Nickelodeon’s all-new 3DCG series adaptation of Lincoln Peirce’s best-selling book series, about an adventurous 10-year-old named Max and her friends on their quest to save Byjovia, uses highly textured sets, practical-looking effects, and stylized character movements to convey the wonderfully imperfect world of stopmo storytelling; debuts today, October 30.
Not every young girl wants to play pretend as a damsel in distress. Some want to be knights. And, in actor Blu del Barrio’s opinion, sword welding and kingdom defending is for any kid with an imagination.
“I was definitely like Max,” says del Barrio, who voices the leading lady in the all-new animated series Max & the Midknights. “And I was one of those kids who grew up in a really wooded forest area playing in the trees with sticks and stuff like that. That was my childhood. And I think the message of the show, and what Max wants, stays the same, no matter what generation you are from. It’s about not feeling like what people are putting on you is what you should be doing or what you really want to be doing, or who you really feel like you are. I love that it's in this setting of being a girl and wanting to be a knight. I think so many people will connect to that. It's definitely something that I would have wanted to see as a kid.”
Based on the best-selling children's books by acclaimed author and cartoonist Lincoln Peirce (Big Nate), the show, premiering today on Nickelodeon, follows an adventurous 10-year-old named Max who embarks on a quest with her newfound friends, a group of misfits known as the Midknights, to save the Kingdom of Byjovia from ominous forces.
Check out the trailer:
The voice cast includes Blu del Barrio (Star Trek: Discovery) as Max; Melissa Villaseñor (Saturday Night Live) as Millie, a wacky yet super positive and magical girl; Zeno Robinson (Transformers: EarthSpark) as Simon, Millie’s street-savvy and sometimes sarcastic companion; and Caleb Yen (Beyblade X) as Kevyn, the bookish genius with a photographic memory. Along with del Barrio, Yen hopes his character also serves as a comforting reminder to viewers that they shouldn’t let others put them in a box. Being smart is not something to be ashamed of. It’s a badge of honor to wear with pride.
“Just because you like books and maps and fiction, doesn’t mean you can’t go and do cool stuff,” says Yen. “You don’t have to be in the box that people place you in, which also means you can choose not to do stuff, and that can be cool too. It’s all up to you to discover as you go through life.”
Produced by Nickelodeon Animation, Max & the Midknights is executive produced by Lincoln Peirce (Big Nate) and Jane Startz (Ella Enchanted). Sharon Flynn (All Hail King Julien) and David Skelly (Toy Story 2) serve as co-executive producers and showrunners.
Despite what the show’s highly textured sets, practical-looking effects, and stylized character movements may suggest, not a lick of stop-motion animation was used in the production. It’s all 3DCG animated but, as Flynn and Skelly admit, made with the intent to fool audiences.
“I love the stop-motion look and feel that we’ve been able to apply to our CG world and really make it all feel like it was done by hand, on a real set, frame by frame,” says Skelly. “In the very first episode, in the cold open, this dragon that Max fights breathes fire and smoke and the fire was designed and animated to emulate a replacement series of sculpted objects for the fire and painted cotton for the smoke. Our hope was that there would be this sense of nostalgia, of a Rankin/Bass holiday special.”
Flynn adds, “I have to say, the first time I saw the fire, I was impressed by how I wanted to reach out and touch it through the screen. It’s incredible. And all the magic effects we have feel the same way.”
Even the actors were surprised to learn that no stop-motion was used in production.
“I thought the show was stop-motion,” shares Robinson. “I was very sure of it. I think I was most impressed by the texture of Simon’s hair, especially now that I know it’s done in CG. That hair texture is impressive and not everybody can do it. Same with all the clothes and all those other tiny details. I’m so impressed with the team.”
Villaseñor adds, “They definitely fooled me. I also thought it was stop-motion. But I think what I noticed the most was the wand that Millie has. There's glitter in it and it just looks so cool. I thought they used real water for it. It reminds me of when I was a kid, and I had this glitter baton.”
For both del Barrio and Yen, the showstoppers are the smoke and fire which appear in more than just the cold open of that first episode.
“We really analyzed how stop-motion effects were done,” says Skelly. “The Fantastic Mr. Fox was something that I paid really close attention to, because I just adore the look of that film. Some modern stop-motion productions are so beautifully crafted that it's easy to forget it was done in stop-motion, that it had to be animated by hand, frame by frame. But The Fantastic Mr. Fox really embraced the idea that it was going to be imperfect, that you could see the handprints in the fox's fur, and things like that. We wanted a sense of that in our show and hats off to our whole CG team who were able to take those references and those ideas and make something that felt like we were skating that world.”
Max’s character design, for example, is intended to emulate foam latex and fabric textures on clothes were enlarged so details could be highlighted, and it would give audiences the sense that they were looking at a miniature model rather than a CG character.
“We found that if the size of the weave on something like a cotton tunic looked like it was well proportioned to the size of the character, it appeared as more realistic and refined CG animation,” explained Skelly. “But if we enlarged the weave and made those threads bigger, then it made our characters look a bit smaller and the texture of the world really stood out. We wanted them to feel like puppets. We use a lot of camera tricks, blurred edges and distinct background spacing to give viewers the sense that they’re looking at a hand-crafted model.”
Focusing on all these textures and details was so much fun for the crew because everything in Byjovia had to appear dirty. “We're in a medieval world where there's horses and pigs running around and everyone's dirty,” says Flynn. “You see it on the characters’ costumes as well. They're not pristine characters. This is a lived-in world, and you can almost smell what the world smells like. And it all works together in service of the story, to make our audience as connected as possible with our characters.”
What better place for a kid to play and pretend? Byjovia is a lived-in Kingdom, full of mud and mischief, not unlike a backyard forest.
“There's creatures, there's magic, castles, bow and arrows, swords… this is the full package,” says Flynn. “This show is beautifully shot and beautifully made, and I hope it sparks people’s imagination.”
It certainly sparked del Barrio’s creativity in the booth.
“That first episode was crazy to watch, and it made me imagine a stop-motion guy actually in these scenes and moving these characters around,” says del Barrio. “It makes me feel like I have to work harder to keep up with that level of care and energy in the show.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
