Editor's note: In 1990, Bill and Sue Kroyer directed an animated feature called FernGully: The Last Rainforest for Twentieth Century Fox and Interscope Communications. This month, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release FernGully 2: The Magical Rescue, a direct-to-video sequel produced by San Francisco-based studio, Wild Brain. With the current growth in the direct-to-video animation market, we decided to take a closer look at the production process. Exclusively for Animation World Magazine, FernGully 2 co-directors Dave Marshall and Phil Robinson generously share their experience overseeing pre-production for the film. Also included is a visual supplement with several storyboard panels from the film.

© 1997 The CBS/Fox Company, courtesy of Wild Brain.

We recently produced our first direct-to-video feature, FernGully 2: The Magical Rescue for Twentieth Century Fox. All pre-production work including character design, layout, storyboard, timing, background and color key was completed in our San Francisco facility, while animation production took place at Wang Film Productions in Taipei, Taiwan. Wild Brain directed all other aspects of pre- and post-production in both San Francisco and Los Angeles including editing, music composition, voice talent casting and all sound recording and mixing.

Getting Started
We knew from experience that the only sure way to hit our budget and meet the schedule would be to solve all unanswered questions in pre-production. There are several key factors that are essential to the pre-production process that we established as priorities including: good communication with the production facility, a strong script and a great storyboard.

Of course, our very first priority was creating a realistic budget for the job and then designing for that budget! (For instance, if one has a low budget, simplify the writing and design, and limit the color palette, but, in our opinion, do not skimp on the storyboard!) This went hand-in-hand with having a thorough understanding of our production facility's needs, strengths and weaknesses. Our expectations had to be reasonable.

Here are some suggestions we can make to help you produce the best possible final product based on 17 months of that good ol' tried and true combination of blood, sweat and tears:

Communicate with the Production Facility
Allow your facility to become a part of the process as early as possible. Encourage them to be honest with you about what they can do for the budget, within the schedule. Be clear about the production standard you need to meet, and talk openly about your mutual goals. What are their concerns? Find out. Production facilities usually have more actual production experience than the pre-production crews. They can help spot potential production hazards ahead of time. Do not, however, expect them to take the leap into creative decision-making. This is an area that often leads to disappointment. It's up to you to communicate exactly how something should look. Production facilities are good at getting the job done, not designing the job.

Both of us have overseas production experience [Dave spent eight years at Wang as the animation supervisor; Phil has experience in Korea, Taiwan and three years in the Philippines], so we are familiar with the tendency for the American side of production to design things that are difficult for the overseas artists to reproduce. In the case of FernGully 2, we were able to design the production to complement Wang's strengths and minimize the weaknesses.

We deliberately designed the film to be fast-paced but eliminated complex sequences, crowd scenes and scenes that would require good acting on the part of the animator. We were pleasantly surprised, however, at how good some of the animators were. Taiwan is familiar enough with American culture to understand the Western mannerisms of the characters. We tried not to add too many locations and we limited the amount of lighting changes which saved additional design time as well. We also avoided costly effects scenes and complicated camera moves that would snarl production once it got to the camera department.