Since it's 2nd season, I'm the director of the series Hello Kitty and Friends Supercute Adventures - a Sanrio US production in partnership with Split Studio.
Every season have 15 episodes of 3min each - so far I directed around 30 episodes, and what a super cute adventure it has been, indeed!
I'd definitely eat a slice of that moon.
Directing
My high priority as a director is to create an episode as entertaining, engaging and high quality as possible within the time frame we have - in order to achieve that, I try my best to express my vision as clearly as possible to the team, while welcoming their own awesome inputs to make it even better.
Bellow is how I currently see my influence throughout the production pipeline.
Because of my art background, I naturally navigate more towards the storyboard, animatic, art, and post-production.
I'm the person with the most context of the episode, so I try to keep laser-eyes for inconsistencies and hook-up problems throughout the whole process.
Script
The scripts are written by the great Shaene Siders and her team - we receive them already approved by Sanrio and ready to roll.
Voice
Although I'm present in every voice recording session, we are fortunate to have Verité Studios and René Veilleux as the Voice Director, so I usually make only a few comments. I'm very comfortable and confident to work with them.
Storyboard & Animatic
For me, that's one of the most important - and fun - steps of the whole thing!
Every choice made here directly impacts the rest of the production, so I try to be very careful about the way we navigate.
My goal is to express my vision in the clearest way possible to the storyboard artists, while looking for solutions to save production time and resources.
I usually draw a rough of the whole episode together with the storyboard artists, which they usually find very helpful! The briefing consists of around 60 rough drawings, which takes about 2h to make.
During this process, we try to spot the smartest and most entertaining way of solving each scene.
The briefings are a really collaborative step - we usually laugh a lot together - and I always encourage the artists to pursue and explore their own ideas.
Examples of rough drawings I made for the episode The Wiltening.
Usually a storyboard briefing takes about 2 hours, and I draw around 60 frames while talking with the storyboard artist.
Art
That's my comfort zone, and I naturally navigate more towards this step.
For every episode, I gather the art crew to discuss the general mood, sketch some ideas and decide the general visual direction, based on the storyboard or animatic. During the creative process, I also give them general notes, make new sketches and make paint-overs, if necessary.
I trust my team, and we're super in sync!
Setup
Usually in this step I check every scene for composition, double-check props, characters, proportions, and any hookup issues.
Animation
Although I animated before and can spot high quality animation, I'm not an experienced animator. During the briefing and feedback stages, my focus is on achieving maximum clarity of intention through expressions, line of action, gesture, and general motion.
The animation crew always surprise me. ❤️
Audio
For every episode, I make a video watching the animation while describing the mood of each scene, making key requests for music and sound effects. The amazing guys from the audio studio do the rest!
Post Production
The series doesn't require a lot of post production - usually we make some custom transitions and screen wipes, but sometimes an episode requires more robust work, like the one you can watch bellow.
One of my favorite episodes!
The scripts are so nice and dynamic - they really allow us to experiment and go beyond with the Hello Kitty universe!
Sometimes I like to grab a character or prop to create. It's just so fun, I can't help it.
I had the pleasure to create Tracy!
It's been a super fun journey to have this characters in my life for more than 30 episodes now - I hope they put a smile on your face, just as they put one into mine every day. ❤️
