The context of the environments came to us easier as an ode to the rich graphic shapes of vintage Mr Magoo cartoons, interpreted with modern day technology, yet the look of the characters seemed to be more challenging, after all the screenplay profiles big personalities such as Stanley Kubrick, Hal Ashby, Peter Sellers, Stan Lee and Mick Jagger.
We looked at toon-shading, a cool technique that makes 3D originated characters look hand-drawn like "the deviants", in the scion commercials. The technique sort of tricks the eye as whether you're looking at a 2D or 3D character.
Yet stylistically they weren't right. We needed warmer feeling characters than the odd deviants...
Take a look at the character board that JJ put together, as part of our research:
We got in touch with a talented illustrator based in Canada, Antony Hare, who we hired to develop the look of the characters. He drew Kubrick(09) and Pacino (27) on the board above. We both thought his graphic and illustrative style was right on the money for the film, and we are still toying with the idea of populating our colorful environments with black and white characters.
Tale a look at the Hal Ashby Malibu Colony Pool House style-frame bellow:
The "Who is Pablo Ferro" teaser video came out well, but gave no clue that this was indeed a narrative, animated film. The layer of animation on top of live footage wasn't anywhere close to our entire vision for the film. And if animation was to be the predominant element of the film, it was time to define what it was going to look like. We surely wanted a "visual feast", "a look nobody ever saw before" - and who wouldn't? - but had we ever done extensive work with animation before? The hard questions kept on coming...
We took on the humble quest of catching up, and met with different animation companies from São Paulo, to Montevideo, up to New York, Toronto, across to London, Dublin, Odessa, and all the way to Calcutta and Seoul! We engaged in serious conversations about partnering up with at least half a dozen candidates. Conference calls and lots of pep talk. Can we find government subsidies? Should we shrink down the scope and ambition of the animated sequences? Am I open to sharing my director credit?
We finally settled on the obvious idea of doing the work, or at least the development work, here in LA. We hired a well-regarded and very talented commercial animation director, JJ Walker. With a tiny development budget, I set him up with a crew of beginner designers and animators in our production office on Melrose Avenue, bought a few computers and sat down for an endless path of research on visual references from other notable designers from all over the world.
Norman Lear generously got us started with some development funds, and we compiled a sequence with some of our generous interview subjects taking a stab at our central question: Who is Pablo Ferro?
Jonathan Demme told us that Pablo "had a visual demon inside of him".
Angelica Huston said Pablo's name "evoked a kind of energy, humor, industry and goodwill.
Bob Downey's take on Pablo? "A Cuban, Jewish Indian". (Try that on for size.)
Andy Garcia called Pablo a "walking work of art".
But it was Beau Bridges who perhaps came closest to nailing the un-nailable. He described Pablo as "A leprechaun, yoda -- and also just your average guy.
You can take a look at the results of our first interview foray here ...
