Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1525032
36 KEYFRAME usher in dance numbers. She describes arranging the story and its many charac- ters on the page as a "call and response" between the design team and directors. "What it's really about is making sure that the kids [watching] can see the whole story and that everything is clear but still has some fun moments and creativity to it," she says. After the directors finalized song placement, Storyboard Artists would lock down each kids' position around the classroom and find ways to punch up the jokes "so that the [audience] has something visual to latch onto," says Snowden. "Or if there's a teaching moment, make sure it's extremely clear as to what's being talked about." In one story, Berti comes to school wearing a new pair of sneakers. She's obsessed with keeping them clean and belts out a dramatic number to her peers on the playground called My New Kicks. "She's up on a bench singing to the rafters about how she's no longer that person that plays in the playground anymore," says Warburton. By the end of the story, she's gotten the shoes dirty and is offered a different perspective from a classmate who calls the dirt "fun spots," a sign of how much fun she's had that day. Another story Moore calls "poignant" is on the surface about counting, but it's a deeper message about learning for personal enrichment and growth rather than simply to get good grades and the anxiety of that kind of perfectionism. "By writing their concerns large, we communicate to the audience that those concerns are universal," says Moore. "We try to come up with stories that we really think are going to resonate with kids and mean something," adds Warburton. Despite a career spanning three decades in the animation industry, Moore says he loves preschool shows especially because of their positive value. "The characters can hug and tell each other that they care about each other's feelings," he says. Choreographer Bree De Lash served as a movement consultant and personally modeled choreography for many of the dance numbers. Armed with early versions of the storyboards, she'd create reference videos to help Animators and Storyboard Artists depict dance movements self-taped from her kitchen: "All these great Broadway moves that we could take verbatim or elaborate on," says Warburton. "Reference was really, really helpful," says Coronado. "And [De Lash] was very versatile, too. She did a lot of different styles, not just standard Broadway jazz hands." But taking the movement from IRL to the page was not without its challenges. "Obviously humans move in such a way because we have a certain length of limbs," adds Coronado "Let me tell you about big heads," adds Moore. "Our characters' proportions made a lot of things challenging." Choreography that required the characters to raise their arms above their heads was avoided. "[Tom] is very fond of keeping the characters' silhouettes clear," explains Moore. "But they could do fancy footwork with the best of them, so we leaned into that." At times the design team would eschew professional choreography in favor of the original storyboard design. "[De Lash] didn't always have the perfect context as to what the dance moves were going into and out of," explains Moore. In those instances, it fell on the design team to create transitions that would work cinematically. Other times, they would merge aspects of the choreography with storyboard movements to create a happy marriage of both. "Music has a lot to do with how a character moves and how they feel about what they're singing about," says Coronado. "Music that was more heartfelt should [have choreography that] feels softer and more graceful than something punchy and upbeat." EVERYBODY DANCE NOW 36 KEYFRAME F E AT U R E Storyboard Artists used references created by Choreographer Bree De Lash to guide characters' movements.