Oct 5, 2023

Pixar Veteran Andrew Gordon Discusses Character Design Process for New Series "Good Morning Kevin" - Exclusive

"Good Morning Kevin" is a new animated musical series designed for distribution on all short- and long-form social media platforms. What makes the show unique is that it is divided into over 100 short episodes that can be viewed as stand-alone or to tell a larger story.

The series was co-produced by Andrew Gordon, a 20-year Pixar veteran, and Alastair Webber, founder of the Other Songs record label. During his time at Pixar, Gordon worked on films such as "Toy Story 2", "Toy Story 3", "Monsters, Inc.", "Finding Nemo", "Wall-E", "The Incredibles", and "Ratatouille".

The animation for "Good Morning Kevin" was handled by Oscar-winning studio Passion Pictures, which co-produced the film with The Other Songs. Because of the record company's involvement, music is at the center of every clip in Good Morning Kevin, and the series of more than 100 short films features a large number of original songs and songs by A-list recording artists, influencers, and producers. It also serves as a unique launch pad for new songs that The Other Songs is about to release.

The synopsis for Good Morning Kevin is as follows:

In Good Morning Kevin, the main character Kevin is sent into space by Kadabra's nefarious CEO, Pete Plainer, to take the audience on a fascinating and entertaining space journey. His mission is to create viral content for the masses. But Kevin's true passion is making music, which sets the stage for a heartwarming and entertaining story.

Leading the series is Kevin himself, a friendly, music-loving bear in a space suit. We recently spoke with Gordon and Webber, who described Kevin's early incarnation. According to Webber,

we initially started with a monkey as a starting point for this project focused on space exploration. Andrew and I collaborated on this venture and brought in outside experts to fine-tune the model and design. However, we realized that our approach was not sufficiently engaging.

After much trial and error, the GMK crew decided it would be better to make the bear the star of the show. The show's creators gave us exclusive access to a series of character experiments that showed how Kevin evolved throughout the development process.

The animation for Good Morning Kevin was created with the Unreal Engine, which Gordon said was a real treat for someone used to the years-long production process of traditional feature animation.

Working with characters in real time was really exciting. Using the Unreal Engine also allowed us to produce work of a quality that sets us apart from other work being produced on Tiktok today.

According to Gordon, character design was the most time-consuming part of the production process; from September 2022 until January of this year, it was the main focus for the Good Morning Kevin staff.

Once the characters were fully realized, the staff constructed the physical space in which the series would take place and built the virtual set. Gordon explains:

Developing the characters in Unreal Engine took time, but once that foundation was in place, we were able to quickly create the sets. We were designed the set strategically, taking into account the limited space on the spaceship and its appearance, as well as several rooms. This approach was similar to filming a soap opera, and we reused the same sets to maintain continuity throughout the project.

The set was built in UE, the character designs were finalized, and production began. Video production of "Good Morning Kevin" will be completed in a few days. Over the next few months, the GMK crew plans to release over 100 videos on social media platforms.