How to make a Disney classic
Michelle Obama graced an episode of Doc McStuffins, now Brown Bag Films’ new cartoon Vampirina is being hailed as Disney’s ‘most original’ yet!
BROWN Bag Films, in the heart of Dublin’s Smithfield Square, is known for being a nicer place to work than many. Some 70 free pizzas are delivered to staff on Thursdays, there is free beer on regular offer, and their Halloween fancy dress parties are apparently the stuff of legend. The Irish animation company’s 500 staff may play hard, but they work hard, too. After scoring a dream commission from Disney — their second, after the phenomenally successful Doc McStuffins — the award-winning team are once again putting their collective shoulders to the wheel.
In 2014, the company were tasked with bringing Vampirina, a character from the Disney Publishing’s popular book series Vampirina Ballerina, to life.
Brown Bag had clearly struck gold with the phenomenally successful Doc McStuffins — even Michelle Obama made a memorable guest appearance in one episode — and Vampirina has only helped to firm up their relationship with Disney. This new series also consolidates their reputation as one of Ireland’s most successful and exciting entertainment companies.
Vampirina is the story of a lovable young vampire as she faces the trials of being the new kid in town. After her family move from their home in Transylvania into Pennsylvania, Vee (6) needs to start school and learn to make friends in the human world. Along the way, she learns that while it’s important to blend in with her pals, it’s also valuable to celebrate the qualities that make each individual unique.
On an Autumn Monday morning, the Brown Bag offices are quiet, with staffers knuckling down with laser-sharp focus. Successful though Brown Bag’s output clearly is, no-one is sitting back on their laurels: there is evidently always another project to get to work on.
As Phelan introduces the team that brought Vampirina, her friends and her family to the screen, I’m introduced to a crack team of sketch artists, colourists, effects artists, editors and 3D specialists, all of whom brought Vampirina through a painstaking, laborious process.
It’s only when the entire animation process is unveiled that the truth dawns: creating something that looks so effortlessly fun and natural is hard work.
Initially, Vampirina and the other characters were created as 2D sketches. The plan, such as it was, was to create a lovable little girl with a little bite; mischievous but not too scary for little ones. Ever mindful that the devil is in the detail, Vampirina was drawn with baby fangs, wing-shaped pigtails and a cobweb dress: spooky enough to separate her from her ‘regular’ pals, but not so spooky that she might frighten fans. Expression sheets — pages detailing the various facial expressions of each character — were created, to be sent on to the rest of the team later.
Once Disney approved the look of each character, it was time to go 3D in the modelling department. ‘Rendering’ is the process of generating a photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model through a computer.
Computers and high-tech software help the Brown Bag staff model with ‘virtual clay’. Once the modelling stage is passed, the project goes next to texturing and ‘rigging’: the skeleton, essentially, that drives the animation.
Thanks to this modern day technology, cartoon characters can now ape humans to a tee. And Brown Bag used a whole new process to make Vampirina as relatable as they could.
Animation director Matteo Ceccotti shows me how one small movement — a hissy fit — is created; while one of the team acts out the character’s movements, the animation matches them, with uncanny precision. Other details — shadows, texture, the sprinkle of glitter that follows Vampirina’s transformation from girl to bat — are added for extra pizzazz. The effects stage of the process is an entity all its own.
Apart from that, each character needs to be dressed: it’s the job of Elaine, another animator, to create in great detail the fabrics that dresses, jeans and runners are made of. Similarly, the props, from the house that Vampirina lives in right down to the spoons that the characters eat with, all have to be created from scratch.
Lip-synching is the last part of the process. The teleplay has been previously recorded with actors in Disney Studios in Burbank: Vampirina boasts Gilmore Girls star Lauren Graham and Dawson’s Creek James Van Der Beek as Vampirina’s
Brown Bag play hard, but work hard too
parents, Boris and Oxana. The stars only made it to Brown Bag studios in Dublin if ever they were in Dublin on holiday, but in the main, it was up to Disney in the US to liaise with the talent. Playing Vampirina is child star Isabella Covetti, who once played the younger Jennifer Lawrence in the movie Joy. The cartoon then goes through a number of edits, both online and offline. All the while, Disney are keeping a watchful, though not meddling, eye on things.
Among the most crucial parts of the entire process is testing: sitting the target audience down to gain valuable feedback.
Brown Bag are aware that we live in a world where tablets and smartphones have turned the heads of almost every Irish toddler, making them a more exacting and demanding audience than in generations past.
The show premiered in the US earlier this month (one blog breathlessly posed the question, “Is Vampirina the most original Disney cartoon of all time?”), and already the outlook is good that Disney will order up a second series. The hope, of course, is that a few famous faces, or at least someone as well known as Michelle Obama, may eventually find themselves in Pennsylvania — and perhaps even in Smithfield Square.