Lisa Hanawalt's lifelong equine obsession pays off in her role as production designer for the animated series, "Bojack Horseman" (pictured); with embassies re-opening in Washington and Havana, cultural exchange could be on the upswing; costume designers for superhero movies take comic book drawings and turn them into flashy but practical outfits.
How artist Lisa Hanawalt designed the 'wonky' world of 'BoJack Horseman'
The most popular horse/human hybrid on Netflix is back with a second season — which dropped on July 17 if you’re looking for something to binge at the moment.
Will Arnett voices the titular Horseman, a Hollywood has-been struggling to regain some semblance of celebrity. This season, BoJack starts filming his starring role in a Secretariat biopic, while fighting off the demons from his past.
The whimsical world where humans and animals coexist (and often co-mingle) comes directly from the mind of production designer Lisa Hanawalt. It’s a world she’s drawn since she was a horse-obsessed little kid.
The new characters for season two come to life in the hands of Hanawalt and are molded through her own methods and imagination.
"I start by reading the scripts and then making notes on the characters that seem like the most fun to draw," Hanawalt says. "Then I leave all the side characters for last. I talk to Raphael [Bob-Waksberg], the creator, about what he envisioned for the characters. We've known each other a long time."
Hanawalt stopped by The Frame recently to talk about her process for designing characters, her past as a pet portrait artist, and gender in animation.
Interview Highlights:
You and creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg went to school together, right?
Yeah, we knew each other in high school. We were friends. He can be like, Do you remember that kid in our math class? Draw him — as a dog.
When you hear the title "production designer" on most live action work — TV or film — you think of somebody who is looking at costumes and who is looking at fabric, wallpaper, props. Does all of that detail involve the same level of execution on an animated show?
I think so. Just rather than looking at that stuff in person I'm looking at it on a Google image search and then drawing it.
It's also a very different medium from what you did growing up as an illustrator. So what are the fundamental similarities and fundamental differences between illustration and animation?
I think the main similarity is that here it starts with my reference points and my inspiration. I'm often drawing things from my parents' bookshelves in the background of the show. I want to make it personal and specific, so I'm drawing works of art that I really like and making parodies of them. I'm drawing fabrics that I'm drawn to. I'm looking at fashion blogs and choosing things that specifically appeal to me.
Then the main difference is that it is very collaborative. After I sketch out the characters and my ideas for things I want to be in the background, it's up to the animators to actually render it and make it work in animation because I don't have an animation background.
Well, yeah, they have to be able to move, they have to be able to do things, which is not something you have to worry about.
Yeah, they need teeth and mouth shapes, their arms needs to bend, which I realized when I was drawing too many patterns on the arms and legs. I was giving people a headache so I had to stop. I still do it sometimes though.
Can you talk a little bit about your education as an artist? What kinds of art you were drawn to as a student? What did you see yourself doing as an artist? How did that evolve over the course of your career?
I went to UCLA and studied studio art. I thought I was going to be a gallery painter, photographer or ceramicist. Then when I graduated that didn't happen immediately. I didn't suddenly get solo shows in Chelsea and I realized that is actually kind of difficult to break into. So I actually started doing a webcomic with Raphael and I started doing pet portraits for money. They're actually very similar to the animals in BoJack. They're wearing clothes, standing upright, and they didn't have tails.
Did that naturally lead to what you do now? Was that something that you were doing as a career or only to make ends meet at the time?
It was just something I enjoyed drawing at the time. I no longer enjoy drawing people's pets. I just want to draw what I want to draw and have people not tell me what to draw. But Raphael did use a lot of those pet portraits and animal-people drawings as inspiration for starting BoJack.
When a show is first launching there are certain kind of pressures and expectations — people you have to make happy. When you get to the second season you know that what you're doing is working. What does that enable you to do creatively in the second season that you might of held yourself back from doing in the first?
