Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1276583
above: Storyboards by Head of Story Steven MacLeod. 28 KEYFRAME F E AT U R E from her childhood—how she pictures her and built her up in her own mind." This dialogue with Pearl influenced the design and story to ensure it was faithful to Chinese culture. "Our leadership always leaned into that and our collabo- rators, who came from the authentic background of this story, were always the sounding board," says Lee. Though the legend is Chinese, Fei Fei's story is universal. The groundwork in terms of the theme had been lovingly crafted by screenwriter Audrey Wells, whose script was essentially movie ready and just need- ed to be refined. "How do we best express this story in terms of these themes, these moments and these emotions?" says Lee of the story process that ensued. MacLeod's main concern at the outset was the varied locations and characters. "It can start to feel like a fever dream, a little bit like Alice in Wonderland." He wanted to make sure that the characters continued to grow through every scene. "Each sequence had a purpose to the evolution of the characters," he adds. It helped that Keane's collaborative environment paved the way for a smoother journey of story discovery. "He'll listen to everybody's ideas no matter what position they're in," notes MacLeod. "He was always open to new ideas, even from the young artists, and always took time to listen to us and get excited," says Toriumi. "Glen did this thing [where] he starts making the sound effects. I was pitching and then I start hearing his sound effects coming in. It was very encouraging!" "It felt very effortless at the time because he was great at describing what it was that he wanted," adds Myers of Keane's ability to articulate his ideas artistically, creating a visual shorthand. "He might draw a little sketch for an expression, then I would take a photo of it and text it to the board artists that [were] at the desks. I'd give them the stats for the scene and which panel and then they would do the fix and process it back to editorial. We'd take an editorial break and they would plug it in and then Glen would