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Matthew Reis is a writer and independent animation producer who prefers animation to the real world. For two years, Matthew lived on a tight budget while he brought Kid with a Rocket Launcher (KWARL - kwarl.com) to life. He did without a car, in car-dependent Los Angeles, and cut back on many things people take for granted, such as a cell phone and food.

Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, he developed an interest in animation as well as writing early on, even before he can clearly remember. Video games helped to expand his interest into Asian animation and, in 2004, he moved to Los Angeles to work in Hollywood. He has been employed by the same great company for nearly five years.

“The idea for KWARL originated as a feature length animated screenplay, so The Fuzz of War short was a return to what I originally envisioned KWARL to be. I decided to write books because, as a writer, I had complete control over them and didn’t need much money to get the stories out into the world. They happened to turn out really well too, as one book wasn’t enough for me to cover all the ideas I had for the satirical, modern day fable of kid-knight Vincent Frye,” commented Matthew.

Matthew’s plan was to create an animated short that he could use to promote his book series. He started the pre-production in Los Angeles and decided to subcontract the animation production to a small Australian company called Blue Wren Studios. Blue Wren, was recommended to Matthew by Adam Phillips who knew him well. Adam had worked with the people at Blue Wren back in the Disney Australia days. Blue Wren Studios use both Toon Boom Storyboard Pro and Animate Pro, so they were fully equipped to take the job. To get the process rolling, Matthew sent Blue Wren the script, voice over tracks, concept art, storyboards and the bible for them to get a sense of the style and spirit of the project. Thanks to Skype, he was in daily contact with the team at Blue Wren: “Because of the time difference between Los Angeles and Australia, their mornings are my late afternoons, so my evenings/nights will be their workdays. In fact it was nice to come home after my 9 to 5 job and focus completely on The Fuzz of War. We could go over concepts and ideas and made decisions that could be started right away. We also used FTP to upload and download big files. It was very efficient,” continued Matthew.

The entire team at Blue Wren Studios, which consists of seven, worked on The Fuzz of War project: Ian Harrowell, Studio Director; Andy Collins, Director/Animation; Rhianna Williams, Tim Andrews and Lily Dell as Backgrounds artists; Justin Lovell, Assistant Animator; Richard Harrowell, Technical Director as well as Adam Phillips who worked on this project as a freelance.

As a 5 minute 41 second promotional short, The Fuzz of War is a self-contained short story that does not appear in the KWARL book series (although there is a quick reference to a ‘towel-pocalypse’ in one of the books). It was meant to introduce people to Vincent and Teresa Frye, their dysfunctional mother/son relationship, and the odd problem Teresa faces of her son having heavy weaponry readily available.

The story in The Fuzz of War is based around the simple concept of a son over-explaining to his mom why something isn’t the way it should be. Vincent is a knowledgeable, well-spoken kid, so his flair for the dramatic can occasionally get him into trouble.

As the animation style is a combination of traditional animation with limited animation, each member of the team took on multiple tasks to deliver the project on time. For example, Andy Collins was the Director of the team for the duration of the project and also animated the bulk of the show. You could also say he was production manager, clean-up artist, in-betweener, painter, FX and final compositer, but then again you could almost say that about every member of the team!

In addition to all these tasks, Tim Andrews also had to become their Technical Director and Editor when Richard Harrowell fell ill and was hospitalised for two weeks at the end of the project. Kudos to Tim for jumping in! Richard was back in action though, the day he was home from hospital! He saved the day talking to Matthew and crew in LA over Skype, thankfully succeeding to sort out some technical problems with the final build, and upload the project to YouTube on September 1, 2009.

Even though the storyboards were already done, the team at Blue Wren created some additional digital boards to include camera moves and hook up character positions for a better feel of the action. They also used Storyboard Pro to create layouts for the backgrounds. Once approved, the animatic was then imported into Animate Pro to be used as a reference.

“We combined frame-by-frame animation with limited animation. We made full use of the pegs to create the animation. For example, the body was static and the eyes and arms were drawn separately. Thanks to cell swapping, we could reuse different parts of the characters to create a different expression or gesture. Animate Pro was great to create different looks and play with the timing. Then, we applied special effects, mostly highlights, tones and blurs. Another great feature was the ability to apply impressive camera moves. Animate Pro enabled us to set up that spice that makes the animation look professional and of high quality. There is no fudging around like in Flash,” explained Andy Collins.

“Using Toon Boom professional products, you can do the entire production process within one application. No need to go anywhere else! In addition, it does not take long for people to get used to it. Each member of the team was responsible for several scenes from background to special effects, touching on all aspects of the project. It is much faster to get things done and the application is good to work with. The result speaks for itself!” concluded Andy.

Matthew Reis was more than pleased with the animation that was delivered. “I would go into pre-production with Blue Wren tomorrow if I could. They were fantastic to work with and their high production quality exceeded my expectations. The short was intended from the beginning to be put on YouTube in an effort to advertise the KWARL book series, but I’m also exploring animation festival possibilities for it,” added Matthew.

The KWARL book series consists of seven books, the first two of which are currently available at places such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com. KWARL Book 1, Volumes 1 & 2 are available now and deals with Vincent Frye’s adventures at the local county fair. KWARL Book 2, Volumes 1-3 will be available soon and deals with Vincent Frye finding himself engaged to be married to six different girls at once! Finally, KWARL Book 3, Volumes 1&2 are still in the works, but will be out eventually and deals with Vincent Frye and a haunted church. Lots of great stories coming up which hopefully will inspire the creation of an action-pack and fun animated series!

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