Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1257506
D E PA R T M E N T 27 KEYFRAME WHEN MIDNIGHT STRIKES (cont.) MIKE MAYFIELD (Supervising Director): I shared an office with Pen Ward and Jesse Moynihan and we were able to make a lot of the visual decisions as kind of a three-headed monster in there with Duncan being there a lot of the time as well. One of us would call another to the desk and be like, "I'm playing with pink on this prop. Is that weird? Does this look good? What if we tried to airbrush texture on this, but not on that?" Pen and Duncan were awesome about giving any of the artists on the show some input. We kind of let them try things and, of course, we would reel them back and shade them differently if they were going off style or not matching Jesse's vision but just letting good ideas come from any direction was really cool, too. JESSE MOYNIHAN (Art Director): Pen Ward's general aesthetic is simple, iconic shapes. Combine that with my aesthetic, which is really dense psychedelic analog techniques. I pitched to do it all on paper, but because of budget concerns and pipeline, that wasn't possible, so I tried to translate a lot of my personal art techniques into the digital medium. I made a lot of texture templates for painters to use and we developed techniques for the show with Ellie Michalka that helped with the aesthetics. I really wanted it to be a wild-looking show while not being alienating at the same time. We wanted to keep it as beautiful as possible, but still having that visceral power. SUMMER 2020 27 Images courtesy of Turner/Adult Swim watchers say that as 2D design and CG animation continue to meld in eye-popping ways, narrative will also up its game and viewers can expect deeper and darker stories. Meanwhile, the pipeline for new and creative concepts in adult animation won't be clogging up any time soon. Buzz is building around programs like Titmouse's Q-Force, Sony Pictures Animation's Hungry Ghosts (based on the graphic novels of Anthony Bourdain) and Sony and Netflix's Agent King, which takes its inspiration from Elvis Presley's childhood dreams of being a superhero.