TV News

Co-Directors bringing the 'Cars' franchise to the small screen

By K.O. Pemberton
MSN TV

"Cars Toons," based on the blockbuster animated film "Cars," hits the small screen on a trio of Disney networks. "Cars Toons" premieres Monday, Oct. 27 at 6:56 p.m. ET/PT on Toon Disney and is set to air later on Disney Channel on Saturday, Nov. 1, and on ABC Family on Tuesday, Dec. 23. These three new animated shorts follow Lightning McQueen's trusty, but rusty, friend Mater as he recounts his glory days as a fire truck, a famous daredevil and a famous bulldozer fighter in Spain. MSN TV talked with Co-Directors Rob Gibbs and Victor Navone about this newest Disney-Pixar collaboration.

MSN TV: How did "Cars Toons" come to be? Can you give us some background on how "Cars Toons" evolved from the blockbuster movie "Cars" and how it came to focus on Mater?

Rob Gibbs: Last summer a small team of story guys and I came up with a bunch of ideas involving "Cars" characters. I guess it started with John Lasseter's (Director/Creator of "Cars) marching orders to just come up with ideas that we can do with these "Cars" characters. He wants to keep them alive. And so we just came up with a lot of ideas, but one of our animators had the idea for "Mater's Tall Tales." Mater tells these stories of these fanciful things that happened in his past. John really latched onto that and had us take some of the ideas we were working on and had us develop them into "Mater's Tall Tales."

Shortly after developing about 15 ideas, we sort of narrowed it down to about five that we focused on, and then we narrowed it down to three we actually wanted to produce.

Victor Navone: It turned out to be a really good format for doing anything we wanted to do in the "Cars" world. Because it would be taking place in Mater's imagination, we can go anywhere, any time period.

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Are you also working on the "Cars 2" feature film that is being released in 2011?

Rob: No, we both worked on the first one, but we're currently just still focusing on these "Cars Toons."

Victor: Not to say we won't be involved with it, but we aren't currently involved with it.

How long is the creative and production process for each of these episodes? It is sort of a cradle-to-grave production process?

Rob: The development process before we really started production was about six months. And that was really just starting from scratch and coming up with a bunch of ideas. The actual production schedule once we decided on what we were going to do was about eight months.

Victor: I think the full process from the first drawing to the last rendered frame was about a year. That's for all three. We worked on all three at the same time so they overlapped quite a bit.

Rob: Because we staggered them a bit, we had different deadlines for when they would be finished, and they were right on top of each other. I didn't even know what I'd be looking at on a day-to-day basis since there was so much coming in.

Victor: Yeah, it could be any one of three stories.

How many people are on the teams that work on these?

Rob: Well, our crew was about 60 at its biggest. We did have people join us and move on to other projects and other people coming on, so over the course of the whole production we were close to 100.

Victor: Yeah, we have a lot of turnover just because we would grab people between working on feature films, so we would borrow from other productions.

Rob: We call ourselves the bottom-dwellers of the studio since we just beg, borrow and steal to get anybody we can get.

How has it been moving from being a story artist (Rob) and animator (Victor) into the role of co-directors?

Rob: I had the story background. I did that for about 15 years. It was a great experience to be involved in all the different aspects. I'm used to doing the storyboards and then sending it off to editorial and not having anything to do with it after that. But as the co-director, I was able to be involved in the editing process which is really where making the film happens. Then just seeing all the other production pieces, it goes into modeling and then layout and character design and art and graphics and shading and lighting. Seeing how all those different departments work was really a great experience.

Victor: For me, I didn't have a lot of experience with the other departments here at Pixar, but I came from the Gaming industry before, and I worked on a lot of pre-rendered cut scenes so I had some experience in all the production aspects there. So, I was able to more or less hit the ground running here. And at the end of "Cars"the movie, I was able to direct a commercial for State Farm and "Cars."

Rob: It was a great commercial.

Victor: So I had a bit of experience there.

Are either of you still keeping your hands in your former specialities?

Rob: We've been really focused on "Cars Toons" for the past year&

Victor: You did a lot of story drawings for these, right?

Rob: For these, yeah, absolutely. I did storyboards for all of them.

Victor: I didn't do a lot of animation. I was acting as animation supervisor, but I did do a little bit.

Was there something in particular about the "Cars" franchise that led you both to want to continue on with it?

Rob: Well, the characters are great, and I'm particularly pleased with these shorts because we focused on Mater, and he was really the most fun to work with. So, taking on that aspect was great.

Victor: Yeah, it is great to take a character that you already know and do something new with him. Because at the end of these films, we finally figured out who the characters are and what their potential is, and then you're done. So, it's nice to have the opportunity to come along with this, and we have these characters we know and love already, and we get to put them into situations, ridiculous situations.

Rob: And we found that the more ridiculous the situation, the better. Some of our early ideas now, I look at them and say, "Oh man, there is no way we could do that; it's not crazy enough!"

Victor: The fact that these are all "Mater's Tall Tales" gives us the license to do anything we want to. Also, because they're only two to three minutes long means that we have quick in and out; we don't have to worry about character development. We can just play it for laughs.

How about Mater's tagline, "You remember, you were there"?

Rob: Here's a little history on that. When we were developing these ideas early on, we started focusing on Mater. John Lasseter was very adamant about wanting to keep (Lightening) McQueen and Mater together in these tales. So it was his idea to bring McQueen into the stories, so we were able to use that tagline right there. So we cut McQueen into the story in some ridiculous situations.

Victor: It's a good opportunity to have some jokes at his expense.

Of the three episodes, do you have a favorite?

Victor: I like "Materdor" the best.

Rob: I do like "Materdor" a lot. I like the tone of it and the music. I think each one was my favorite at a certain point, at completion.

Victor: When they were done!

Rob: I think "Materdor" was the last one we completed, so it became my favorite.

Victor: I like "Materdor" just because it's more of a simple one. You get to spend more time in one environment and watch the progression of the story.

Rob: Just the look of it. I think everyone working on it did such a great job lighting it and building the stadium.

Victor: The Bulldozers were really fun to work with.

What is it about "Cars," and now I'm sure "Cars Toons," that resonates so well with both kids and adults?

Rob: Kids love cars! Kids really do love these "Cars" characters. When we first started out to make these things, we never thought of making them just for younger audiences. I think there is something that appeals to adults as well as kids, but they are not dumbed down for kids, but nothing really goes over their head in terms of the humor.

Victor: I think also just the level of abstraction. I find often the most successful cartoon characters are the most abstract. Not a human, but something that makes you suspend your disbelief and get more involved with it.

"Cars Toons" premieres Monday, Oct. 27 at 6:56 p.m. ET/PT on Toon Disney and is set to air later on Disney Channel on Saturday, Nov. 1, and on ABC Family on Tuesday, Dec. 23.