New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
How Disney’s Connecticut-inspired ‘The Owl House’ is drawn, animated
The first episode of the final season of Disney’s “The Owl House” has reached millions of fans. But before the characters of the fictional Connecticut town of Gravesfield could go on their adventures, they had to be drawn to life by real-world artists.
The cartoon, which was created by Hamden native Dana Terrace, is known for exploring LGBTQ+ themes and features the first bisexual lead Disney character, an Afro-Latina teenage girl from Connecticut named Luz Noceda. Noceda is from Gravesfield, which has elements inspired by the state’s “haunted” history, according to Terrace. Noceda “accidentally stumbles upon a portal to a magical new world,” where she befriends a witch known as “The Owl Lady” and follows her dreams of becoming a witch herself, according to Disney.
Since its Oct. 16 release on YouTube, the first episode of season 3 — titled “Thanks to Them” — has received over 3,400,000 views. The final two episodes will be released at some point in 2023, according to Terrace. The complete process of making one episode, including writing the script, drawing it, animating it and airing it, usually takes around a year and a half, according to director Bo Coburn.
The process of drawing an episode begins with the California-based storyboard team reading an episode script — given to them by Terrace and the show’s writing team — so the crew can get a sense of the tone of the scenes and the emotion of the characters.
“The Owl House” directors divide the story script into sequences for artists to draw them into storyboards, according to Coburn. To keep the team motivated, Coburn said she divides the sequences between storyboard artists based on their individual strengths and interests. Storyboards are drawn digitally on Storyboard Pro, which is an application with lets users draw and animate their own works.
When the artists are given a sequence, they will start by drawing “thumbnails,” which are small non-detailed drawings used to get an idea of what the scene will look like. The director will give artists feedback on the thumbnails in order for them to further flesh them out into rough drafts of a sequence.
“[The rough drawings] are just for clarity, any sort of indication of a background or character acting is all we’re looking for,” Coburn said.
Terrace gives feedback on the rough drafts before they enter a “cleaning” process, where storyboard artists give them more detail. Storyboard artist Mike Austin, who worked on seasons 2 and 3 of the show, said he uses the “cleaning” stage to focus on drawing the expressions and actions of characters.
“Usually I start [my roughs] by making a sort-of template, which is a bunch of little boxes, and I do a bunch of literal scribbles just to get the basic idea down,” Austin said. “Before [the cleaning stage], it’s like, ‘There’s a character standing here and there’s a character standing there,” but [during the cleaning process], we make them look sad or make them look angry or happy.”
Austin said that storyboard artists mainly focus on creating the characters, but sometimes
THE CARTOON, WHICH WAS CREATED BY HAMDEN NATIVE DANA TERRACE, IS KNOWN FOR EXPLORING LGBTQ+ THEMES AND FEATURES THE FIRST BISEXUAL LEAD DISNEY CHARACTER, AN AFRO-LATINA TEENAGE GIRL FROM CONNECTICUT NAMED LUZ NOCEDA.
they will create basic backgrounds. Old background assets can sometimes be reused for a new episode as well.
“You are not a background designer; it doesn’t need to be perfect. But doing just basic grids, showing where a building or background would be, really helps down the line,” Austin said.
According to Coburn, it takes around four to six weeks for a sequence to be fully cleaned up. After an episode’s storyboards are done, they are turned into an animatic sequence, or still storyboards appearing one after another to give the appearance of animation. The animatic sequence — along with a guide for what the color and tone of the episode should be — is sent to a South Korean-based animation studio, like Rough Draft Korea and Sugarcube depending on the episode, which takes the storyboards and animates them frame by frame.
After receiving an episode back from the overseas studio, a post-production team works alongside Terrace on adding some finishing touches before it is sent to the Disney Channel to air.
“A lot of amplified effects and lighting is done by our [post-production] team in-house,” Coburn said.
While some modern Disney cartoons and movies (like those in the “Star Wars” series and “Frozen”) use computer-generated models, Terrace said she decided on using a 2D artstyle because of her prior experience working on 2D shows like “Ducktails” and “Gravity Falls” and because she likes the way it looks better.
Seeing an episode air is a “surreal experience” for the crew, according to Coburn. With the show coming to an end, Coburn said that “The Owl House’s” animation crew, with the exception of the overseas studio and its in-house postproduction teams, wrapped up their roles about six months ago.
“I’m so used to seeing the episode in rough story-board form, or in animatic form. So when everything comes together and you see the final product from all the departments, it really touches me a lot of the time. It finally feels like ‘Ah we can let the episode go now,’ ” Coburn said. “I’m going to cry really hard when the final episode airs because that is kind of the mark that everyone finished their job.”
Austin said working on “The Owl House” was a fun opportunity and that the team is “like a family.” He decided to join “The Owl House” crew based on his longtime love of drawing and fondness of cartoons like “Steven Universe.” He was tapped to join the show by Terrace during his junior year at UConn.
“You really care about what you’re making, and that’s why I feel like ‘The Owl House’ is so special. [The crew] really cares about these characters and this story and we are putting in the extra love into our work,” Austin said.
Despite the show reaching its final season, Terrace recently said that she hopes to continue the universe at some point through a comic spin-off and would like to bring back some members of the old “The Owl House” team to work on it.
“I really want to make a [comic]. I want to write it, I want to draw it, I want to work with some old crew members and make it special,” Terrace said in October. “Would I do another show? That’s hard to say, I would have to think very hard about that.”