Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1500204
D E PA R T M E N T 27 KEYFRAME cultural consultant, he says finding ways for the audience to understand visually a character's cultural background can get tricky. "You have to be cliché, but also not [create] a caricature," he says. He offers his own country as an example. "If we have to create a French character, I don't know if I would give him a baguette and a beret. At the same time, it's a cliché that works." Being in on the ground floor, Todesco was able to follow the characters from their initial concepts to the final models. "It's rewarding for me to see the full process," he says. And despite all the influences coming from various directions: "It gives you boundaries. I really love when I have to create characters from scratch, but for this show it's cool because … I'm working with CG. I'm working with the Art Director. I'm working with the Showrunner. We are all working in the [same] direction to make the best character." Another example he gives is the feet. The animated characters needed bigger feet than the dolls. "In animation you need to have the shadows on the floor. You need to see the contact," he says. If a character is given long legs and very tiny feet, when they are running, it can look like they are flying. "It really helps the animation that they have bigger feet." At the same time, he had to make sure larger feet didn't look clunky and weird. Other issues Todesco had to address included hair. The Abbey doll has hair to her knees, but it was too difficult to make that same style work in CG. He also had to rework Abbey's pants. On the doll, parts of the pants are transparent. Because 3D models are made of polygon shapes, when two shapes overlap—like the joints at the knee—you can see them "collide" against each other. To avoid this, Todesco had to rework the design with an opaque fabric. While Todesco enjoyed the technical aspects of working on Abbey, he connected with her on a personal level. "She's from the southeast of Asia, and she has an accent. I'm from a different country, and I have an accent," he says. Diving into the cultural aspects of the character with a opposite page and this page: Todesco used iridescence and a snowflake pattern to suggest that Abbey Bominable is from a snowy climate. He also made her feet bigger than on the Abbey doll so that the design would work in CG. Monster High images courtesy of Nickelodeon. SUMMER 2023 27