Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

Between April 2021 to July 2022 I worked as a stop motion animator on Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio.

Where do I even start? It is the longest project I have been to date. It was very demanding and I had the worst burnout I have experienced after finishing the project. But am I grateful I got to work on it? Absolutely. It is the project with the most reach/impact I have worked on in my career so far.

Here is a compilation of some shots/raw footages I animated for the project.

Tina T. Hsu Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio Reel from Tina T. Hsu on Vimeo.

For the first 8 months or so most of my work was on Wood Spirit, the blue fairy that gave Pinocchio life. I did the bulk of her shots in the 400 and 3500 sequences. Where she gave Pinocchio life and when she grants cricket's one wish and exits. I loved her design and am grateful I got to do the majority of her sequences, but animating her was not easy. Her wings especially. One of my fellow animator described her as two characters stuck together. Since her wings did not have the anatomy of bird wings, it took me a while to figure out how to animate them so they looked organic. Since all her movements were supposed to be gentle and graceful, there were a lot of tiny increments in the animation. However, Since the puppet and the wings are quite heavy the joint tensioning couldn't be too loose it no longer supported the weight. So I had to put a lot of force on her while trying to be accurate as slow movements are not very forgiving. The wings were also very long but the root is a small ballpoint, which makes positioning the wing tips very difficult. Tensioning and fighting with the leverage/length of her wings was something I struggled through out working with her. One thing that came rather naturally was her acting. I sort of knew what she needed to feel like or at least had a vision that was close enough to what the directors wanted

By 2022, I requested to animate some shots other than wood spirit for new challenges. I have always been interested in dance sequences as I had studied many different styles of dance growing up, and it is a fundamental part of my understanding of movement. Wanting a gear shift from the gentle and graceful shots wood spirit embodies, I asked for the poop dance sequence. I did not end up getting it, but was given Pinocchio's puppet show debut dance sequence. I was responsible for most of the stage side of the performance, while other animators did the audience side and Volpe's closeups. It was very challenging/complicated and rewarding at the same time. As it was the second half of the production, pressure for speed became a lot more apparent, which was not easy to juggle when dealing with complex multi character dance sequences. One other thing worth mentioning is that the choreography from this sequence was actually not outsourced to professional dancers/choreographers, but a combination of me and fellow animators coming up with fitting dance moves, and the directors also  pulled dance moves from old movies that we fitted into Pinocchio's performance.

I worked in person closely with the onsite director Mark and the rest of the crew, and had briefs over the internet with Guillermo Del Toro. As an animator I tend to look at the board and shot length and offer the most direct path I think solves the problem, and the director either lets me do it or have a different path in mind. One thing I really appreciated working with GDT was that he always had an answer when it comes to what he wanted. Whether the direction was "go for it" or "no I want that instead", I rarely disagreed with his vision. It is hard to explain, but I feel he had this very accurate sense of balance when it comes to not shying away from what he wanted while making things assessable to the audience.

The experience watching the film after its release was an odd one for me. The first view at the staff screening I was unable to watch it as a movie. I was reliving the production as I watched each shots go by than enjoying it as a movie. A couple weeks later I went to see it in the theater with the general audience, and that was when I was able to enjoy the movie more. Watching a good chunk of my life flash past the screen is definitely an experience that is hard to describe. The fact that there is footage of me animating on Netflix and at the MOMA in New York is also mind boggling.

It was over all a very intense yet rewarding experience to work on this project. I hope you enjoyed it if you have seen it and give it a chance if you haven't. Congratulations to all involved making it and I hope the film continues to excel during award seasons and continue to captivate audience.

I will update BTS as I sort through them.

BTS footage of me animating the close up of Wood sprite poking cricket (animated separately in large scale)

Tina T. Hsu Pinocchio 0400-0760 BTS by Jason Ptaszek from Tina T. Hsu on Vimeo.

BTS footage of me animating Pinocchio's Dance

Tina T. Hsu Pinocchio 1400-0260 BTS by Jason Ptaszek from Tina T. Hsu on Vimeo.
This was also featured on MOMA Instagram  

Crew Photo

Animation Team

Wood Spirit Stage

UV pass

Puppet Show Stage

Children head rack for back of audience head

Other random BTS Photos I took while on production
Maquettes (character sculpts) 

The Puppets features in the infamous poop dance sequence

Head Mechanism for facial animation

Stand-ins. Basically mock ups or broken puppets, or anything that can be used to help with planning/camera/lighting setup when full puppets are busy in shots.

Flat Puppets with limited movements. Think cardboard cutout used in live action for background crowd.

Puppet hospital

Sets

The Waterman

In Summer 2019 and beginning of 2020 before and after I worked on The Shivering Truth Season 2, I worked on the 2D animation sequences of live action film "The Waterman". The problem with working on features is that they have the tendency of taking a long time from me working on it and it coming out. I thought I wrote about it already but apparently I have not.

Here is a compilation of some of my raw footage

Tina T. Hsu waterman reel from Tina T. Hsu on Vimeo.

I was one of the lead animators on this project responsible for a big chunk of the rough/tiedown animation. The process was surprisingly design heavy as I had to come up with many solutions that dictated the final animation/art direction of the piece even though rotoscoping is used pretty heavily during the process, and I will go into it a little more in the next paragraph.

Since rotoscoping was used, many would think all I had to do was trace over live action footage and be done. That wasn't the case here. The character design was made for live action, which means it was not animation friendly. It took a while to figure out the right stylization for the designs to work as animation. On top of that, we could not shoot some of the footages in the setting it was supposed to be in.

As a result, there were many things I had to animate over from scratch. For example, all the reference footages of underwater scenes were shot on land. For the sequence where the heroine drowned, I had to animate her hair, clothing and lower body from imagination because she was fumbling on land in the reference and non of those elements looked like they were under water. In the sequence where waterman swam in the lake, the footage I was given was the actor pretending to swim on a table on his belly while losing balance once in a while. So I took a few key poses from the footage as reference and pretty much animated everything from scratch for that shot. The direction also wanted to minimize hard cuts whenever possible so coming up with ways to morph one scene into another was something I had to tackle. 

Once the rough/tied down animation is locked it was then passed onto another animator to do the final "cleanup" animation. The art direction wanted the animation to look like it was done on pencil and paper, and after some R&D we figured the best way to achieve that was still by drawing with pencil on paper. I wasn't involved in that part of the process since I had Shivering Truth S2 lined up already and had to leave the project for a chunk of time, so the other lead animator, Sam Neiman, was responsible with that part of the project.

More info on this project can be found on the DVD bonus featurette.

2016 Laika Reel - Kubo and the Two Strings

I worked at Laika for about a year between February 2015 to February 2016 and they finally released my portfolio materials! I worked in the (Oscar winning) Rapid Prototyping Department as a Rapid Prototyping Quality Assurance for Laika's 4th film, Kubo and the Two Strings. I was responsible for bringing 3D printed faces and objects from the printer to camera ready. I usually tell people that we are sort of like make up artists for puppets. I think the work here is about 1/10 of the shots I have touched one way or another.


Tina T. Hsu 2016 Laika reel from Tina T. Hsu on Vimeo.


Here is the full BTS video for better understanding of the process.

I appear in 5:15 - 5:18 sanding the 200% Kubo's for his one tear moment, and 5:25 - 5:32 probably painting someone's teeth to add gloss to them.