Apr 5, 2024

Tiki's Don: How 2D and stop-motion animation elevate this documentary about the creators of Tiki culture.

Don Beach was the undisputed Godfather of American Tiki, imitating the cultural iconography of the tropical islands of the South Pacific in a much different and more authentic way than we are familiar with today. He was also notorious for reinventing himself, often at the expense of complete truth. [In their new documentary, "The Donn of Tiki," premiering at the Florida Film Festival on April 13, filmmakers Alex Lamb and Max Well sift through Don Beach's many, sometimes conflicting, life stories to explore the real Don Beach. Nevertheless, in their pursuit of the truth, the two never leave out any interesting anecdotes, no matter how outlandish they may seem.

To tell the story of these multifaceted characters as compellingly as possible, Lamb & Well commissioned both stop-motion and 2D animation, using archival footage and interviews. The stop motion was produced by Mystery Meat Media and the 2D animation was done by Venturia Animation in Colombia.

Director Well told us why they used animated sequences and why doing so was always their first instinct:

We always wanted to use 2D animation for this film. And we needed a way to visually differentiate between the "real" dons and the "narrative" dons. The film makes great use of Don's reputation as a storyteller and showman, letting the audience know right away that some of the stories may be stretching the truth, so to speak. The puppet Don is portrayed as a real person living in the same world as the other interviewees, and the 2D animation is a visual representation of the events Don describes. It took us a long time to understand all of this, but we are convinced. We hope audiences will agree.

Lamb agreed and elaborated:

We knew that Don's interview animation had to be constant and different from the vignettes. Stop motion made the most sense, not only because it is different from all other styles of animation, but because stop motion is realistic. Don is really talking on this tape, and stop motion supports that because the physical puppets are sitting in physical chairs and are filmed on a set.

To create Don's puppet, Mystery Meat worked from a complete character sketch by Kevin Kidney. Kidney then carved the head, arms, and legs from wood.

Kidney told me about his approach to making the Don puppets:

I felt inspired from the beginning by Sterling Sturtevant's art. I love her simplified character designs in her work for UPA in the 1950s, especially her TV commercial animation work of the time. Don's first concept was a mere black dot with eyes. I wasn't thinking of Rankin/Bass, but they had a similar eye for Santa in "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". I liked the look, but the Mystery Meat guys knew they could get more "acting" out of Don's eyes if they had white eyes and pupils.

I rolled Don's miniature cigars from scraps of brown paper bags and carved his cocktail mugs from scraps of wood from the store. It's a scale replica of a real vintage Don the Beachcomber "barrel mug". I also made little mint sprigs out of paper to decorate his drinks. It was a thrill to see the doll come to life, sitting in that little wicker chair, legs crossed like the real Don, puffing on his cigar.

From there, Mystery Meat took over. Animator Li Crawford explained to Cartoon Brew:

Then, customizing the armature's remaining proportions, he built up a form to fill out the rest of his body, and fabricator Angela Pearson tailored an attractive The form was concealed by an attractive khaki suit tailored by fabricator Angela Pearson. Kevin also provided us with hands in a variety of poses, which we used for some shots to get some shapely poses that our wired silicone hands could not reach. Cigars, rum mugs with ice and straws, etc. These are the details that make stop motion magical.

According to Crawford, the studio spent three to four weeks on the puppets and sets, including a major revision of the puppets along the way. Animation, led by animator Arrika North, who created about two-thirds of Don's character, took another three to four weeks. The remaining shots of Don were animated by Tom Gibbons.

"Tiki's Don" unfolded over the decades of the 20th century, and its 2D animation sequences were produced in imitation of popular techniques in the art corresponding to the period represented. Juan M. Urbina, founder of Venturia Animation Studios, explains how it was done:

The rubber hose sequence was the most difficult, accounting for about 50% of the workload, so we put together a team of the best classical animators One team worked their magic on a Warner-esque 1940s "World War II Don" sequence, another team animated only the mid-century stuff, and another team worked on two for the documentary's ending finish the nostalgic sequence.

Many of the hand-drawn characters and locations were recreated from archival material. However, when reference materials were not available, Venturian artists had to be more creative and imitate what animators of the time were doing, which sometimes created new challenges:

We appealed to Creative Licensing because we had no archival and the Internet for references at all, and in those cases our thought process was, "Okay, how would they have designed this type of character back then? Co-directors Alex and Max wanted to keep anything that could be considered racist out of his designs as much as possible, but this was especially difficult because the cartoon era (especially the 1930s and 40s) was filled with all kinds of negative depictions. In the end, I think we were able to create an attractive design without sacrificing the cheeky authenticity of the rubber-string era.

The amount of time and care that went into The Donn of Tiki is evident in the final cut of the film. Given Don Beachcomber's penchant for transformation and his still-enigmatic character, it is easy to see why the filmmakers wanted to utilize so many different styles and aesthetics to tell his story.