Animating Interstellar Tenderness w/ Kid Koala

MATT: I am so happy to have another great artist on this show and this podcast. A new exciting voice, now, in contemporary animation, really expanding the known bounds of the art form with a new film called Space Cadet. Let me start here, actually, just to break the ice a little bit. Space Cadet, correct me if I’m wrong, marks your directorial debut, officially. Of course, you’ve been involved in music and graphic novels. But when did you first become interested in animation to the point where you wanted to actually make your own animation film? Like I said, you do graphic novels, and Space Cadet is based on your graphic novel. But how does that come into the origins of your active interest in animation?

KID KOALA: I’ve been interested in animation since I was a child. I remember taking after-school animation programs in elementary school, and I remember making claymation films in high school, just for fun, mainly. I even applied to go to film school after high school, and I was accepted at NYU. But we looked at the numbers and it was a bit too expensive for me to go. So my life took another path, and I studied to be an elementary school teacher. But then, after I graduated from that, the music thing took off. And then, I kind of went a roundabout way. So, it’s been decades later, but here we are.

MATT: Quite a journey, actually. We’ll talk more about animation. But since you brought up this idea of life being a journey, one of the interesting things about you, of course, is that you do so many things. You’ve got the music, the scratch DJing. You’ve released five albums. You toured with Radiohead, the Beastie Boys… And then you do graphic novels. Now, you’re also doing animation. Do you see it all as being interconnected, or is there one that you see as your primary art form, and does everything start from there? Or, like I said, is it all interconnected?

KID KOALA: It’s all kind of wired in the same wave in my brain. I don’t think I can make music without talking about characters and narrative. Similarly, when I’m drawing a comic or a graphic novel page, I’m always thinking about, “Hey, what would the soundtrack sound like for this page?” It’s always pretty interconnected in my brain. I’d be very sad if I was asked to just stop the visual side or the music side.

MATT: Thinking back to the graphic novel, this one in particular, Space Cadet. Where does that come from? Was there something that inspired you in particular?

KID KOALA: Yeah. At the time of writing that book, my grandmother had recently passed. My wife and I were also expecting our first child. So, it was a very pivotal, critical paradigm. Going into the past, trying to celebrate and remember my times with my grandma. And she loved to watch Charlie Chaplin films. So, that was our shared thing. But also, thinking about things I learned from my parents and what I was eventually teaching my future daughter. And so, my brain just went to both the future and the past. And when it came time to just put it down on paper, it ended up being that graphic novel.

MATT: Interesting. And actually, let’s talk about that because you brought up Chaplin. I’m a huge Chaplin fan. I actually have a Chaplin tattoo on me.

KID KOALA: No way.

MATT: Yeah, it’s right here. Can you see it?

KID KOALA: Oh yeah, I see that.

MATT: Yeah, Chaplin is my hero. One of my heroes. And certainly, of course, you know, one of the things that I appreciated about this film is the wordless storytelling. Of course, like I said, I’m a big fan of Chaplin and I did read that Chaplin was an inspiration or an influence to you, especially with this film. So, what’s the trick in telling a story in a film with essentially no words, from your perspective of working on Space Cadet?

KID KOALA: For me, it’s just trying to find the balance at the heart of each scene. If it’s a poignant, emotional scene, giving it the space to breathe and resonate. And then, if it’s a quirky, fast, up-tempo comedic moment, or a suspenseful moment, then you work towards that. The music for me, obviously, has a lot to do with it. So, even at the beginning of the process, I’d temp in a lot of music that I’d either play on piano or set up a beat. And this was just to kind of have a good sonic skeleton for the animators to work off of. But then, once that’s there, there’s still all this room in the process for all these layers of artistry that each department can add to make each scene even more powerful.

MATT: I had a feeling that the sound design and the music are very important. Let’s focus on the score, actually, which I find very interesting. So, from what you said, it was very important in the production of the film. Was it a starting point? Like, when you just conceived of everything, of the project, did you kind of begin with a piece of music in mind–a specific piece of music in mind–and then worked your way from there?

