0
Interview
Neil Stokes - 3 January 2016 2.00 h

Making the most of reality

Every Monday at 6.30pm, El Punt Avui TV airs the interview series Going Native. This week, Neil talks to creative director Toni Garcia, from the BRB International animation production company
- Neil Stokes
What does a cre­ative di­rec­tor do ex­actly?
Mak­ing an an­i­mated TV show needs lots of peo­ple to work on it, so we have a big team. My role is to find the right peo­ple for each new show and then to su­per­vise and co­or­di­nate the whole team.
What are you work­ing on at the mo­ment?
We are fo­cus­ing on In­viz­imals, which is based on char­ac­ters from a video game for Sony Playsta­tion de­vices. It was orig­i­nally cre­ated by a Cata­lan stu­dio, No­varama. Then we got the idea of doing a TV show. In­iz­imals uses aug­mented re­al­ity, so you use your de­vice to see the char­ac­ters around you. In the TV show, mark­ers ap­pear and if you point your mo­bile de­vice at the screen, you can cap­ture an In­viz­imal and play with that char­ac­ter in the video game.
How im­por­tant is that type of in­ter­ac­tion nowa­days?
It is not only im­por­tant, it's the way to sur­vive. Peo­ple love the en­gage­ment of video games, so we are bring­ing the cre­ativ­ity of video games and the cre­ativ­ity of an­i­ma­tion to­gether to cre­ate some­thing new: a multi-plat­form ex­pe­ri­ence.
Is that the best way to max­imise your au­di­ence?
Yes, and the short­cut is the in­ter­net. When we were kids, there was a TV and the time of the show. Now if some­one loves In­viz­imals they go on­line and get the episode on de­mand. With the video game it's the same: you down­load the app and play when and where you want.
There must be a lot of pres­sure to keep up?
There is. We need a cou­ple of years to fin­ish a good an­i­mated TV show. Once you have some­thing new, every­one wants it im­me­di­ately. When I started 25 years ago there was no pres­sure, now it is to­tally dif­fer­ent.
How else have things changed in that time?
In the 1980s we cre­ated shows like Dog­tan­ian, which in Spain were watched by more than 20 mil­lion peo­ple on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noons. The whole fam­ily would watch it to­gether. It's dif­fer­ent now, as every­one wants their own con­tent, which means mul­ti­ple con­tent for each tar­get group. Tech­niques have also changed. At the be­gin­ning we did every­thing with pen­cils and brushes, film­ing frame-by-frame. Now it is easy to do an­i­ma­tion on a com­puter, but that does not mean it will be suc­cess­ful. You need tal­ent, you have to cre­ate qual­ity and tell in­ter­est­ing sto­ries. This has not changed, be­cause if you do not have in­ter­est­ing sto­ries, it doesn't mat­ter what graph­ics you use, it will fail. Sto­ry­telling is the key.
What is the process of mak­ing an an­i­mated se­ries?
We start by brain­storm­ing as a team and get an idea about the char­ac­ters and the story, and we cre­ate what we call a ‘bible'. This ‘bible' is the basis of the show and has all the in­for­ma­tion, the tar­get, the for­mat, the char­ac­ters and their back­sto­ries. You then show it to pos­si­ble part­ners – Dis­ney, Uni­ver­sal or what­ever. If they like it and come on board, then you can start pro­duc­ing it.
Now con­tent is global, how do you serve dif­fer­ent tastes?
In the past 25 years we have de­vel­oped a global idea of what en­ter­tain­ment is so we now have the same idea of en­ter­tain­ment. The cul­tural bar­ri­ers are start­ing to come down.
Can an­i­ma­tion sur­pass the pos­si­bil­i­ties of live ac­tion?
Peo­ple of our gen­er­a­tion grew up with car­toons and comic books, and we still watch an­i­ma­tion, as we can see from the mil­lions of hits car­toons get on YouTube. An­i­ma­tion not only in­ter­ests kids. And so what we are try­ing to do is to go a step fur­ther and cre­ate user-gen­er­ated con­tent, which means you might watch the TV show and im­port the char­ac­ters into your game, and then you can cre­ate your own show with the same char­ac­ters, adding your voice and shar­ing it on­line. That is the fu­ture and an­i­ma­tion has an un­be­liev­able po­ten­tial for that.
Will vir­tual re­al­ity allow us to take part in a car­toon?
Yes def­i­nitely. If you go to see a film and you love it, then you will be able to come home, put your glasses on and begin play­ing in the world you have just been watch­ing. But first you need some­thing that makes you com­fort­able in this world. And that re­quires sto­ry­telling to make it in­ter­est­ing and to make you want to ex­plore it.
Is this where things are going next in an­i­ma­tion
There are two ways to con­tinue pro­duc­ing an­i­ma­tion. One is on­line video on de­mand, mak­ing con­tent avail­able to peo­ple when they want it. And the other is, amaz­ingly, fea­ture films. Peo­ple still love going to the cin­ema, not least be­cause it is a so­cial ac­tiv­ity. Yet, that needs to be sup­ported with in­ter­ac­tiv­ity out­side of the cin­ema. Video games and an­i­ma­tion are be­com­ing the same things. So, we are try­ing to offer a nice story that you can enjoy and that you will then want to ex­pe­ri­ence for your­self, which is the meet­ing point be­tween video games and in­ter­ac­tive an­i­ma­tion.
Sign in. Sign in if you are already a verified reader. I want to become verified reader. To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader.
Note: To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader and accept the conditions of use.

Published on

Most Viewed