Exploring Lake Erie with WildBrain Studios

Lake Erie is a ghost story from WildBrain Studios. In it, a young boy has to face blood-curdling fears in order to rescue his faithful, furry companion. The thrilling short film haunts viewers through its striking animation, given life by talented creative director and animator John Vassallo and team members from the Vancouver-based studio. The short is a ‘family-horror,’ inspired equally by John’s upbringing in the Great Lakes as it is by cult-classic 1980s movies like Stand By Me and E.T.

This well-woven horror story features a whole host of impressive animation feats. From SFX and lighting that gives the film its gloriously gloomy atmosphere, to impressive underwater action scenes that will give you chills. Lake Erie showcases the top-tier talent at WildBrain and the individual contributions that made up the collaborative animated short. The 7-minute short serves as proof-of-concept for larger series, so you may well be seeing more from the world of Lake Erie.

Animated using Harmony, Lake Erie combines hand-drawn artwork with textures and FX animation to create an illustrated look. In the short, the WildBrain team gives us a stellar example of how Harmony can be used to create complete scenes with detailed and ghostly compositing effects. Read on for more insights from the making of this animated short.

Please introduce WildBrain Studios and the team who worked on Lake Erie!

John: WildBrain Studios in Vancouver is the animation production arm of leading kids and family entertainment company, WildBrain. The studio has produced such award-winning animated series as The Snoopy Show; Snoopy in Space; Go, Dog. Go!; Carmen Sandiego; Ninjago and many others. With roots in the community going back more than 30 years, WildBrain Studios is today home to over 800 artists in its state-of-the-art facility, specializing in 2D and CG animation across all genres for kids and families. With full-scale development and pre-production teams, the studio can take projects all the way from script through post-production. 

Lake Erie is an animated ‘family horror’ project currently in development at WildBrain Studios. It began as a passion project of mine that I worked on during nights and weekends, and it’s inspired by 80s classics like E.T. and Stand by Me. WildBrain got involved with the project in 2020 and then produced the seven-minute short film that we’ve been using as a proof-of-concept for a longer form series, which we’re very excited about. The film is currently on the short-film festival circuit, with the next confirmed screening at the Soho Horror Film Festival in the UK from November 11-13, 2022.

We had an amazing team of talented artists and animation professionals at WildBrain Studios working on the short film. It was produced by Devon Cody with production management from Jenn Korba-Gill. John Hill was the BG Layout Supervisor, Bob Etchingham and Eric Chow headed up the character builds, Jeff Burt and Woong Park provided the 3D assets and layout under the direction of our 3D supervisor, Jason Julich. Josh Dresner was our 2D tech lead, who helped establish the look of picture in Harmony. Flavia Guttler was our Animation Supervisor, Ari Fremder Utria handled the compositing and character lighting, while Jeremy Rillorta was our lead FX artist. 

What is the inspiration behind Lake Erie’s sheer cliffs and coastal lighthouse setting?

John: The production design as well as the story are inspired by the Great Lakes region where I grew up. The beaches around there are unique, rugged, and beautiful. Making a horror-inspired short in a setting like this felt like an interesting juxtaposition. There is contrast between the raw beauty of the beach and the old, dilapidated lighthouse with its mysterious ghost; which I felt gave the story a nice atmosphere to build on. We were lucky enough to get two amazing Visual Development artists, Isaac Orloff and Charles Hilton, involved early on to develop the look of the film based on some rough drawings I had done.

Both have extensive experience conceptualizing beautiful worlds for animated shows. Charles worked on Amphibia, Stephen Universe and Ben 10. Isaac’s credits include Troll Hunters, Rise of the Titans, Marvel Spiderman and Disney’s Monsters at Work. I had been fans of their work for years, so it was a thrill to get them on board. They really helped push the unique look and mood of the Lake Erie world. 

Can you introduce the main characters seen in the short?

John: Lake Erie follows a shy, socially anxious 13-year-old boy named Kip and his faithful dog, Molly. They encounter two bullies on the beach, Brandon and Travis, who are on their way to vandalize the old lighthouse. Captain Wiley is a ghost who, according to legend, stalks the beach at night searching for some treasure he lost in a shipwreck many years ago. He is rumored to haunt the old lighthouse that the two bullies are targeting. When Molly becomes lost in the lighthouse, Kip must face terrifying supernatural forces to reunite with her. 

Can you tell us a little about their character design and rigging process?

John: The character designs were influenced by some of my favourite artists like Jamie Hewlett and Robert Valley. Hewlett’s edgy illustration style for his Tank Girl comics and the band Gorillaz really inspired me to push my designs. The same is true of Valley’s work on Pear Cider and Cigarettes.  Both really know how to push the stylization and shape the language of characters in a really appealing way. Their designs always have a story to tell, as well as a certain authenticity to them that draws me in. The story in Lake Erie itself is set in the 1980s; even though there is no direct mention of that in the script. It gave me some fertile ground to work from and an opportunity to build some specificity into their designs. Eric Chow, one of our build supervisors, can speak more to the rigs themselves. 

