Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1530710
How did you approach the challenge of bringing a character to life without any facial articulation? CS: That was a limitation I wanted to give the animators. I felt very strongly that all the robots that I really relate to and fell in love with had no mouths. Or if they did have a mouth, it didn't move. I would say that the only robot I know of that had a bit of facial articulation that worked was the Iron Giant. Otherwise—C-3PO, R2-D2, Robby from Forbidden Planet—they have no faces or very limited articula- tion. Peter Brown's illustrations from the original book had a very sim- ple line indicating that Roz had a mouth, and that was the only thing I said, "Let's get rid of it." I wanted to give the animators that limitation because I knew that would push them in other ways, that through pantomime and through Lupita's amazing voice performance, I was very confident we could get everything we wanted and maybe more, because I feel like in the absence of over-articulated faces, an audi- ence will project their emotions onto that blankness, almost like a canvas. I felt like the end result was just very incredible. How did you bring a traditionally animated feel into the CG world? CS: There's such reverence for 2D animation or classic animation amongst all the animators, amongst all the artists. There's a graphic quality to animation that will always have this different way of com- municating with our brains. I think we look at paintings and we look at drawings in a different way. I think that graphic sort of communi- cation combined with what I feel was a great sincerity that we put into the story. It is not a cynical book, and we didn't want the film to have any sort of cynicism to it. It's a very earnest, honest story—very sincere. I have to also mention Kris Bowers' incredible score. Kris Bowers, I would argue, is the largest voice in the film. There are many, many places where I built what I call houses for music within the story, which I learned—an experience on Lilo & Stitch had a big effect on me—that we then applied to How to Train Your Dragon sequences like "Forbidden Friendship," where Hiccup and Toothless are working out their relationship and have no dialogue. Those moments are very, very powerful. So I have several places in this film where dialogue pretty much just stops and music takes over. Those moments for me are the most transportive, elevated moments in our film for sure. Do you have any career advice for up-and-coming animators? CS: This whole idea of following your dreams is great, but if I had a dream to be a singer, that wouldn't have worked out because I can't sing. My voice doesn't do that. I was talking about this with Jeffrey Katzenberg, and he broke in and said, "No, follow your talent." And I thought, that's brilliant. Follow your talent. If you have an aptitude towards animation or design or background painting, go with that. Listen to that. I started out in the story department at Disney. As I transitioned into directing, both Dean [DeBlois] and I thought, "Well, how can we do this? I don't know how to animate. I don't know how to draw a background. I certainly can't paint very well. So how are we going to 10 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 4 Roz's unarticulated facial design is inspired by C-3PO and R2-D2.