How Stoopid Buddy Stoodios animated Peter Quill's Christmas past in The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special

Marvel fans may be surprised to see The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special open with an animated sequence. Harkening back to nostalgia for Ralph Bakshi’s style of animation, the animated scenes in the special tell the story of Peter Quill’s first Christmas after leaving Earth — and the challenges of celebrating an Earth holiday with a ship full of extraterrestrials.

Stoopid Buddy Stoodios is an artist-friendly collective founded by Seth Green, Matthew Senreich, John Harvatine IV, and Eric Towner. Among its many projects, the studio is best known for Robot Chicken, SuperMansion, Blark and Son as well as the the 2D animated series, Hot Streets.

To learn more about the animated scenes in The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, we caught up with lead animation supervisor, Mac Whiting. Mac discusses his crew’s experience on the project, the craft behind rotoscoping live-action footage, adapting the characters to animation and working with James Gunn.

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

I was brought in very early on with Stoopid Buddy Stoodios to help with the animation test to 'audition' for the job. It was presented to us that Marvel and [Guardians of the Galaxy director] James Gunn were interested in doing this in a rotoscoped, Ralph Bakshi style. 

Marvel was kind enough to provide us some footage to base our initial test on B-roll footage from the first Guardians film. Then I hunkered down using Toon Boom Harmony to traditionally animate the footage. The initial test was about eight seconds of footage, of Yondu in particular. 

It was close to three hundred frames. Knowing the style and everything they were looking for, I dove in head-first to a traditional animation on twos and threes. It was a pretty labour-intensive first pass, but the overall test was received really well. And then we launched into full production.

Once we got into the production, it was a little different because we realized, of course, that I would not be able to animate the entire short by myself. We partnered with a wonderful collaborator called Studio Moshi, in Australia. They provided a lot of production legwork for us, and great animation.

The actual production was really interesting because, after talking with us, we all agreed [with Marvel] that we would need live-action footage to base this animation on. So they actually arranged for a live-action shoot in Georgia on a soundstage, where we went and helped co-direct the piece and extract the footage that we needed to then produce the animation. 

What was your reaction to hearing that Marvel wanted a rotoscoped animated short?

When I heard that, I led the charge specifically in saying, “I don’t think there’s a way to cheat this.” We did experiment with a few digital programs for in-betweening, but it didn’t feel organic and natural. So we did it all by hand.

Toon Boom Harmony of course afforded us some luxuries, just being in a digital space. We tried to reuse a few of the lines where we could, and not redraw every single line, but for the most part it was a straight-ahead, traditionally animated piece. 

What did the creative brief from Marvel look like?

They were really collaborative, but at the same time gave us room to explore and do our own thing as well, which was really cool — especially early on in the character design stage. One of the trickier parts of doing a rotoscope is making the design dynamic enough, where there’s enough detail and things of interest to look at, but also making it producible so you can redraw these characters for thousands of frames. So that exploration process was really fun for me. 

Marvel provided a lot of film footage and imagery and set production photos, which was really cool. But then we were given room to explore that. For the most part, they had very few notes. Everything we presented, they really were digging and it vibed with their vision for the piece. It was a pretty seamless collaboration in that regard. 

What did the planning stage of this project look like?

The planning stage was key. Because we were working with a vendor, who was in Australia, and we had a finite amount of time to do this, and was a huge ask from a production standpoint, we really had to creatively lay out timelines and check-ins and things of that nature. 

We also had to cast scenes to particular animators’ strengths, which was different because I didn’t know all of the animators who were working on it. So we had to feel that out a bit, but once we established who was drawing certain characters well, or that kind of thing, we tried to keep those types of shots within the same artist’s hands. 

People underestimate how difficult rotoscope actually is. You think, “Oh, I’m just tracing live-action footage. It’s straightforward.” But there is a real artistry to it, to make it look and feel right. A lot of that stuff was just early exploration, and looking at rough keyframes, and giving notes or draw-overs, or seeing how much we could get away with in terms of timing. 

We used Toon Boom Harmony exclusively throughout the animation process. We brought the live-action footage directly into Harmony and broke up our scenes that way. I did as many keyframes as possible in each shot. 

