Refining the Palate with Narrative & Visual Development

We revealed in the first Spice Frontier Production Diary, “Saving Thyme with Layout & Animation” that three centuries after Earth’s destruction is where we meet the hero of the Spice Frontier universe, chef Kent Williams. But to understand the true genesis of Kent, we need to flashback to the year 2013 (before Earth’s demise).

A small but mighty team of five artists brought their talents and ambitions to the back of a t-shirt shop in Mount Dora, Florida. The team at the time was focused mostly on assisting some of the biggest entertainment giants produce animated films and games. Steamroller Animation quickly grew and now includes more than 200 people from across the globe.

Despite being proud of the success and rapid growth, the founders of Steamroller Animation still had another dream waiting to be fulfilled.

“The goal for us has always been to tell our own stories and make our own films,” said Jalil Sadool, co-founder of Steamroller Animation, Chief Creative Officer, as well as the director of the pilot episode of Spice Frontier.

Sadool was a successful Lead Animator at Weta Digital and a Character Lead Animator at DreamWorks Animation before co-founding Steamroller Animation.

Production for episode one of Spice Frontier the TV series is well underway. The Steamroller Animation film crew sat down with five members of the team both virtually and in our Mount Dora headquarters to discuss the unique opportunities and challenges this self-funded project is presenting.

Sadool recorded his video interview in his office overlooking Lake Dora where he explained where the idea for the sci-fi adventure came from.

“I love Anthony Bourdain, Parts Unknown, and all the adventures. And also I love Star Trek. So I was like, Why don't I just put that together? Maybe there's a story there. Maybe I can have an ensemble of characters traveling the universe looking for the lost ingredients of Earth,” said Sadool.

Sadool also explained he and the team use the same technique of tabletop role-playing games, such as Dungeons and Dragons and the White Wolf System while creating characters and plot lines.

“Never as a dungeon master, do you want to have a rigid plotline because you cannot force your players to do what you want them to do. You just build a world, throw them in and see what they do,” said Sadool.

The visual style of Spice Frontier the TV series is based on traditional 2D animated films. Flat graphic characters are placed against a more rendered painterly background to achieve this look.

We called Adam Meyer, Steamroller Animation Co-Founder and Head of Art to ask him more about this unique style. Before co-founding Steamroller Animation, Meyer worked at larger corporations where he didn’t have as much autonomy over the types of stories he was able to work on.

Meyer explained that one of the inspirations while creating Spice Frontier was Disney feature films like Sleeping Beauty.

“(Sleeping Beauty) had bold character designs, against detailed backgrounds and so we challenged ourselves with, well, why do they work? And for us, we discovered it was all about the value. As long as you have the correct values on a character and they match the lighting values that you have in the background, then it works and you can get away with quite a bit,” said Meyer.

Josh Carroll, Creative Director of Spice Frontier, started working for Steamroller Animation in 2021 after more than a decade in the animation industry. He explained the difference between the pipeline during the production of the short film and the TV series. He revealed the first thing the team did was analyze the original short and identified what the limitations were of the characters’ facial expressions and facial design.

“Now what we're doing is we're basically building out the characters more three-dimensionally and with broader range with more expressive eyes with all these visual cues that are going to allow the audience to really hone in on them to really read the performance,” said Carroll.

Carroll also explained they crafted the character models to push their performances to get a broad range of expression. He says they improved the animation quality as well as cartoon sensibility while enhancing the expressiveness of the emotions going on in the scenes.

Tad Branham is the Head of Design at Steamroller Animation. He has worked as a graphic designer for nearly 20 years. He walked through his process for designing C-LA’s facial features for the series.

“We did probably hundreds of mouth designs and none of them seemed to work and when we settled on this sort of very simple half-circle shape, it really helped us to realize what we really need to be focusing on with C-LA is her eyes and her eyebrows and how they relate expression and how she's feeling to the camera,” said Branham.

Another unique element of this project is the challenge of creating this 2D look in Unreal which is a 3D engine. Antonino Scodrani is the Lighting Supervisor on Spice Frontier. Before joining Steamroller in 2022 he worked on various projects that included lighting full CG and live-action shows. He explained how the characters and environments are treated differently when it comes to lighting.

“The environment gets lit individually on its own. We get to be able to add light pools and create a composition with lights and shadow, and when we add the characters, they just stand out from there, from the backgrounds. So what we need to do then is grade the characters to fit accordingly in the scene, add rim lights where positions of lights make sense, and then on top of that, to just ground the entire character to the background we add Gobos to be able to mimic effects and just have a bit more dynamic in the scene,” said Scodrani.

Branham added his thoughts about integrating the characters into the backgrounds. He says that using color scripts is a huge help with setting the tone and emotional beat for each scene.

“We've actually been able to take the color swatches from that color script and we're able to apply them to the characters in Unreal and actually use those color swatches from the color script to marry the background and the characters together so that they feel more integrated as a whole,” said Branham.

Traditional film workflow is very linear. Typically one department does its job and then passes the product on to the next department. Using Unreal allows for real-time changes without having to wait for other departments. While creating this episode, multiple teams are engaged earlier and simultaneously within the production.

Scodrani expanded on this concept. He says setting up compositions that environment artists are able to set dress and then lighters give a first, second even third light pass on helps the animators process because they already have a great shot to create their animation performance in.

“This allows the entire team to just have a boost of morale where they can already see part of the final results while they're already working without really affecting performance at all,” said Scodrani.

Despite making progress using this new Unreal-based pipeline, it has been a challenge according to the team. Compared to the production of the short film which was eight minutes long, a much larger team is working to produce this episode which is 32 minutes long.

On the bright side, the team agrees that using Unreal allows everyone in the pipeline to become emotionally invested in the film much earlier on in the process. Carroll notes that any director who comes in and works in this pipeline can get amazing visual feedback very early in the show.

“The great thing about using one tool to do everything is how easy it is to emotionally be invested in the film much early on in the process. It's very helpful as a director and a creative to actually be making decisions emotionally so early within that process,” said Sadool.

The risk to self-fund this project while developing a new pipeline is one the owners of Steamroller Animation hope pays off.

Sadool explains the strategy of Steamroller Animation has always been, “if you build it, they will come”. He says they’re employing that same strategy with the Spice Frontier TV series and are actively looking for partnerships to help fully develop and distribute the project.

“We're very fortunate in that Spice Frontier Episode One, we're able to make ourselves and that's really exciting,” said Meyer. “It takes a lot of work, a lot of money to do that and so, you know, quite honestly, we're looking for help. We're looking for a partner to help join us on this journey and just keep the momentum going that we've already started and carrying it all the way to, you know, getting the season one completely finished.”

Before wrapping on our video shoot, Sadool shares one final sentiment about the project.

“I love every single person on this team and all the effort that they're putting in this project and I wake up every morning and I go onto Shotgrid just to look at what everybody's doing and everything that they're producing looks better than I could have ever imagined,” said Sadool.

To learn more about Steamroller Animation please visit their site at: www.steamrollerstudios.com