KID KOALA: Well, the original graphic novel actually included a CD soundtrack. We called it a still pictures work because it wasn’t a movie yet. But I guess it kind of read like a screenplay to a silent film that was never made. And then, there was a companion CD. A lot of those tracks on there, I had recorded on piano and turntable. They were kind of lullabies for my then just-born daughter. Because it took me years to even finish that book.

But Ginette Petit at Outsiders Films, she got a copy of the book, had seen our concert promoting that book launch and music from it. And two weeks later–and this was in 2011–she reached out to me and asked if she could option the book to turn it into a film. So, yeah, I think for me, music has always been a template in terms of tone. But obviously, when the screenplay was expanded to fit a feature-length film, I had to write more music to fill it in and actually bring in some of my favourite singers to join me on a few of the numbers too.

MATT: You mentioned the screenplay and you mentioned having to fit a story in a feature film format. So, what’s the process there? I mean, you worked with somebody, right? This was a collaboration.

KID KOALA: Yes, Mylène Chollet was brought in to expand the universe into a 70-minute feature. She did such a wonderful job. Her first version of the script, I remember reading it and I was crying. And then, I sent it to my wife, and she was reading it. She said she was crying. We both said, we gotta make this movie.

MATT: Of course, the beauty of so much emotion being in this film… And then, a robot is the protagonist. Now, tell me about that. I mean, what does that represent? I mean, let’s think about it philosophically. Nowadays, there’s so much anxiety about such rapid development of technology. There’s always been anxiety. If we think back to Modern Times by Chaplin, there’s always been anxiety about development-

KID KOALA: That’s the exact film. Modern Times is the exact film.

MATT: What a great film.

KID KOALA: That just splintered my brain as a six-year-old and hearing my grandmother laugh so hysterically to that film. And it was contagious, you know. But regarding robots. I don’t know. I mean, I think, as a character, it’s a parental, or a guardian. We call him Guardian Bot. The themes in the film, you know, deal with Celeste, who Guardian Bot raises from when she’s a little child, to become a space explorer. It deals with her life and her point of view in terms of looking to the future and looking to new adventures. But it also deals with robot aging and moving towards obsolescence and emptiness, and this and that. Dealing with all of that. As a character, I think it just fits the themes of the story, which is cycles of generations and connectivity.

MATT: The emotional development of the movie but also the emotions felt by the robot, represented through technological wear. On top of that, it does come from a very personal place. Dare I say it? How much of that character is you? Do you see yourself as the robot? Just because of everything you told me, kind of going through, when you initially-

KID KOALA: Well, yeah, I think the robot represents the guardian figure in my life, whether my father, or my mother, or my grandmother. And some of the moments, those subtle interactions that were quite paradigm-shifting for me as a child. Like when my mother taught me how to fold this perfect tetrahedon out of a slip of paper or my father taught me how to draw a boat in a very technical style. And it was those moments where I was so young that I realized, I’ve seen drawings and I’ve seen good drawings. But I didn’t know my dad could do a good drawing. “Wait, are you saying I could learn how to do a good drawing?”

So, even within a one-minute interaction… My father doesn’t remember this moment. But for me, I’ve asked him, actually. I was like, do you remember you drew me that boat in that restaurant? And he’s like, “No.” But at the same time, that moment changed my life. Literally. That one minute, watching you draw that boat, showed me that it was possible. That I could learn something, or somebody I knew could learn how to do this. And the adventure began from there. So, I would say, as far as inspiration, it’s more from my parents and my grandparents.

But as far as acting, I would say some of the more physical ways he moves and stuff, I did do some of the acting references for the animators. And so, sometimes my daughter will watch a scene and they’ll say, “Yeah, he’s walking like dad.”

MATT: This is why I love to have these conversations with filmmakers or with artists in general. You said something that’s so wonderful and that really resonates with me. The small moments in life that can change us. And just as a side note, watching your film actually brings that to my mind. I think that’s a big part of my own cinephilia. Everybody has their own definition of cinephilia. But I watch copious amounts of movies, not necessarily for the stories–I’m always looking for small moments and small details that will resonate profoundly with me and even change my life. Now, in your film, as you were saying that, I could see some of those details. So, I wondered whether that was part of the way you worked on this movie, rather than thinking about just the story as a beginning, middle and an end. Did you go out of your way to put in those small moments that maybe, they’re not necessarily there to be obvious but they’re there to be explored in a more insightful and intense way? Experienced.