Eric Chow: Lake Erie is one of the most unique productions I have worked on in my career. There were so many details on the character/prop designs that we tried our best to make them animation friendly. Since Harmony is powerful enough to put deformers on the drawings, we were able to minimize redrawing for the rotation. Textures were probably the most challenging part and we had to hand draw the textures using art brushes that we created. In order to make the unique texture flicker, we needed at least four drawings that were close enough to each other for our in-house script to run an animated cycle on. Despite the intricate process, we were happy with the end product. I was so glad to be part of the crew.

How did you achieve the spooky, supernatural lighting we see at different points of the short?

John: We always knew that lighting would be an important part of the short film since it plays into the story. The scenes' cinematic design takes real lighting into account. Charles Hilton did a colour script for us early on that helped set the lighting and mood for each major point and setting of the short. Those were used as a starting point and inspiration. For backgrounds, John Hill and his talented team painted the lights and shadows and also gave us the unlit, or local colour layers. For many of the more intricate scenes, our compositing and lighting supervisor, Ari Fremder Utria, used the background paintings as a starting point. Using a combination of color layers, creative masking and detail finessing, they pushed the final look to match the colour keys we had and some individual lighting keys that I did for important scenes.

Ari Fremder Utria: As a compositing artist with a passion for lighting, I saw this as an opportunity to push the final lighting and compositing treatments to bring John’s vision to life. There was nothing that John asked for that I didn’t at least try to achieve in Harmony by building custom tools out of Harmony’s nodes. I could write a book on the process for each element, but this is as concise an explanation that I can manage in such few words.

My goal was to make the lighting on the characters just as much a part of their personality and feelings as their physical expressions and poses. I created unique light rigs and compositing treatments for each character to emphasize what kind of person they are and how they react to what is happening around them. I paint with light.

How did you create the glowing, flame type effect we see on the wolf-like creature at the start?

John: The flames were important because we use them in the short as a storytelling device to indicate a character who is stuck in the alternate dimension or 'Drift' world. They needed to be visible enough to tell this part of the story, but not overpowering to the point of being distracting. Our lead FX artist, Jeremy Rillorta, did an amazing job of taking some concept art examples that I provided and emulating them in Harmony. He hand-drew a few different cycles and types of flame to fit different situations. 

Jeremy Rillorta: I talked to John a lot about different references of fire or will-o-wisps. We wanted it to look almost like a cold flickering flame that would roll off the contours of the ghost wolf. I used a coloured glow module and a few of the default texture brushes as strokes to give the fire a more hard-painted feel.

What other techniques did you use to convey feelings of the haunted and supernatural?

John: Besides the set design and lighting, I think the pacing and cinematography played the biggest part in the eerie mood of the short. Quick cuts and constant action detract from the creepiness. The pacing of the short slows down inside the lighthouse to help sell the creepiness. We opted for animation on 2s to give the shots a more surreal feeling, like a waking nightmare.

The sound design and score played a huge part in setting the mood for Lake Erie as well. Dick and Rogers Studios here in Vancouver did an amazing job creating custom sound design and foley. Peter Ricq, who composed the original score for the film, had some experience composing for horror films before. He crafted some beautifully tense music which really pulled everything together and elevated the supernatural feel of the short.

How did you capture the feeling of being submerged in the underwater scene?

John: It was a great team effort! The compositing and FX in the underwater scenes really helped make it feel like our characters were submerged. Ari used our key art as a guide and layered on the work from our awesome FX team which included bubbles and debris. Volumetric light that was painted into the backgrounds gave the scenes depth. We also added some extra drag on the hair and clothes in animation to tie the shots together. 

What one tool within Harmony or Storyboard Pro could you not have done without on the project?

Josh: Toon Boom Harmony allowed us to meet the expectations of the concept artwork without sacrificing quality or workflow. Rigging enabled a combination of puppet and hand-drawn animation, all with textures for a hand-painted quality. We mixed hand-drawn FX animation with particles to achieve illustrated-looking rain and water. Shader nodes dynamically generated vibrant and graphic lighting, and compositing completed the lighting and added atmosphere to each scene. This is all within Harmony!

Ari: Honestly, I don’t think I could pick a specific tool to talk about. The way I process ideas for workflows from a tools perspective is like a symphonic conductor/composer working with an orchestra. There is no instrument that doesn’t add a very specific and important value to the music. In my technique, as someone who identifies as artist before technical director, I was the conductor, and every tool was an instrument that when combined together produce a beautiful final image.

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• Lake Erie is currently on the festival circuit! You can find the short film's official trailer on YouTube.
• Interested in working with the team at WildBrain Studios? Don't be afraid to apply on their careers page.
• Ready to rig, animate or composite your own spooky scenes? Artists can download a free 21-day trial of Harmony Premium.