#keith kellog

Can you describe the role of Animation Supervisor and what the job entails?

We have three studios working for us currently, so basically every studio submits their shots to me on a daily basis. We’re working on multiple episodes at any given time, and I review these shots—around 80 to 100 of them each day—and I make notes on them. There are also many times where I will record myself, as sometimes this is the easiest way to get across my thoughts on the performance.

There’s also a lot of work that is done upfront, earlier in the design process of the episode. From the start of the show, the assets are created. These are modeled, both in-house and overseas from the amazing designs on the show. I’ll give feedback on these and make sure that the characters can move properly. We also have rigging dailies to take a look at the upcoming characters in the episodes. This is to make sure that they meet the deformation and motion requirements that are necessary for the show. Sometimes a still image can look good, but we have some really crazy designs and outfits—plus the armor of the clone troopers—so you have to make sure that it all works onscreen.

You started working on The Clone Wars at the end of Season Three. What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced so far on the show?

With every episode we’re creating new characters, new locations, and new designs—so each and every show has its own special set of challenges. Obviously, we have our main characters: Anakin, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan and so on, but with different story arcs we also get to delve into other characters that people haven’t seen in the Star Wars universe yet. It’s a lot of work creating those characters on an episodic basis, and making sure the character stays consistent across our three animation studios.

Which is the bigger challenge on the show: creating a new character or animating an existing one?

To me, it’s creating a new character. Occasionally, due to different production and scheduling things, we have different studios animate a new character. That’s a big challenge, because there’s a lot of different ways to animate a character. A really great example of that was Pong Krell in the Umbara quadrilogy. He was created across two different studios, with each doing two episodes. A lot of my job is trying to make sure that we maintain a complete character with all the subtle characteristics intact.

Speaking of characteristics, is it difficult to make sure all the clones in the show are different?

The challenge is finding their different personalities. The upcoming arc on Umbara is mainly about clones. Obviously, they all look the same, so trying to make sure the audience could tell them apart by both their body language and facial expressions was a big challenge. Some clones would be more questioning, so I’d have their inner eyebrows up just a little bit, just to kind of get that subtle nuance across that this is the one that’s questioning the orders. There might have been another who is angry about what’s going on, so maybe his brows were down a bit more, his lower lids up slightly more; just subtle little things like that.

Do you have a favorite character?

I tend to like the villains, just because they can really chew up scenery; you can be a little more aggressive with them, have little jaw-rolls here and there and little nuances in the face. It might be a facial tic like we had with Osi Sobeck in “The Citadel.” Whenever he spoke to Count Dooku, we gave him a little bit of an eye-twitch to show how nervous he was. With villains, you can push them probably about 20 percent more than what you can do with your heroes.

You brought Chewbacca into the show —are there any other classic characters you’d like to see?

We just got to do Ackbar in “Water War,” which was really cool. To see him as his younger self, commanding an army in the field was really fun, and to be able to see him mentor Lee-Char was great.

I liked seeing Tarkin come back; it gave the audience a glimpse of what he was like when he was young. As we keep going through Season Four, I’m sure you’ll start to see some more classic characters that have been brought back, but I’ll just wait for those to surprise you as they come!

THE CHEWBACCA CHALLENGE

Keith Kellogg reveals how Chewbacca was brought into The Clone Wars.

“When we introduced Chewbacca to the show, it was the first time the world had ever seen Chewbacca being performed by somebody else. [Original Chewbacca actor] Peter Mayhew was really heavily involved in our recreation of the character and he gave us subtle ideas of how Chewbacca should behave. Peter is the only person to have ever portrayed Chewbacca, and we tried to make sure we were true to his vision. We made sure we incorporated the fact he’s not as aggressive as some of the other Wookiees, and he’s a little more curious, and that he has the movie-Chewbacca’s little bow-leggedness. Hearing all that from Peter’s perspective helped us to bring that character to life.

“There was also a technological advancement because we had moving fur for the first time. Chewbacca was an incredibly heavy character to animate; the animators struggled a bit at first, because of how dense he was, but we came up with ways we could help with that.”

How has it been working with some of the guest directors?

There have been some really big names, for sure. Duwayne Dunham’s episode was an incredibly challenging thing to do because we were going underwater for a three-episode arc. We had to create all-new environments and the characters had to be constantly treading water and moving. I chose a lot of the underwater fight scenes from Thunderball, the James Bond movie, as reference for the animation studios to look at, and I’d constantly be sending them clips of other things. Reference is always the key. Duwayne also pushed us on the amount of characters that we use, and we’ll be seeing a lot more of that in Season Four. We’ve started using Massive at some of the studios, which is a crowd software package, and we’ll be using more of that and fleshing out the universe. It all adds to that level of realism.

Another guest director was Walter Murch, who worked on the Umbara arc. Everybody around the studio was obviously really happy he was here and learned a great deal from him. He’s got so much experience. You can really see his camera-work and all the details in the Umbara arc; you feel like you’re down in the actual trenches, fighting alongside the clones.

When you’re working, do you study the actors at all, and how closely do you work with the voice actors?

One thing I’ve always found to be a really big help in animation is filming the actual ADR [Additional Dialogue Recording] sessions of the actors. You can see what the actors were thinking and get an idea of what their emotions were when they recorded the scenes. In studying the performance, you always find little things that you can bring out that take the performance to another level.

Some of our animators don’t actually speak English, and it’s a real challenge for them to animate lip-sync. So to actually be able to show when the mouth is opening and closing, and what the different shapes are, helps them a great deal.

Would you say that the animation is stylized or is it striving to be more real?

It’s a stylized realism. We’re definitely more realistic than a lot of animated shows are, but we do still have a specific style that we’re trying to hit. We have a very angular kind of design and I try to emphasize that angularity a little bit. Making sure that we have really strong poses is a big deal, especially when lightsabers are blocking blasters. We definitely are stylized, but there is also a high level of realism.

As the show advances, can you tell me what you think is the next step in animation?

In any animated show, sometimes there can be little things which draw you out of the story—for instance, if a walk looks a little stilted or you suddenly realize that something doesn’t look quite right. My biggest goal was to make sure that none of those things appeared on-screen. The second task I wanted to accomplish was really pushing both the facial performances as well as the acting in order to bring a new level of animation to The Clone Wars.

Also, we have so many different kinds of characters and a lot of them walked the same and did similar things, so, later on in the season, you’ll see that different species will start to have a little bit of a different walk and different gait. We’ve tried to give them some personality through that.

What excites you about the future of the show?

Our biggest thing with The Clone Wars is just to try and keep pushing and see how far we can go. Both Joel Aron, the CG supervisor, and myself, really want to push the show to a place it hasn’t been and push television animation further. We want to show that even if you don’t have an incredibly huge budget, you can still make something really amazing and blow people’s socks off.

On our show, there’s a whole lot of drama, which is something you don’t see in many other animated shows. We are starting to portray very real situations and trying to make sure that the acting looks as real as possible. We’re trying to take TV animation to the next level and my goal was to try and do feature animation every week on a TV schedule. This season, you’ll start to be able to see everything that we’ve been pushing for.

GETTING ANIMATED

Keith Kellogg discusses what made him want to get into animation.