Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1485933
WINTER 2022 15 live-action dramas and rom-coms, you have a beat to see the main character just being introspective. You rarely see it in animation," says Moules. "In a lot of [our] scenes there's two people talking about very relatable things." To capture the emotional resonance of these interactions, step animation was used. "What's the key pose for this line," he says, "and what's the reaction pose? Then what's the reaction pose back from that. We'd animate every scene just from a key pose to the next pose to the next pose. And then fill the frames in until we had enough." "When [Entergalactic] is over, you turn it off and you see the real world and you think, man, I wish [it] would slow down a little bit," says Williams. Underscoring the whole production was the music—the inspiration for the film in the first place. Entergalactic was conceived to support an album by Kid Cudi, which made for a unique process. "In the writer's room, I would normally throw out some index cards and say I want [the characters] to be here by this time and here by this time," says Williams. "[But] I didn't have to do that because I know where they're going to be because we're shaping it around these big musical moments." "For me as a director," says Moules, "when the writers' room was going, I probably had four or five songs." He knew roughly what direction the movie was taking because they were making a rom-com, and the music allowed him to visualize and feel scenes at a very early stage. Was it a challenge working from the music first? Williams says no. "It was never a point where it was like, hmm, this is really limiting from a story standpoint. Because the music, the songs are such earworms of "It's a rom-com, it should feel warm and loving, and I wanted to make sure that the artist's hand was on the screen the whole time" – Fletcher Moules S T O R Y & V I S I O N