From September 24, Island of Memories will hit theaters, the new feature from DreamWorks Animation, which in recent years has treated us to cinema of animated life both aesthetically striking and refined, as demonstrated by The Wild Robot and also Puss in Boots 2, directed by the same filmmakers behind Island of Memories, namely Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado. For a film so choreographically vibrant and disorienting, we spoke with Sean Sexton, a veteran animation supervisor.
The Head of Animation on Island of Memories: “We Kept the Anime Very Much in Mind”
Island of Memories is the story of friendship on an island in the Philippines, that of Jo and Raissa: a bond that could be reaching its limit, because Raissa, after high school, is about to depart for the United States. The farewell party is unpredictable, however, as the two plunge through a magical portal into the full Filipino folklore that told their Jo’s grandmother, living through absurd and grotesque adventures. Sean Sexton, who joined DreamWorks Animation more than twenty years ago, is well aware of the technical and artistic challenges posed by this feature. Here is our interview:
I read that you began your career in traditional 2D animation. What is your story, how did you “survive” the transition from 2D to CGI? Do you still draw poses before animating the CGI models?
Great question! Yes, I started working on Futurama, animated in traditional ways. Then I moved to DreamWorks, for our last hand-drawn feature, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas. In that period, between the late 1990s and the early 2000s, traditional animation was fading away. A lot of films wouldn’t be made in 2D anymore; CGI was taking over. So I began taking courses to learn how to animate with a computer. I really liked it, I enjoyed it more than drawing, because drawing had always been a challenge, I always felt that creating a nice drawing was quite difficult. With the computer, animation seemed much easier. So the transition for me was very smooth; I genuinely wanted to use the computer and I loved it for real. And I’m glad I did, because I feel I achieved a level of animation quality I wouldn’t have reached animating with traditional techniques. But yes, I still draw. And as an animation supervisor, it helps me because I can communicate a lot of what I want in a shot with a quick drawing. Sometimes it’s the best way to convey how a scene or a pose should be. In short, I’m happy to have had that traditional training… but I’m also happy not to have to draw anymore!
Would you say Island of Memories is every animator’s dream, because the film feels so free and crazy. What is the most absurd thing you animated for the film?
Oh, I didn’t animate much, just one shot that stayed in the film. When it comes to crazy scenes, the movie has a few really nuts moments. I think the anime sequences are perhaps the most absurd, they’re very funny because they’re strange, hallucinatory. Still, there’s a lot of wild stuff in the film.
Island of Memories is wild, but it’s also a story about friendship, affection, and memories. How do you ensure that the characters don’t lose that believable humanity beyond the unleashed comedy?
Yes, good question. I think Joel and Jan truly wanted to ensure we kept their real emotions. There are definitely moments when the characters go overboard and their expressions are exaggerated, turning into pure cartoons, caricatures. But it wouldn’t work if the characters didn’t have their own credibility. If you truly believe in their friendship, ensuring that their emotions and acting feel realistic in those moments, then you can let loose with the humor, you can really push the characters’ expressions. If we had done that for the entire film, I think it would have been
I think Island of Memories, in both plot and imagery, has a complex identity. This film reminds me of Japanese animation, anime. Did you use it as a reference while working?
Yes, definitely we kept the anime in mind. The directors are big anime fans. In fact, when I began working on this film, I didn’t know much about anime. I had to watch a lot of films like Wolf Children and One Punch, stuff like that. I had to learn the anime style, to be able to imitate it in the film. But the directors always referenced films they loved. They wanted to make sure it felt authentic to anime fans.
This film is a compact experience, but you could also call it experimental. What heartfelt wish do you have for Island of Memories?
I hope people will really like the style we’ve tried to find. And there is more than one style! The feeling was that, as we were making the film, we kept pushing to the limit of what we could do, in terms of animation. So I hope that people are left awestruck by its look. And perhaps with future films we can go even further. I sense that we’ve always used each film as another rung to push ourselves higher. You can see this in the Spider-Verse movies, or in our Puss in Boots 2, again directed by Joel and Jan, where we experimented with things like stop-motion animation and different styles. I hope the atmosphere inspires even freer things for what comes next.
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