KID KOALA: Yeah, we try to bring people into that moment if we can. I watch movies for a number of reasons. Sometimes, you just have a stressful day, and you just want to escape and get into some real escapist type of film. But this film, I think, was a movie where I was like, it’s not what I want to forget about today. This is a movie where I want to remember. You know? So, make a film that, instead of trying to forget something, you’re trying to remember something. Have that stir some of the things from your past, maybe. To do it with some tenderness and, you know, connectivity. I think, that’s the way you can honor those moments, is just try to make a beautiful version of them to share.

And actually, the operative word for me in this film was, because I’m a scratch DJ, I could easily put beats on everything and really fill in every noise into every nook and cranny into the score. But the idea was just to keep it open enough so that those moments, maybe you didn’t have that exact interaction with your parent or guardian, but maybe there’s enough time and space, and even the pacing of some of those moments, that you can reflect on your own life and bring that to it while you’re watching it.

MATT: I’m gonna make this a broad question because we have to wrap it up. But as I mentioned, basically, there was the graphic novel before. We talked about the screenplay. We have to talk about the animation. This is your directorial debut. So, what are the obvious differences between the two mediums, beyond the obvious ones? But in terms of style. Because, obviously, Space Cadet, the movie, has a very tactile 3D look to it. Now, on the graphic novel, you can’t replicate that. But can you tell me more about kind of connecting with that style and also working within that style?

KID KOALA: I was introduced to this thing called the animation pipeline, which is news to me. Because, obviously, when I’m drawing panels in a comic book, it’s almost done simultaneously. I’m making those decisions, like camera angles, lighting, key poses, all that stuff. It’s just in the drawing, simultaneously. But when you’re dealing in this type of production, sometimes, you’re working with teams that are specifically just doing the one thing, like rigging. Where are the joints on the character, like the bend? Where’s their elbow, exactly? And so, you might do that for a few months.

And then you go into the layout, and then you go into locking the characters in the layout. And then, animation and texturing. And lighting and compositing. And each one of those, you might sped a few weeks, or a couple of months, with this team, really close. But then, they leave. It’s, like, really sad, actually. It’s kind of like, summer camp’s over again. It’s like, wait, are we going to see each other again? Probably not. And then, we move down to another production pipeline. And what was complicated for me is, I realized that certain things that were done with earlier departments, you can’t adjust later. Because now, you’re dealing with people who texture stuff. And they don’t know how to make the elbow bend, or higher in the arm, or something.

So then, in those moments, you’re like, okay, I have to figure out how this scene can still hit. You know? But then, there’s always room to be like, how can we still make this a funny moment, or a poignant moment? So, that was interesting. I say it’s akin to playing the string game, cat’s cradle. You know, it’s already pretty complex to play cat’s cradle with two people. So, imagine you have string but you have a lot more string and there’s, like, 20 people all playing cat’s cradle. And you’re like, “Wait, what shape are we trying to build?” But at some point, it all gets tangled up. But if you take a step back and you’re like, okay, wait, we’re all aiming for the same thing. We want this thing to resonate, and it should be fun. So, you bring yourself to that.

I think the second thing that I really learned was how to speak animator in terms of time. Because I’m a musician, so I think in BPMs, tempo, time signatures. You know, it’s like, “Yeah, just have him blink on the two and the four.” And they’re like, “What?” You know, it’s like, “No, his shoulders could swag with the music, just on the snare drums.” And they’re like, “Huh?” And so, I had to learn how to speak in frames, essentially. It’s like, “Okay, every six frames, the right shoulder should just kind of hit a little swing there,” or whatever. Hold for four frames here and then move. So, I learned a new way of thinking about time. But that was, at first, foreign. But now, actually quite normal. Now, I kind of use it as a joke in my daily life, you know?