Arendelle and Elsa’s Ice Castle were the prime locations in the first Frozen movie, but Frozen 2 takes Anna and Elsa out of their home and into the Enchanted Forest, where they will also encounter the Dark Sea. It’s an area filled with magical creatures, such as the Nokk the water horse and Gale the wind spirit, and several people at Disney helped bring it to life.
Forests and seas are two things that Walt Disney Animation Studios has done before, with one of the most prominent examples of the latter being 2016’s Moana. However, Moana’s water is considerably different than the water (and waves, for that matter) in Frozen 2, as the upcoming sequel is much rougher and more dangerous.
Bill Schwab (Art Director of Characters), Tony Smeed (Head of Animation), Erin Ramos (Effects Supervisor), Trent Corey (Animation Supervisor), Svetla Radivoeva (Animation Supervisor), and Hannah Swan (Software Engineer) presented Frozen 2’s Enchanted Forest and Dark Sea to Screen Rant and other outlets, and afterwards, they answered a few questions in a Q&A session.
With Gale, you said that originally one of the initial ideas for her was to have it to show up as kind of like an actual physical character made of debris. What made you guys decide to go away from that and make her purely invisible and just kind of a spirit?
What can you tell us about the salamander?
Tony Smeed (Head of Animation): Yeah, that was very, very early. And as the story developed, I think the feeling was that she worked better as just being wind. And I think the test that Trent showed that Mark Henn did, we really saw how much personality we could get. With abstraction was kind of the test that made that make sense for us.
Trent Correy (Animation Supervisor): I think, too, as we went further, we had a wind expert come in and talk about the physics of wind, and that was really interesting to us. So, we bring in all that stuff to kind of ground the character. It really felt like a fun idea.
Svetla Radivoeva (Animation Supervisor): Also, you guys went indoor skydiving, too.
Trent Correy: Yeah, we went indoor skydiving and we all embarrassed ourselves.
Svetla Radivoeva : We love our research.
Trent Correy: Except Tony. He was a pro.
Tony Smeed: Beginners luck.
Does every element have its own spirit representation, from the ones that you’re telling us is an element here? Or is that the full slate?
Trent Correy: When we were working with the salamander we just- we took reference from all sorts of lizard, salamander, reptilians, and just really tried to have fun with the character. He’s kind of in that moment where you just want something cute to look at. So, you’ll find out more when you go see Frozen 2.
Svetla Radivoeva: In theaters, November 22nd.
Who was in charge of naming Gale?
Trent Correy: You’ll find out more when you see Frozen 2 in theaters.
When it comes to creature animation, how much, for the salamander for example, you showed what you do for the forests and what you did for the wind, but are you literally just looking at lizards crawling around in a cage. Or was that more completely abstract?
Trent Correy: I’m gonna guess it was Jen Lee.
Bill Schwab (Art Director of Characters): It was probably the directors. Yeah, that was the name when I came onto the show.
Trent Correy: Gale force winds, I assume that.
You talked about the water being a huge part of Moana and then the dark sea here. How much more advanced were the water scenes between then and now?
Trent Correy: Yeah, I mean, first of all, salamanders move very slow. And we wanted a little more speed with the salamander. So, I looked at a ton of different reference of iguanas, lizards, basically anything. But, really, I mean, it’s such a fun, cute, cartoony character. A lot of it just kind of came from the heads of the animators. There wasn’t a ton of reference used. And, really, the drawings that Bill and his team did really inspired the character.
Can you tell us a little bit about your personal experience when you first read the script or when you first approached and talked about the character, what meeting these characters is like for you and what your initial thoughts about how that’s changed?
