Federico Vallarino on animating the Monster Manual

Vallaround Creative Contents is a team of seven animators based in Italy. Founded by Federico Vallarino in 2012, Vallaround creates original animation for clients, as well as training modules for prospective animators.

Their most recent project is Monster Manual, a YouTube series in both English and Italian that profiles epic encounters from the world’s most popular roleplaying game. Each two-minute episode focuses on a different creature — and what might happen to players who run fail to defeat them.

We got the chance to speak with Vallaround founder and creative director Federico Vallarino about Monster Manual, his experience creating a YouTube series, and the role marketing plays in independent animation.

How would you describe your role in this project and what did a typical day in production look like for you?

Federico: Normally, we work on a per-episode basis. We don’t have more than one episode going at a time. So a typical day in production starts with checking the script, then taking a look at the designs we’re working on.

Normally, everybody’s doing everything. So the character designer is also the storyboarder, there are three or four animators that are working on every episode, and I’m overviewing the whole project with my head of production.

What was the inspiration for this series?

Federico: Monster Manual is produced by Vallaround, which is my company. We decided during the pandemic that we had to work on something that makes us happy. So we jumped on this crazy project. I directed it. My first involvement was as a producer, then as a director. 

It was stress-relieving to do funny things. A lot of the staff at Vallaround are Dungeons & Dragons players, so we were giving them a project about something they love. Everyone was really happy to work on it. We did it for ourselves. And it was born during a very stressful moment. So that was the spark for doing something that makes us happy.

How familiar was the crew with Dungeons & Dragons before starting production? 

Federico: I used to be a Dungeons & Dragons player. I really loved the manual in Dungeons & Dragons — the big book with the descriptions of all the monsters. Kids can enjoy having that kind of guide or manual. I have a taste for fantasy and I thought, “Let’s do a project that involves Dungeons & Dragons, fantasy elements, something I and the team will enjoy.”

My head of production is not aware of Dungeons & Dragons at all, but the rest of the crew are players. I used to be a player — I don’t have the chance to play anymore — but the younger animators on the team are active players. 

What techniques and programs did you use in animating this series?

Federico: The series is animated digitally, and it’s a full Toon Boom Harmony pipeline apart from the writing. The storyboard is storyboarded in Storyboard Pro, and the animation and compositing is all done in Harmony. 

How did you go about designing the creatures featured in the series?

Federico: The most difficult thing about designing the creatures is choosing the creatures. There are so many creatures, and everyone wants to say, “Let’s do this episode with this one!” So the problem is deciding which one. 

Then normally we have a first round of design with different shapes and different designs. When we all agree on what is the funniest design of all, we then discuss the colour palette.

The series is peppered with pop culture references — everything from Dragon Ball to Disney. What inspired this choice, and how do you choose which references to make?

Federico: You work with what you know. I’m a child of the ‘80s, so there's a lot of ‘80s or ‘90s references in the series. Sometimes maybe some of the target audience doesn’t even know what Army of Darkness but that’s my background, and the background of some of the team. 

We are not all the same age. I’m coming from the ‘80s, but most of the team is from the ‘90s. So we still have some common ground. There’s a lot of pop-culture and geek culture. 

Which part of the project was the most interesting or challenging to animate?

Federico: At the beginning, we struggled a little to develop the narrative arc. It’s a little bit peculiar because in the end, we’re speaking about the monster but in the titles and in the episodes there are heroes. But the heroes always die. They’re only there to show what the monster can do. They’re just crash-test dummies.

If this is something that people will like, always seeing their own characters dying every time, we say, “Why not.” We like being ironic and subverting stereotypes. 

The most difficult part was developing the concept for the series. After that it went smoothly. Episode after episode, we are raising the bar. We’re adding more effects and action scenes. We’re trying to always surpass the previous episode. 

How would you describe the reaction to the series so far? 

Federico: Everybody is very happy and enthusiastic about the series we’ve published on YouTube. The comments are very encouraging. As far as the numbers go, almost no one knows the series because we hadn’t planned a good communication strategy. So now, while we’re on the road, we’re trying to communicate it properly. 

We have plans to do another season of thirteen episodes. We’ve released six episodes and we’ve already finished a couple more. We’ve stopped publishing the episodes because, at the beginning, we started releasing the episodes with no clue about marketing. After a digital strategist came on board, he told us, “It’s very nice, very funny, but you have no schedule and no strategy.”

We initially created a channel on YouTube that was both in Italian and in English. He told us, “Let’s have two channels: one that’s in English that’s aimed at the North American audience, and one in Italian.”

This created a bit of a pause in production. We had to rethink the strategy. Now we’re creating the new English channel that’s going to be launched in the next couple of weeks. We’re uploading new content and the other English episodes. As soon as the English channel has the same engagement as the Italian channel, we’ll start releasing the new episodes. 

We plan to see if we can create a community around this project after the first season. Because it’s a very short format, this should only be the launching-off point for a bigger series — probably through crowdfunding. I’m not expecting to have millions of views in six months or one year from now. But I believe we can be a little bit better about spreading the series.

What other creatures can we expect to see in this series?

Federico: I don’t know if I can give spoilers, but I can tell you that we are thinking, for the final episode, to do something really big and really iconic from Dungeons & Dragons. We are aiming to probably have the last episode be a longer length than a normal episode, so we can see all the heroes fighting a big creature. 

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• Interested in seeing more work from Vallaround Creative Contents? Be sure to visit the studio’s website, Facebook page, and Instagram.
• Monster Manual can be found on YouTube at Vallaround’s English and Italian channels, on Facebook, as well as on Instagram.