I think confidence is the main thing. I mean, when I started I was used to working all by myself. Then suddenly I'm telling a team of animators how to draw really basic things like clouds and trees. These are people who can draw better than me. So I'm like, I know you can draw this way better, but this is how to match my wonky style of illustration because that is the voice of the show. So now I feel a little bit less sheepish about doing that because I know it's not a complete flop. I'm not completely a fraud even though I'm still afraid I am.
We're doing more confident things with exploring the medium. There is one point in season 2 where the line art kind of breaks away and it's just water color illustrations that look like an old-timey story book. That was really fun to do.
Can you remember that first day when you were on the set or with your team of artists as an artist and an illustrator? You worked by yourself and now you're in a room. Do you remember the terror and panic you felt?
Yeah. I'm starting to have a panic attack just thinking about it. I mean, the supervising director, Mike Hollingsworth, is very good at talking to people and working with a large staff. So he kind of did most of the talking and then he was like, Well, Lisa, if you'd like to say a few words? I think I just mumbled something about liking complicated patterns and colors and then I wandered away. So I think it took a while for people to warm up to me, understandably.
How important is it to work with the actor who is performing the character? At what point, in the second season at least, do you start designing a character around a voice, or is it really always the reverse? That character is drawn and designed and then you find a voice that you think matches it? How involved in that process are you?
Everything is kind of done at the same time. Usually I've started designing a character by the time it's cast. Sometimes I haven't drawn anything yet. Sometimes Raphael will say, Oh, you know so-and-so is coming in today. Maybe if you have something you could show them? Then I'll kind of do a quickie just so I have something to talk to them about. I like meeting the actors.
Who are some of the new actors who we will be seeing in season 2?
Philip Baker Hall. He is really terrific in it. Lisa Kudrow plays BoJack's love interest this season and she is just amazing. She is an owl named Wanda. She might be my new favorite character. She has sort of a heart-shaped face. She's just very adorable.
How important is it on this show that you make sure that you are representing women in an interesting, positive, and meaningful way?
That is very important to me. I mean that is something I'm, of course, personally invested in. Yeah, I've had some battles over that.
Over what kinds of issues?
Well, there was one thing that Raphael blogged about so it became very public. There was a background gag where a car whooshes by and a dog slobbers on a person standing next to them because their tongue whizzes with the wind.
I wanted to make both those characters women and everyone disagreed with me. Everyone. It became this huge fight over several days and I kept pushing it. Normally I wouldn't, but it just seemed like I didn't receive one good reason why they couldn't be women.
What was the argument that they made for why it had to be men?
First it was just like, Well, we're worried it will be distracting because then the audience will wonder why there are two women. If it's a women and a man then it seems sexual. I was like, No that's insane. Women are funny. Women are gross. That's important to me to represent. Then I finally won.
The fear was that if it was two women it would mean something other than if it was two guys?
Yeah, because men are the base. When people think what is the most simple sort of human, it's a white man and anything else that is added to that complicates it for people. It comes with all kinds of meanings and connotations. If they have a different skin color, that comes with a connotation. If they're a woman, Oh well, what do I feel about that? Which is super weird because women are over half the population.
So yeah, I don't claim to be making great political strides just by drawing women into an animated TV show. I try to print out all the characters and put them up on my office wall so I can see how many people of different races we have and make sure that there is a little bit of balance there if possible. Raphael is also incredibly sensitive to that, even though he fought me on this one issue and then later admitted he was wrong. I mean we're constantly discussing it and we want to be called out if we get it wrong too.
If you were looking ahead to season 2, what would you say is evidence of your attention to that kind of detail in the upcoming season?
In season 2, BoJack goes on a series of dates. At first he's sort of trying to get something out of his head and a lot of the women he goes on dates with are like lizard people. But I wanted them to be sexy in this universe. Maybe in the world of BoJack, physical attraction is sort of different, beauty standards are different from our world because, why not? It's just more fun to have a sexy chameleon or a blue-tongued skink or whatever. I don't know how subversive that is, but it's fun for me.
Is there ever a moment where you say, I have co-created a show about an alcoholic-horse-former-actor that is on Netflix? Does it feel a little bizarre?
