The filmmakers benefited from the affordable animation software now available. This movie could not have been made for the same price years ago. Above are Nicky Flippers (left) The Woodsman (center) and Twitchy.

It was vital for the Edwards brothers to put together a production team with significant experience. Montgomery brought in veteran Disney animation producer David Lovegren (Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea and Fantasia 2000). Lovegren developed a production plan that made sense within Kanbar’s budget parameters. Offered Lovegren, “Six or seven years ago, the idea of doing Hoodwinked as an independent [animated] feature would have been impossible. Animation was just too expensive and only major companies like Disney could afford budgets that reached a million dollars a minute. However, technology has benefited the independent film companies. Today filmmakers can buy production software that allows them to create theatrical style animation at acceptable cost levels.”

After Lovegren joined forces with Montgomery and longtime friend and partner of the Edwards brothers, Preston Stutzman, they hired editor Tony Leech to initially cut the first story reel for the project. Leech became so helpful in guiding the creative process that he was hired as a full-time editor on the project and now shares directing credit with the Edwards brothers.

But what about animators? The team couldn’t just walk over to Disney or DreamWorks and borrow theirs. Fortunately, Lovegren had been sent to Manila in 2001 to start up a hands-on independent animation studio and hire a team of animators to crank out cost-conscious cartoons and animated features. Unfortunately, the sales team couldn’t lure any productions there and the whole enterprise folded, forcing the animators to seek alternative employment. In January 2002, Lovegren and Montgomery, with Kanbar’s backing, hired about 20 of those animators and created their own studio in a 5,000 square foot rented house in Manila. Thus, Hoodwinked represents the first independently produced 3D animated feature in the Philippines.

One of the most important people to join the team was visual effects producer Robert Shajer, who’s been working in CG for 10 years. He began with ABC News during the Gulf War then moved to Los Angeles and worked as a PA at Rhythm & Hues, moving to coordinator and eventually to producer of special venues. Then he went to Dreamquest, where he produced Inspector Gadget and Mission to Mars. Next he spent two years working on the pre-production and production on The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring at Weta Digital in New Zealand as the digital producer. He had just come off of Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed for Meteor Studios before joining Hoodwinked. Shajer agrees with Cory Edwards that we are on the edge of a wave that is definitely coming in independent feature animation because of the accessibility and cost-effectiveness of new technology.

They used a Maya software package composed of Maya and Render Maya. Half of the work was done with 4.5 the other half with 5.01.1. Due to the fact that they are independents and are working on a budget of about $15 million, they could not afford to go chasing after upgrades. “We know we [couldn’t] be Monsters, Inc., so [we picked] a style that we could achieve well on this budget, instead of trying to overachieve and doing it poorly,” Cory said.

Cory’s artistic vision harkened back to the days of Rankin/Bass animated stop-motion and the work of Henry Selick. Cory loved that nostalgic look and thought, “If we approach our look like that — photographed miniatures in stop-motion - and if that nostalgia resonates with our audience as far as that look, then we’re not going to shoot ourselves in the foot trying to put every freckle and hair on photoreal creatures.”

Not only can independents produce an animated feature these days, they can do it much faster. The reason for this lies in studio methodology. Added Shajer, “[A studio] tends to want to review the entire movie and then go back and rewrite it. When a studio starts seeing what their movie is ultimately going to look like, that’s when they start backpedaling and saying, ‘Oh, wait! Let’s try and move in another direction with this.’ And that’s where they get into rewrites, changing of technology and changing what the movie’s all about. The advantage that we have in an independent feature is that our investor [Kanbar], who’s very excited about the prospects, has bought off on the concept and is entrusting us with following through with our own vision. And that’s really where Cory is so key. He’s the hub of this entire project because he’s got the entire movie playing in his head and he knows what he’s going after.”