations of , it’s also woven into the visuals.Stevie and Elliot share a bedroom, and while her side is neat and tidy, Elliot’s side is messy, discombobulated and littered with baloney slices. “If you look under Elliot’s bed, we spent an enormous amount of time putting crayon drawings and stickers under there,” notes production designer Steve Pilcher.
“Elliot would have laid down under there and scribbled or picked at the stickers.We also did a little bit of that under Stevie's bed because one sibling might intrude on the other’s side a bit, as he doesn't get caught.You don't really see under Stevie’s bed a lot, but we still took the time to do that.
I think, whether some people see it or not, those details make this world feel alive.” Throughout the film, Elliot is a constant source of disruption in Stevie’s life.This is best illustrated when Stevie dreams of her life as an only child before having a nightmare when a newborn Elliot shows up.When Stevie attempts to make the “perfect” breakfast for her parents, the scene is lit up in warm, vibrant tones that shift to cooler, more grounded and realistic tones when Elliot tries to help before, inevitably, she kicks him out of the kitchen.
But it’s not just Elliot’s personality that undermines Stevie’s perfectionist mindset.The siblings’ home, based on the house in Minnesota Woo grew up in, is well worn, with dust particles flying through the air and dents and scrapes covering the house walls.As Stevie rides her bike through her neighborhood, there are cracked sidewalks, old cars and unracked leaves scattered across lawns.
The whole real-world environment that Stevie and Elliot inhabit seems to go against Stevie’s will to create the perfect, squeaky-clean, and always happy life for herself and her family. “It was all very intentional,” says Woo of the visuals.“Plus, when you’re making a CG animated film, the goal is to make it look imperfect because the minute it looks perfect, it looks fake.We wanted the family’s house and the real world to have all the imperfections of reality.
It was one of the times in my life where I didn’t mind things being messy because the imperfections of the house were necessary to make the movie perfect.” But while Woo had spent most of his life living in a classic Midwestern home that displayed the wear and tear of a family with two young boys, many of the artists on the team had never stepped foot in Minnesota.Some also had never had kids.So, part of the design process for Elliot and Stevie’s home was having the animation team not only look at reference photos, but spend time adding details to the house and, in a sense, living in it, to establish that attachment and sensibilities for the film. “We looked at Alex’s photos, but we also went on Google Earth, since it was still the pandemic, and went through the streets of Minnesota, looking at the houses and the neighborhoods,” says Pilcher.
“We designed original comics and magicians’ posters for Elliot’s side of the room.We created craft projects for Stevie.We bent corners of pictures that would have been on the wall for a long time.
We spent four and a half years living in Stevie and Elliot’s home.That’s more time than I spent in my dorm in college.” Just as much effort and care went into making Stevie and Elliot’s dream worlds.Breakfast Town – where Elliot and Stevie reunite with a very dusty, one-eyed Baloney Tony – is filled with humanoid breakfast foods living in cardboard houses.
The roads are paved with oatmeal, fountains are filled with Lucky Charms marshmallows, and back alleys are inhabited by moldy muffins that haunt nightmares.There’s one scene where a cooked, upright piece of bacon is walking down the streets when an orange dumps what appears to be orange juice out their window onto it.It immediately loses its structure and collapses. “I don’t know if you caught it, but the juice is being dumped out of a chamber pot,” says Alex, referring to an old, portable toilet.
It’s fitting as Breakfast Town looks to resemble an old medieval village.“The idea was that he’d be ‘juicing’ into this chamber pot and then dumping it out the window.” Head of character animation Sacha Kapijimpanga adds, “We actually used Breakfast Town as a warm-up exercise for the animators.When they joined the show, it'd be like, ‘Hey, why don't you pitch some ideas for what we could use to populate Breakfast Town?’ It was an easy introduction to the show and people got to just do whatever they liked and then present it to Alex, who picked stuff that would make it into the film.
There was one about resuscitating an avocado who had its pit knocked out.That one didn’t make it in, but it was hilarious and the whole thing was a nice team warm-up.People had fun with that.” Baloney Tony was also a character Kapijimpanga and the team had a lot of fun bringing to life.
“All his movements, the way he flops around, are based on how kids play with toys,” notes Kapijimpanga.“There’s a sequence where Nightmara is starting to show and Tony crawls onto Elliot and then smushes into his face.It’s meant to look like someone controlling a sock puppet.” One of the most detail-oriented, and logistically challenging, characters in the film was Nightmara, whose arrival in any dream is signaled by a storm.
The character’s form, unlike the blockier structured and bright Sandman, is made up of wispy, almost tentacle-like arms colored in varying shades of black and grey.The team started her character design early and was still tweaking it through the last few months of production. “There were particles that hugged the surface of her design and hair that was this mist that went down her back, which is a whole setup by itself,” explains VFX Supervisor Nicola Lavender.“And then there’s ink swirling around within her.
There were just so many different layers that took a lot of animators and a lot of trial and error with animation to figure out.For example, if we moved her forward too fast, she’d separate.If we moved her backwards too fast, she very quickly became engulfed in all the ink and mist..
Actually, animation ended up using that in some scenes where she’s actually leaving by walking backwards and disappearing.That was a happy accident.” Happy accidents were a big part of this film.In addition to all the controlled details, there were plenty of moments where the artists improvised.
“There’s a scene where Stevie and Elliot are floating down a river of these plastic, rainbow balls that are glowing like lava,” shares Lavender.“That wasn’t an intentional effect.It just happened during animation tests, and everybody fell in love with it.
We encouraged all the artists to use the brief that we gave them but also be creative.A lot of ideas evolved that way.” Woo says his own views of “perfect” have evolved through production on this film as well.“All our lives, I gave my brother so much crap about being irresponsible, but we were just two different kinds of creatives,” says Woo.
“We both found our own way to create art for people to enjoy.And I wanted to reinforce this idea that, when Stevie and Elliot work together, when they hold hands, that's when things start to go well for them.That's when they can take control of their dreams.
And when they're not together, it's a lot more difficult to navigate the uncertainty and imperfection of the world.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime.She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment.Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
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