The thing that feels most bizarre is that it's come really full circle from me being an extremely obsessed horse girl in elementary school. I love horses, I think about them all the time, and now the fact that my job involves drawing horses and I've started to write again — I couldn't be happier about that.
Cuba-U.S. cultural exchange is in the spotlight as embassies re-open
The United States and Cuba have re-opened their embassies in each other’s countries. It’s the next step in the ongoing normalization of relations between the two nations. What does this mean for artists and cultural exchange?
The Frame's John Horn spoke with Adolfo Nodal. He's a Cuban-American businessman and former general manager of the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. He now runs Cuba Tours and Travel, a company that organizes cultural trips to the island.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
There was a time — not so long ago — when it was really hard for Cuban visual and performing artists to get visas to the U.S. That has ebbed-and-flowed over the past few years. Now that the embassies have re-opened in Washington and Havana, what affect will that have on cultural exchange between the countries?
I'm happy to say that cultural exchange has really opened up, to the point where Cuban artists are all over the United States, and American artists are starting to go to Cuba to do projects. It's really exciting. Just off the top of my head, I can tell you that the artist, Luis Camejo, who's one of the major painters of Cuba, is here right now doing an exhibition. And groups like the Preservation Hall Jazz Band are playing at the Jazz Festival in Havana in December. So artists really are going back-and-forth now, and many of the Cuban artists are getting five-year visas and they're becoming normalized. That's how it's supposed to be.
How much easier has it become for Cuban artists to get visas to the U.S.?
Nobody needs visas to leave the country of Cuba anymore — that was changed about two years ago. You don't have to get government permission to leave the country, so the concept of having five-year visas is a brand new thing that just started. When they apply for a visa to come to the U.S., artists automatically get a five-year visa now.
Another major thing that happened this last May was that The Bronx Museum had a major exhibition at Bellas Artes Museum in Havana. It's the first major collaboration between a museum in the U.S. and a museum in Cuba in 60 years, so I think both sides realized that artists are a perfect way to get people to get to know each other for the first time. It's happened before, but now it's all over the place.
Cuban authorities recently returned the passport of dissident artist Tania Bruguera. But she said she wouldn’t leave Cuba unless she was assured she would be let back in. Is there any indication that Cuba is becoming more tolerant toward artists who are critical of the government?
No, I won't say there's any indication of that yet. But Cuban artists and the Cuban people overall have lost their fear; they don't have a fear of the government anymore. They do what they want to do and they take the consequences, so artists are doing a lot of things they wouldn't normally do five years ago. It's opening up there, and [free] speech is expanding there.
What have American audiences been missing out on in terms of not having full access to Cuban artists?
I think American audiences have seen the tip of the iceberg of what's come from Cuba, and they've all been great artists: Chucho Valdes, La Camerata Romeu, or artists that have been able to come here and perform. But Cuba's a place where culture comes out of the ground and the water, so there's so much great art being produced in all fields in Cuba.
There's a broad set of music being produced in Cuba that hasn't seen its way here, and there's a lot of art that's been produced and hasn't been seen here, so when people go to Cuba and see the broad, expansive Cuban culture — everything from architecture to opera, classical music to Afro-Cuban music — they'll realize it's really a rich place for culture.
From 'Ant-Man' to 'Spider-Man': Top costume designers create superhero looks
"Ant-Man," starring Paul Rudd as a mini-avenger, took home $58 million at the domestic box office this weekend. He's just the latest comic book character to leap from the printed page to the silver screen and rake in box office bucks in the process.
Hollywood’s superhero obsession has kept cinematic costume designers on their toes. Frame contributor Eric Molinsky spoke with some industry veterans about how they take two-dimensional comic book drawings and turn them into outfits that actors can wear, do stunts in – and not look totally silly.
Back to The Basics
Superhero costumes used to be stand-alone works of fashion, which over time became dated or cringe-worthy. It’s like that scene in "The Incredibles," when Edna Mode designs a new suit for Mr. Incredible, but refuses to use capes.
