Birdgirl
I could write a book about this production - it's an interesting window into the complexities of the series-making process. I'm really proud of the visual world we created - Season 1 with the aptly-named Awesome Inc. in Atlanta, and the Season 2 with the amazing crew at Global Mechanic in Vancouver, BC.
Services
Direction, Design
& Composite
Client
Cartoon Network/Adult Swim
A large crew of extremely talented artists helped to conceive and execute hundreds of designs to create the world the characters would live in. Credit to Kat Stockton, the backgrounds lead, and Carly Monardo, who led the design team. Above is just a small sample of the design work that went into the production. Many of these detailed elements were seen for just a few seconds - collectively they added to the lushness of the show design.
Birdgirl was a balance of many elements - one of those elements I'm most proud of is the way we integrated textural scenes into every episode - that is, finding alternate animation or illustrative treatments to bring certain scenes to life. Below is a brief edit of some of those animation styles.
We had an incredible cast for this show - including Paget Brewster, Rob Delaney, John Doman, Kether Donoghue, Julie Dove, Negin Farsad, and Tony Hale. We wanted to capitalize on the acting talent through the animation - adding subtleties that a show of this budget would not normally go for.
To that end, we boarded in two stages - one stage to establish scene blocking and general action, then a second stage to finesse the finer acting points.
The scene was then further refined in animation after approval by the showrunners. Below is a sequence featuring John Doman (Dog), Julie Dove (Jessica from Accounting), and Negin Farsad (Meredith). Each of the three stages is represented here.
I think it's interesting to see how this process, step by step, resulted in an extremely tight and well-performed scene. The very talented Mike Owens did the storyboard work here.
Erik Richter, Christina Miller, and Michael Ouweleen were the creators and showrunners.