Tuesday 10: Pirate Fairy Animation Team

Tuesday 10: Pirate Fairy Animation Team

It’s Tuesday and since I have another post to share about my recent press trip to L.A., I wanted to share it this way again.  The Pirate Fairy was released today on BluRay, DVD and Digital HD.  I’ve already written my review of the movie and I also have a giveaway running for the movie.  We had the opportunity to sit with the Pirate Fairy Animation Team and learned alot about the process of creating the film.  I am going to share ten tidbits from that Q&A with you.

When we sat down to talk with the team that worked on animation and we were all surprised that Ray Shenusay was dressed as a pirate.  What fun!  I can tell you they really have a great time doing their jobs and you could tell when they talked about the project.  Now on to my ten tidbits.

One – When the team was thinking of what to do next for the residents of Pixie Hallow, John Lasseter got the idea of Pirates.  Once they picked that team they know right way they wanted to tie the movie into to one of  the most famous Disney Pirate –  Captain Hook.  When they added the Croc to the story he wanted to make sure he was cute so people would find him adorable.  The sketches above show some of how he was developed.

Two – Zarina is taller than Tinkerbell and her friends.  This was done so when she transformed into the Pirate Fairy she would be more commanding.

Three – As head off story Ray Shenusay is responsible for bringing the writing and animation together into one piece.  He stated they draw thousands and thousands of sketches and drawings to create a rough cut of the movie.  Those sketches and drawings help filmmakers choose what they want to keep in the movie and what they want to take out.  He also shared about the process of how they decided to use the storyline for Zarina.  They wanted to make her redeemable even after she betrayed the fairies (I’ll share more about this in my filmmakers post this week).  Oh and Ray doesn’t dress like a Pirate every day.

Four – Ritsuko Notani is the person responsible for designing James, Baby Crocky & Zarina.  She shared that Zarina also has a beauty mark on her cheek like she does.

 

Five – When Zarina first arrives back in Pixie Hallow she is wearing a coat.  Ritsuko shared that it was made from cuff of a man’s coat.  She’s the only fairy that has clothing made from man made materials since all the other fairies wear organically made clothing.  She said that James probably made the coat for Zarina.

Six – Zarina’s design also had some designer elements because Christian Siriano helped with designing her costume.  You can read more about that partnership in my post here.

 

Seven – Yuriko Senno shared with us the stages of bringing Zarina to life.  The first was the modeling stage and working with the 3D modelers to bring the character to life and be able to capture her features.  This is the first time you would see her in 3D.  They wanted to make sure they captured her as a Pixie Hallow Fairy and a Pirate Fairy.  The next stage is the facial stage to show her wide range of emotions.  This involves numerous facial expressions on story boards.

Next is rigging and skinning stage.  Rigging is creating a bone structure into a puppet so it can move.  The story boards helps with rigging emotions for Zarina.  Since this movie has a few action scenes it was important to work on skinning to show the wide range of movement.

Next stage is animation.  This is where the story comes to life and the animation team is responsible for making the story believable.

 

Eight – The team spent a lot of time in the ARL – Animation Research Library to get inspiration from the Peter Pan movie.  They also visited a ship to learn about scaling and how to incorporate the fairies.

Nine – There’s a part where all the fairies has “swords” well they aren’t actually swords but hat pins.  So each one is unique and very detailed.

Ten – Tom Hiddleston who played Loki in Thor is the voice of James in the Pirate Fairy.  Check out the clip above of him in action.  When we were at Disney Toon Studio everyone raved about how much they loved working with him and how much he enjoyed the role.