These days, costume designers are looking more closely at the source material to figure out why those design elements were there to begin with. When Michael Wilkinson and James Acheson worked on "Man of Steel," they discovered that Superman’s costume was a combination of Victorian circus performers and swashbuckling heroes like Zorro.
“The weightlifters and the strongmen had this look of wearing early wool jersey tights with their shorts over the top,” Wilkinson said.
So they thought a cape and boots will still communicate strength and adventure. But Acheson wondered, “How are we going to resolve those silly red underpants? So we went through dozens and dozens of drawings.”
“They pretty much just got smaller and smaller until they weren’t there on the illustration,” said Wilkinson, “and that was the look we decided to go with.
Sammy Sheldon Differ had a similar experience working on "X-Men: First Class." The film’s director wanted the costumes to look like the comics from the ‘60s, when "The X-Men" wore blue and yellow jumpsuits. So she went into deep research mode.
“And what immediately came out was, in 1963, DuPont discovered Kevlar,” Differ said. “So we kind of went down this route of seeing if that would work for us, and also what NASA were up to — so I tried to pull in all this reality of the period.”
No Leotards
The next big leap was texture. Comic books used to have printing limitations. That’s why the costumes were made of a few primary colors that showed off the characters' muscles. But Wilkinson said: “One thing we discovered is that no matter what incredible shape an actor is in, once you put a leotard on, then everything is smoothed out, and all that fantastic definition they’ve been working so hard at is kind of negated.”
Here’s where new technology is solving a bigger challenge than capes – tights. Wilkinson used a 3D printer to create texture on Superman’s suit, which gave it muscle definition and created visual interest for cinematography.
Differ likes to mix-and-match materials on the same costumes.
“With the X-Men costumes, there were layers and layers of fabric pieced together and then connecting things one on top of the other,” she said. “So, if you stand away they look quite blue with yellow bits, but actually when you go in close, it’s all intricately stitched to make it textured [with] panels and leather pieces and the Kevlar in the middle.
Acheson points out: “Part of design, if it’s going to be interesting, is that you have to take risks. And the thing about superheroes is, it’s a fabulous arena to take risks. The problem is these films cost a huge amount of money. You can take the risks but you better make sure come up with goods because it’s an awfully expensive process to get it wrong.”
Is he worried the fans won’t like it?
“Not so much the fans," he said, laughing. "it’s the producers, who are still waiting on the set saying, 'Where is it?'”
Getting into Action
Acheson had a devil of a time working on the first "Spider-Man" film. He spent three months making 70 different versions of the costume. When the producers thought it was ready, they took it on a test run.
Costume worn by Tobey Maguire in 2002 film "Spider-Man" as it was displayed at the Hollywood Costume exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
"We had a stunt man on a wire and they flew him straight into a tree. Half the webbing unglued from the suit,” he recalled. “It was sort of like a terrible waffle hanging in the trees. It was a disaster!"
It’s funny – superheroes are supposed to seem indestructible, but these costumes are really fragile. Or they’re too bulky. The solution is to create 20 or 30 different versions of the costume, each one tailor-made for the specific needs of that scene. Differ says when working on a film like "Ant-Man," even that wasn’t enough.
“They want someone to kind of turn over and over and over," Differ said. "And they’ve put in a rubber floor and they kind of [say], 'Well, he can’t do it in those boots.' And you have to whip up a pair of boots that look identical to the hero pair, but almost like barefoot."
Taking a Step Back
It’s a grueling process, so Differ said she always takes a step back to constantly ask herself, Why?
“I don’t think you can get away with a funny helmet and a leotard,” Differ said. “I think you have to make sense of why that person is wearing that suit. What does he do with it? Does he have a power or is it something the suit gives him? And then those questions lead you on to, How does that work?”
The best costume designers are storytellers. And Michael Wilkinson believes these superheroes and their costumes are telling the story of our hopes and dreams in the real world:
“Hopefully one day they’ll be looking back at our 'Superman' series and our Justice Leagues and be thinking how that reflects where we’re at in the year 2015."
For more stories from Eric Molinsky, check out his podcast, Imaginary Worlds.