Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1513434
could show that sort of darker side that I think we all kind of have. But you still found her so endearing and aspirational, and you connect to her in an emotional way. You saw that a lot of that attitude and that comedy and everything was a cover for a real character deal- ing with true emotional storylines. I think that, as a lmmaker, that's what you want to dive into, and spend time with characters like that. Nick Bruno: I love the graphic novel. I loved how much fun it was, but also how it was about a character that was allowed to feel and be all of those feelings at the same time. I feel like a lot of times in anima- tion and things for family, they only show this squeaky clean, cookie cutter version of a cartoon character, and that's just not how we are. So I just felt like it showed life in a more real way, even though it was in a medieval future and this character can transform into anything. It was just a lot of fun. CGW: ND, were there any sequences you were especially excit- ed to see animated in the lm? ND Stevenson: There's one that's pulled exactly from the comics, one where they play Monopoly together. That was really cool, going from this one man show to being something that so many people came together to bring it to life. Just seeing the characters truly animated, moving, talking, interacting with each other. I think the one that's closest to my heart is the climactic scene with Nimona's rampage through the city. She's consumed a thou- sand years of anger and pain and fear and betrayal, and all of these things that she's been pushing down and trying to hide. And it just comes bubbling out of her. The comic has kind of a dark and bittersweet ending, so I knew that was going to be a hard sell for the movie. I was like, 'How are they going to pull this o?' And they just truly found this place for her to focus more on her grief and her sadness than on her anger, like in the comic. But you truly feel every one of her emotions…all of these emotions coming out at once, and I get goosebumps every time. So I think seeing that journey to the screen was just really emotional. CGW: On the directing side, were there any parts of the pro- cess that really stood out as being especially challenging or rewarding? Troy Quane: They all have their challenges. I mean, the reward is when you gure it out, right? There's that ending that ND was talking about, where you're trying to gure out scale and scope and you want this to be this big monster movie with a major na- le. You're sort of dialed in for the action adventure. But sometimes the more important thing was the heart and the character that was driving all of that. So then you have a really quiet scene where, aer this big comedic chase set piece in the marketplace, they end up under this overpass. And it really is just a scene about two charac- ters talking, which sounds really easy execution wise, but it's hard because there's not anything else to distract you from the emotion in the character that's happening in that moment. There's no ashy camera moves or special eects or explosions. So they each come with a dierent set of challenges in that sense, one in scale, the other in simplicity. But at the end of the day, it's The lm is animated in 3D CG blended with distinctive 2D stylings. 16 cgw o c t o b e r • n o v e m b e r • d e c e m b e r 2 0 2 3