By Javier Perez
Members of the production team behind Amazon’s Invincible came out to WonderCon and gave the fans a small look under the hood of the hit animated series. Invincible. Season 3 launched on Amazon Prime in February, and fans have been buzzing ever since.
Moderated by Dan Cassey from Nerdist, the Amazon Invincible team of Simon Racioppa (executive producer), Dou Hong (art director) and supervising directors Shaun O’Niel and Dan Casey came to Hall 200A. They showed clips to the fans of key moments and storylines from season 3. Not only that, they gave some perspective on all the work from the start of the show and what might be coming next.
The team started by highlighting the great response from the fans and the production progress from season 1 to the latest conclusion of season 3.
When asked about the experience from season 1 to the current season 3; Art director Duo Hong was sure to highlight the progress and evolution of the show.
“For me, I was on Season 1, and every season we learn a lot from it and just see what works and what doesn’t. It feels like the background is getting better because now we have slightly bigger crews; they become slightly bigger every year. So we have a lot more people that make the visuals a lot better and just the talent we are able to get as well,” said Hong. “It’s just the elevation of the animation and story in every season. It gets better and better”
And while the show is known for its action there is also a good emotional core and the emphasis on character development.
(SPOILERS ahead if you haven’t seen the last season of Invincible…..c’mon go watch it already, what are you doing?)
When discussing the emotional bridge scene where Mark confesses his love to Eve in Season 3 Episode 2, Supervising Director Shaun O’Niel was asked what was more difficult, a quiet emotional scene or a hectic action scene?
“The action stuff has a lot of parts that have to keep track of, lots of scenes because we’re cutting so frequently. When it’s these quiet moments we stay on something for so long we have to make sure it looks good, that it moves just right and it cuts just right. So it’s the same but one is slower than the other.”
“I think it’s all hard, and it’s all equally important. The people on the show really love the source comic and with the scripts we are really trying to respect that through the entire creative process,” said Dan Duncan, also a Supervising Director on the show.
“I will say, the action is great and it draws people in, but kinda like the comic. You get in ‘oh it’s a superhero story, I’m not sure I’m into that’ but you stay because you realize the backbone of this thing is a teenage soap opera, and that’s the backbone. The rest is there to bring you in but you stay because there are real moments,” Duncan continued.
Hong continued, “For that particular scene I think what made it great was the voice acting and the storyboarding…a combination of all these different things, what the book artist did, the pacing, the voice acting and what our writers actually wrote and I think what is great about the show is that it’s not afraid to do pauses. I think that sometimes you have shows that run for 25 mins where you just have to cram it and there is no room to breathe but this is such an important moment between Mark and Eve that we want that space and that time. So it’s great to have that pacing and allow it to be that long.”
“We have great fights, we have a lot of them in season 3 but those matter if we care about the characters, right? You can watch that kind of stuff on Youtube if you want to just see characters fighting each other. Hopefully the only thing that makes it important to you guys is that you care about the characters and that’s why these scenes have to work” said Racioppa
“The show is different every episode, I hope. The characters evolve and move along, relationships come together. I’m not gonna say what will happen in the future but there is more story to come, this is just one step” Racioppa continued.
The panel then turned to the Invincible War arc in the latest season and all the voice acting work by the whole crew but Steven Yeun was specially noted.
“He played 18 different characters in this episode and that was incredible, he always brings his A-game. Steven came in and we talked about each one and give each Mark something a little different and Steven would just be able to take it even further like ‘Hey, what if this guy was played like this? what if this guy sounded a little more angry’ and he carried that through all his punches and all their impacts as well,” said Racioppa.
We also learned what ADR is, Automatic Dialogue Replacement and how some of the recordings are done for the show.
“Sometimes we record our actors first and the team comes in and does storyboards and animatics of the recordings we first did,” explained Racioppa. “And sometimes we go back and re-do some of the voice lines and bring the actors back because some of the blocking on the scene has changed or the characters are further apart so they have to sound like they are shouting. Or maybe some action has changed so we bring Steven back into the booth and show him the episode and he acts to picture almost live and he is incredible. We will run the episode and he will do the sound, fight scene or he’ll re-do lines live to the episode and we’ll do that multiple times until it’s locked in.”
The team also talked about Rex’s final scene in episode 7 and Jason Mantzoukas’ work in the voice-over booth.
“Jason was incredible, we spent two hours with Jason just trying to get that to feel exactly right. And he was the one that was really like: ’we can do it better’ ‘lemme do it again’ ‘I can do it one more time’ and we are always happy to do that and i think the result speak for themselves” said Racioppa
“But there are also art design challenges for a scene like that will have multiple Marks,” Dou added when mentioning the Invincible war clip. “I think for us it was just the sheer amount of assets that we needed to do. If there are 18 of them then obviously we need a character sheet for each one and if they are all damaged then you have to have another 18 sheets. Even relatively small things like scratches or a little blood on them or if they are clothed in a very special way. So it was a challenge just the sheer amount and it also got confusing because in our asset program they weren’t listed by name but by “alternate Invincible number x” and that got very confusing to keep it in control overall ”
“I would say it is kinda funny because we do some really great designs but also some things that if you are a little squeamish, it might be a little difficult for you. So for example with one of our designers, Charles. Sometimes I’ll give him something and say ‘hey this Invincible, I need you to twist his head off’ and Charles will look at me like ‘oh no!’ So sometimes I have to space out the assignments I give people,” laughed Duo
“Sometimes someone will come in and say ‘that’s not what a broken arm looks like,’ so we have to fix that with reference,” quipped O’Niel.
“Please don’t check our browser history,” Duncan joked.
Lastly, fans also got some insight on the work that went into the fight between Eve and Conquest and just how much work went into just the character designs and sound for this action scene.
“We worked on this for a long time, we always love to give Eve as much time as we can and we got a lot of great help in the script because you have to be really creative with Eve. And definitely BoomBox and the sound people did an incredible job in making it feel and sound really big,” Duncan explained.
“I feel like the sound is something that is definitely underrated in the conversation about this stuff because if you don’t feel those punches, if you don’t feel like they have weight to them and that come through the shockwaves that you hear, you don’t believe it. So just a great job to the team,” added moderator Cassey.
“Also the sound in comics is not so great, we try to do a better job on the show” joked Racioppa.
Dou quipped “I was also about to say, this is one of the episodes that I distinctly remember because Invincible had like maybe 25 damage states so we had to make a character sheet for each one. It was amazing just to see the chart of them all sometimes on the same sheet because sometimes that’s what we would send overseas just so they could understand like…yes, his femur does get broken but of course it’s not just him.” Conquest has nearly 15 damage states as well.
“It was also a bit of a special challenge like when Eve unleashes her destructive ray and it kinda burns him. So even that, as you mentioned before, we are looking at references to try our best to get to something that is relatively animation friendly but still kind of show that yes, this guy just got everything thrown at him,” Dou concluded.
Some quick hits on Invincible news that came from the questions from the audience.
– ”Damian will be back, there is some stuff with Damian if you read the comics, you still won’t know or expect” said Racioppa.
– “Thragg has been cast, we just can’t tell you who it is. But that will make it better when you hear it, ” said Racioppa
– We’ll see more from Oliver in the future.
– Contrary to what you might have read online, the Gambit scene from Xmen 98’ and Rex’s scene were just parallel thinking. The show was already in post production.
– There was no confirmation of Spawn or Savage Dragon in the next season but we had to ask.
English (US) · 