14 posts tagged animation

We asked Lily Sparks, Price Peterson and Ryan Sandoval, the creators of the Amazon original pilot Supanatural to tell us more about the show. They asked if we would accept answers in the form of GIFs. We said, “Spider, please!”

Supanatural is about two best friends who have dealt with supernatural phenomena for so long and so easily, that nowadays when some overwhelming horror like this happens

their reaction is this

Hezbah and Lucretia are not impressed by things you would consider to be your WORST NIGHTMARE. They handle demons, ghosts, and ghouls on the regular and frankly they’d rather just clear their DVR and gossip about slutty sorceresses they know. Unfortunately nobody in the world has their knowledge or experience when it comes to apocalyptic threats, so when push comes to shove our heroes WILL take care of business.

Why this world, why these characters?

Because it’s the only world we know: A cold, hard world plagued by a nightmare-scape of hell monsters and sometimes the only fun is your friends. Like, you KNOW you have a rare talent or valuable skill, but that just makes it even harder when you’re wasting your days working a bad job surrounded by uncaring people. 

90% of people spend 60 hours a week feeling like this:

Right? The characters of Supanatural may have larger-than-life experiences, but they still gotta get to their crummy day jobs on time and make sure their rent check clears. In the real world we are all pretty much powerless against disasters, just passively sitting in our cubicles ‘liking’ a photo of a tornado on Facebook while eating a Cool Ranch Doritos Locos taco.  In Supanatural, our heroes can step outside of their daily frustrations and GET INVOLVED like

Tell us about your awesome cast, and what they brought to the show:

Well Kristen Schaal was like

and then Jameeliah Joy (Lucretia) was like

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Brad Combest’s first few jobs in Hollywood – as a researcher on Modern Marvels, as a literary agent’s assistant at the Gersh Agency, as an executive assistant at Dreamworks – taught him plenty, but it was his work as a story editor on Robot Chicken that changed his life. It was there that he got a taste for animation and realized it was what he wanted to be doing. 

As a production coordinator on the Disney animated feature Wreck-It Ralph, Brad got to be around the director, writers, head of story and voice talent during the entire production process.  It was after this that Brad followed his true passion and wrote Sassy Gay Samurai, the latest series to be optioned by Amazon Studios.

We spoke with Brad about the series, how reading Pearl S. Buck put him on the path to a writing career and how standing in a never-ending series of lines at the San Diego Comic-Con International resulted in an optioned series.

What inspired you to want to write as a career?

In high school I read the The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck.  We had the option to do a book report or write another chapter, so I wrote a satirical chapter.  Stylistically it worked in the context of the book but it was just so silly.  I had a great time writing with a bunch of my friends at an Applebee’s trying to come up with ideas while drinking way too much soda. 

Then I managed a movie theater during college and got paid to watch all the movies that came out the night before to make sure they were OK.  I watched so many terrible films that it was a huge motivator as it made me feel as if I had something of a chance to write something that might sell.  When college was done I threw everything into my car and moved to Los Angeles not knowing anybody, started looking for work and started writing.

You have had quite a variety of entertainment jobs; do you feel that helped you?

I really felt I got an education on all these jobs which helped me with my writing that was invaluable.  I got a good foundation of how things worked from a buyer’s perspective and learned a lot about development and the story process from not just the studio side but also the writer’s side.

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The Amazon Studios development process is visual, from comic books to “test movies” – videos that help an audience imagine what a story would be like as a feature film. Here’s the story of Burma Rising, a new test movie now available to watch for free at Amazon and Amazon Studios.

For Sung Jin Ahn, a career in animation felt right, given that he was always interested in drawing as a kid growing up on the East Coast. Just like it felt right for him to make his directorial debut with the Amazon Studios  test movie for Burma Rising, created by Titmouse Animation Studio – a place he considers a huge influence and inspiration.

Since this is a test movie intended for a wide audience and not a traditional set of storyboards for production, Sung Jin approached the material with an animator’s mindset which created a little more work, but in the end resulted in a more finely tuned project.  That the project is eventually going to be live-action in no way hampered Sung Jin. In fact, he felt it gave him more creative freedom.  “Before this, I had been involved strictly in animation storyboarding.” he said.  “So this being a live-action script gave me more freedom as a storyteller and as an artist also which was pretty great.”

Set in the 1980s during the Burmese Revolution, Burma Rising is a dramatic thriller about a group of mercenaries who must find their way out of Burma in the midst of a war between guerrillas and the vicious military junta.  The main character, Manny, “has been traveling and gets into some trouble, and in the midst of that trouble he meets this rag-tag team of ex-military and they end up having to stick together to survive all the turmoil,” said Sung Jin.  “It’s a story about how the main character grows and evolves through all the hardships he is forced to endure, and learning about what he has to sacrifice to make the right choices.”

What resonated with Sung Jin were the very real emotions the characters dealt with. “The feelings of lost identity, guilt, the burden of responsibility, and making sacrifices are all things that everyone has to deal with to some degree,” he said.  “So I tried to take those emotions I was most familiar with and personify them within the characters.”

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