Feb 15, 2023

"Moon Girl And Devil Dinosaur" is a song by Japanese rock band Moon.

Marvel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur debuted on linear tv last week and hit Disney+ today. During the show's release, we asked executive producer Steve Lotter and director Rodney Crowden to disassemble one of the show's signature "mixtape" sequences and share the exclusive artwork.

Lotter is an Emmy award-winning producer (the Penguins of Madagascar) and is now also executive producer of the Disney-nominated series Annie Ghost and Molly Maggie. He previously served as director and producer of the Disney Channel's Kim Possible and 2 Kim Possible films. Other credits include the Ren & Stimpy Show, Duckman, and Clerks.

Crowden has his own Emmy for his work in the hit adult animated series Futurama. His other animated credits include animated shows such as The Wild Thornberrys, Drawn Together and American Dad.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinoza are Disney TV animation productions in collaboration with Australian animation studio Flying Bark Productions. Alongside Rotter, executive producers include the Cinema Gypsy Productions of Lawrence Fishburne and Helen Sagland.

The show is based on a Marvel comic series of the same name, following the adventures of 13・year-old super genius Renella Lafayette and her 10-ton T-Rex, the Devil's Dinosaur. We are working with you.

Loter: This is one of our "mixtape" scenes 1. The work on these scenes begins with the script and the song. In this scene, I had a childish Gambino song "Sweatpants" in my head, but I remember pitching and the director was horrified because the song's pace was slower than I thought in the action sequence. But I believed it would work, and I believed the pace would enhance the action sequence and make it feel unique. Lunella is on roller skates and the song has a very fluid movement that fits our story and has a lot of meaning. Then, as the song was picked up, Ben Juwono played with the camera and put in some moves, turns and flashcard shots as she was flying through the air.

Loter: There were a lot of superhero shows that existed by this time, so we wanted to find a way to make this special. The show already had the first African-American teenage girl superhero, which is very important, so for our contribution, we saw what we could do in the city of New York. We looked back at the time when we were growing up in New York at the height of the graffiti movement. We wanted to mix that sensibility combined with New York Art Benchmark, Andy Warhol, and some of the screen printing process. Basquiat street art murals you would see in New York City at the time before gentrification, when it felt like a really creative environment, a really great place for artists to nurture their craft. The show is set in the current era, but we have created this idealized and creative version of New York City.

Crowden: I grew up in New York during the Golden age of hip-hop, the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was this whole scene and it was really raw and we had textures that our New York also wanted to have. I wanted to show it visually, musically and acoustically, and make New York a unique character. Spider-Verse has had a huge impact on us, so we really wanted to incorporate some of that style or at least plant our own flag in the sand, which is where we came up with the idea for a clip-like mixtape moment. It allows us to play with different animation styles and inspirations, and music and visual styles influence each other.

Crowden: The neighborhood of Renera, it is Les, the Lower East Side. Her neighborhood is a major part of Lunella's life and she really wants to protect it. She is all about her family and her community. We used the aesthetics of screen printing when old cartoons were printed on paper to create a specific look that was different from what we saw in Spider-Man. It was cool and created a look. Then for the characters you have a more modern ink style set in front of the background to create a juxtaposition.

Loter: By the time we got to this scene, we had already graphically established what we wanted for the show, but at the moment of the mixtape Ben was unleashed and worked hard to match the music to the animation, which was also tied to the overall theme of the show.

Loter: When I was working on this clip, I was strongly inspired by the work of Edgar Wright, especially Scott Pilgrim and definitely Baby Driver. I was obsessed with how Baby Driver injected music into the story and visuals. I'm a huge music nerd, so if I have a chance to inject music into the structure of something I'm working on, I'm going to do it. In this sequence, we enter into this surreal version of the story where the art style can feel more monochromatic and turn into something with different design elements that enhance reality. The shift style can not only strengthen the theme of what is happening in the story, but also enhance the integration of the music with everything else. Ben was unleashed, and Moon Girl had to live longer than gravity, so he would use all his power, so he worked hard to match the beat of the story with the movement and the music. The episode is about patience, so Ben had to come up with a visual way to express its virtues.

Clouden: When the scene sometimes slows down, the animation becomes more fluid, working hard to draw the audience to feel the emotion and gravity of the scene. For these mixtape moments, we will draw inspiration from the lyrics of the song and the theme of the episode. Sometimes the theme of an episode is integrated visually and literally into the mixtape with the song being played.

Loter: I was lucky enough to work on television and had a feature before returning to TV. I could see different working processes for each, and one thing I really enjoyed about the features, aside from the time you get to focus on the script, was the level of collaboration you would get. At Feature, we had a story trust to ensure that other directors, producers and artists saw and critiqued our work and promoted it to a place where it felt like the best. The show featured a collaboration of Flying Bark and its level. We had a great mix of veterans and young artists who worked together to make this show the best.

Crowden: Disney executives deserve a lot of credit here too. The company never stood our way and told us to step back from something we were trying to do, even if ambitious. When we come up with an idea, they look at our plan and tell us to go for it. I think the show is all better for its hands-off approach.

Loter: One of the great things Flying Bark does is send a rough animated daily newspaper to Rodney and me.1

Clouden: Cat Kosmala [animation supervisor] and Jose Lopez [character art director] meet with us about an hour and a half for several episodes each week and go every day. We comb them together and take notes. It is always so they blow our minds every time we get this package knowing that we will come by our email and see what they have for us. It is very unusual to receive a daily routine every week, and I am very grateful for that. It streamlined the process down the line and allowed fine tuning to make sure everything became the way we wanted.

Crowden: The fact that Lunella and the devil work so well on screen together is a testament to our storyboard artists and directors. Their relationship is important and we want them to be seen as equal. It is not the situation of the master and the pet; They are partners. When you create a scene, you want to make sure that it is represented. It also requires a bit of creative staging, with a bit of magic mixed with reality. If she needs to talk to him, she sometimes uses a hover wing to talk to him face-to-face, or plays with her in the foreground and with the devil in the background in depth of field. There are many ways to stage them. It can be hard, but if you're good enough, you can come up with some creative ways to deal with it.