Why did Marvel choose to include animated scenes in the holiday special?

I think that James Gunn just likes doing things differently. With this special in particular, he really wanted to lean into the fun and nostalgia and timeless stories that are holiday specials. He was drawing on the things that he loved growing up. He picked and chose different elements of various Christmas specials that he’s into.

I think it really just came from his innovative and unique mind. And honestly we’re thrilled he did, because it was super fun to work on. 

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

We used Harmony predominantly. I even did the design in Toon Boom Harmony. I’ve been a big advocate of Harmony as my primary animation tool both professionally and personally. I just really like all the variety of tools. The drawing tools are the best I’ve found. 

It’s very subtle, but there’s a little bit of a grit to the line. It’s not your traditional vector, hard-edged line. Toon Boom Harmony provides a lot of ease in terms of adjusting that kind of stuff, which is great. It’s also good for establishing colour palettes and things of that nature. 

We did do a small treatment with After Effects that gave it a little extra grit to date it. And lean into that nostalgic vibe that we were going for. 

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

To be honest, it was all very challenging, not only because of the high-profile nature of the project, the limited amount of time, and the sheer amount of drawing we had to do. Specifically the most interesting or challenging, but also the fun part of it, was translation the live-action performances into the animation. 

One challenging character in particular was Kraglin, who’s played by Sean Gunn, James Gunn’s brother. He was there to perform the role, but in the short had to be de-aged. He was supposed to be represented as a teenager. Finding a design that Marvel was happy with and James was happy with, and then also finding a way to utilize his performance, but then animate it using a different model, was interesting.

Similarly, the child actor who was on set for the day, who filled in for the role of young Peter Quill, was wonderful. But again, James wanted to pay homage to the original child actor who played young Peter in the movies for continuity. So, again, we were left to design a version of young Peter and then apply that to the stand-in’s performance. 

That definitely took a while to figure out. It’s almost like reverting to traditional animation, where you’re almost animating with a character design, but still trying to capture the essence of the live-action performer’s acting performance. 

Also, another challenge was just keeping things consistent across the board. With different artists drawing these characters, inevitably there’s things that might look a little different from scene to scene. We did our best to keep that consistent, but it was certainly challenging.

How would you describe the reaction to the animated sequences in the Christmas special? 

I’ve been blown away by how positively it’s been received. I know people love Guardians, but I was kind of anxious in terms of how they would receive the animation in particular, because it is so different from everything else they’ve done. 

I was a big fan of the What-If series and I love Disney animation, and Marvel’s getting into that production frame as well. But to open the special with vintage-looking animation was certainly nerve-wracking. I didn’t know how people would feel about it. 

But everything I have read and seen has been extremely positive. It seems like fans really understood the intent of it, which is probably the most important part of it. They really grasped that vintage concept and the rotoscoped ‘60s and ‘70s work that we were emulating. That concept came across. 

People aren’t necessarily hailing it as the most amazing thing they’ve ever seen, but at the same time no one is saying anything negative about it. It’s maybe one of the first times in my character that I can say, across the board, people have been really positive about something that I’ve worked on.

Do you have advice for other artists interested in rotoscoped animation?

I would start by viewing some films of the past and present that used rotoscope and research how they were made. Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings and Fire and Ice films are a couple of standouts to me. More modern films like A Scanner Darkly, Loving Vincent and Undone are all really cool takes on the medium as well. As for how they were made — there are great behind-the-scenes documentaries that are easy to find on YouTube. 

Beyond that, I would highly encourage artists to experiment; find a short piece of media they love, or better yet, shoot an original scene of footage on their phone or camera and try to translate it into rotoscope animation. There's no wrong way to do it. Download a trial version of animation software online, or go old school and simply draw and color each couple of frames on paper. You might be amazed at how challenging but fun the process can be.

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• The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special is now available to stream on Disney+.
• Do you have what it takes to be a Stoopid Buddy? Visit the studio’s website for a list of current job openings.
• Interested in trying your hand at rotoscoped animation? Artists and animators can download a 21-day free trial of Harmony Premium.