Erin Ramos (Effects Supervisor): That’s a good question. The challenges on Frozen, it’s funny ‘cause I always stress that water effects aren’t always the same. And so, I mean, we’re running much bigger sims on this show. We had to make these huge, breaking waves that are fully simulated. So, it was definitely a step above where we were with Moana. I think Moana, the challenge was just getting the water to feel very gentle. It’s actually pretty hard to tame simulations. But then for this, just getting the right size of these waves, getting the scale - nailing that was the big challenge here. And also, honestly, the interaction with Animation, just the back and forth that we had to do that was the biggest challenge for this movie. It’s definitely from, like, when a boat’s cutting through the water, it’s one thing. But when her feet have to register on the surface of the water, on a surface that’s simulated. So, you don’t know what you’re gonna get. You run a simulation, and it comes out like, all right, that looks cool. And you run it again, you might get something completely different. Her footstep could’ve worked with one time, and then the next time it didn’t work.
The main thing I took away from the presentations is the collaborative process. Can you talk about that versus any other projects you’ve worked on for Disney thus far?
Bill Schwab: I mean, just because I’m on so early in design. And I worked on the first film, so I was so excited to be a part of Frozen 2. And you hear it a lot up here, but it’s so true, is research. And for me, that’s a way to really focus in on a character and kind of just start finding things that I’d never- you just become experts on so many things here through research. And I find, personally, that’s very inspirational for me.
Trent Correy: Similar to Bill, I started on the first movie, and I was a trainee and worked on crowds. And then- and I got to work on Olaf in the first movie. So, to come back on this one and work with Olaf and the new characters- I do remember Tony asked me, ‘hey, we want you to supervise the wind.’ And I thought it was a joke. That’s not a real character.
Svetla Radivoeva: I came very late in the team, but I saw Bill’s drawings and Vis Dev drawings, and I fell in love with them. So, I thought- I never supervised before. But I thought if I’m ever going to do this, I am so in love with this film. And I couldn’t wait to see how we’re going to end up having the Nokk in CG since it’s so abstract and strange. I’m pretty proud of what we did.
Erin Ramos: When I came on, I came on early-ish. But the storyboards for the dark sea sequence were the first thing I ever saw on this movie. And I just knew I want to work on that. It looked so cool. And also, it looks terrifying. I mean, just looking at what the scope of what we needed to do was just much more than we had to do in Moana. So, yeah, I mean, I was excited to be a part of that and create it.
Next: Frozen 2: New Story Details & 20 Cool Behind The Scenes Facts
Trent Correy: That’s probably because of the characters in this movie. They kind of lend themselves to collaboration. I mean, often times, we might just be working on a human. But with the wind and with the Nokk that you saw-
Erin Ramos: Yeah, both the Gale and the Nokk were- I mean, it was Animation and Effects. Animation would start, and then Effects would pick up and add the rest of it, fill in all the gaps, and just help bring it to fruition. So, it was really cool.
Trent Correy: I feel the studio as a whole, everything we work on has become more collaborative just because the films are getting more complex. Like Moana was so complex, too, with the water. And it’s just getting more and more.
Svetla Radivoeva: It was interesting to come out of- ‘cause you usually stay in the bubble of Animation or bubble of Effects. But it was interesting to come out of that and start conversations with our colleagues and learn more about each other. The more you learn about them and their work, the more you can become a better animate knowing what they’re looking for and what they’re aware of.
Trent Correy : Actually, even with what Hannah was talking about, we met with the developers. This is the first time animation and developers- we met twice a week for almost a year to develop that tool. And it’s a lot of really smart people like Hannah and a lot of artists trying to work together. So, that collaboration was really cool.
Hannah Swan (Software Engineer): Yeah, it’s my first tool, so I can’t compare it to anything before. But I know that just seeing Trent use an in-progress tool, one that isn’t complete, just sparked ideas for me. And then I would make something, and then you’d play with it. And it would spark an idea with him. It was just a lot of back and forth.
Trent Correy: Yeah, I think that process before might’ve been: we need this tool. They would’ve made the tool and then given it to us, done. There was very little back and forth previously, so it’s a very cool experience.
- Frozen 2 Release Date: 2019-11-22
