Between 2015 and 2017, Céu D’Ellia moved to New York, where he worked as Art Director at Little Airplane, a studio located at the South Street Seaport in Manhattan. In addition to art direction and design for various productions, he oversaw the direction and animation of the series aimed at young children, P. King Duckling.
Little Airplane
Comments from Céu:
One day in 2015, Josh Selig, the founding director of Little Airplane, reached out to me in Brazil for help resolving an impasse. His studio was developing—on commission—the series bible for an animated show that a Chinese company was set to produce. The project aimed to take Loli—a little doll popular on textile products in China—and transform her into a character with her own world, friends, family, and so on.
But no matter how hard various U.S.-based designers tried, the Chinese client wouldn’t approve the main character’s model sheet, and this was stalling everything else.
When I analyzed the situation, I realized there were two main obstacles.
One: U.S. designers tend to “Americanize” things—that is, they try to fit everything into their own established formula. It’s a great, proven recipe—like apple pie—but it doesn’t work for every type of pie. Naturally, the Chinese clients on the other end saw their key asset being completely distorted.
Two: The client was a textile company with no experience in the requirements of animation. They weren’t going to grasp the specific needs of animation during the “bible” production phase; they wanted a copy of a print design, not a three-dimensional projection of it.
I solved the problem by identifying the original matrix structure and creating variations, all while staying within the client’s level of understanding. The issue was resolved, and Josh was enthusiastic enough to invite me to handle the design for the rest of the project.
Coincidentally, I was heading to NYC for the screening of our short film Love Will Rescue You, so I was able to work on the Loli project right at the studio in Manhattan. I had a particular interest in Little Airplane because I knew that Josh—beyond his extensive experience working on the Sesame Street team (including an Emmy win)—shared my interest in the work of educator Mr. Rogers. Near the end of the Loli project, Josh invited me to become the studio’s Art Director. I accepted and stayed until 2017, when I decided to return to Brazil to focus on my personal projects.
It was a period of nearly three years well spent. Beyond visiting and revisiting NYC museums and art galleries, I focused heavily on bridging international production efforts: understanding and refining communication between studios and artists across different countries.
My daily routine involved writing correction notes more than actual drawing, so I would sometimes return to the studio on weekends just to draw freely.
In addition to developing design proposals for various projects in their early stages, I oversaw every production phase of the 52-episode series P. King Duckling—a co-production between Little Airplane and the Chinese company UYoung, slated to premiere on Disney Jr. Daily, I worked with the team to review the various stages—from reading scripts to identify new design elements and supervising pre-broadcast color correction, to storyboarding, blocking, directing, and animation. I directed one of the episodes in its entirety.
Interestingly, I noticed that one of the biggest problems in the series’ pipeline was that they didn’t do a color script, because they thought it was a waste of time, but they ended up wasting a lot more time going back to correct color discrepancies of all kinds. After a lot of resistance, I managed to convince the producers to at least use a color script in the production of the opening animation. And, of course, we had no color issues.
For the predevelopment of the Dog & Pony series, I was asked to use a scenario technique made with drawings on photos, which I had developed for my short film that took me to NYC, Love Will Rescue You. The scenarios for Dog & Pony were the city of New York itself, so I was able to work and review scenarios from human daily life, those places without tourist importance, but where ordinary life pulses: construction sites, playgrounds, nondescript corners, common facades, flower shop doors, bus stops or boarding stations ferryboat.