MUSHKA Cast & Crew Screening

Just about a month ago the MUSHKA crew finally got together for a premiere screening of our film. Most people had never met each other. Everyone had worked from home, and the voice talents were recorded separately at my home studio. We invited a few guests of honor as well.  

Before the screening I introduced the artists individually. Actor Tanner Beard, who voiced the Father, turned around and shook hands with his on-screen animated daughter Helena Aviv Perez (Sarah) for the first time. It was such a funny but beautiful moment.

This was the venue for our screening and reception. 

Of course we had to give out goodie bags for all of the guests. They included a copy of the Jungle Book catalogue as well as.... some MUSHKA merchandise. 

Voice actors Josh Goldman (Alex), Tanner Beard (Father) and Helena Aviv Perez (Sarah).

Disney royalty Kathryn Beaumont and MUSHKA singer extraordinaire Holly Sedillos. Unfortunately Richard Sherman wasn't available that evening.

Don Hahn and Rick Farmiloe. 

On the left, filmmakers Ted Thomas and his wife Kuniko. On the far right my storyboard partner (Layout artist and scene planer) Matthieu Saghezchi. 

Head of character opaquing and character color Ambrosio Garcia. 

Animator and good friend Andreas Wessel-Therhorn. Andreas animated critical scenes with the three villains. 

Cortney DiPaola animated a ton of lovely scenes with Sarah. 

On the far left my amazing screenwriter Mayka (Michael McKinney), then Roger Viloria, coproducer  and head of all postproduction...and my dear partner. Next to him is composer Fabrizio Mancinelli, who worked closely with Richard Sherman. Fabrizio gave me a film score I could only have dreamt of!!

And Natalie Franscioni-Karp painted the vast majority of the backgrounds. I am in such awe of her talent and her commitment. 

On the right is Steve Gordon. I go waaaaayy back with Steve to the Black Cauldron. He animated the most complicated action scene on MUSHKA. At the time it seemed impossible to do from a technical point of view.

Kathy Beaumont with another Disney voice legend Bruce Reitherman. 

It was an emotional night to say the least. I will always be grateful to our small but kick-ass crew, who helped me to get this story to the screen. 

Fabrizio Mancinelli

 

Fabrizio wrote the score for MUSHKA. It is a magnificent score! Here you see him with Richard M Sherman during a musical "brainstorm", a few years ago. This pic was taken at my home. I do own a piano, but I don't play myself. So it is always a special occasion when Richard or Fabrizio (or both) stop by to fill the house with beautiful music. 

It was magic witnessing these two magnificent talents coming together to produce the emotional musical landscape for our film. Richard started out by writing a beautiful lullaby (Mushka's lullaby). Fabrizio picked up this theme and incorporated it throughout the overall score. 

I remember when Fabrizio had finished writing his first piece of music for a montage sequence. He sent the file to Richard to listen to and to get his input. It turned out that Richard left a phone message full of praise and affection. It was beautiful! Now everyone was on the same page as far as the musical direction.

Fabrizio has written scores for numerous feature films as well as shorts. Go to his website to find out more about his many accomplishments:

https://fabriziomancinelli.us/

I love this photo of him with Diane Disney Miller, who was very fond of Fabrizio and his passion for Disney.

Fabrizio with the one and only Ennio Morricone.

With MUSHKA singer Holly Sedillos after recently winning the Hollywood Music in Media Award for best song in a short film (Mushka's Lullaby).

I encourage you all to listen to Mushka's Lullaby (featuring Holly Sedillos) here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEhncKYpRAg

I cannot overstate how grateful I am to this young composer who contributed so much to our film with a musical score that exceeded my wildest expectations. Thank you, Fabi!

Take a look at a conversation between Fabrizio and Richard Sherman here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAA6HwV6FkY

Mushka in Color

We are so ecstatic to move into final color on our film Mushka. In this scene above we find out that Sarah's and Mushka's sleeping quarters have gotten too small for a girl and a Siberian tiger. Mushka turns over in bed, causing Sarah to fall to the floor. A color pencil texture will be added in order to avoid the conventional cel-painted look. Our final color scenes rock!!
But in end the humanity of the overall story is what will really matters. And I think we have that.
CAN NOT WAIT to share our film with everybody!!

Mushka - Official Animated Short Film Trailer

Here is an easy access to my film trailer MUSHKA. 

I am very happy to say that we recently won a Kids Choice Award at Palm Springs international short film festival. Reviews for the movie are starting to show up. This one tells me that MUSHKA has the potential to touch people in all the right ways:

https://btrproductions.medium.com/tiger-kin-mushka-d2c670f9fa91

MUSHKA Holiday Dinner

What an incredible evening! 

Last Sunday I hosted a holiday dinner party for our main MUSHKA crew.

Animators, background painters, song writers and so on. 

And Doris, our dog, who sneaked into the set up. With apologies to folks, who contribute to the project off and on. I only had 14 seats at the dinner table. We will have the big blow out with everybody next year, when the film is done and in the can.

Of course we had an updated screening of MUSHKA,  I am sooo thrilled to report that the Shermans were very happy with  the way it is coming along. Believe me, they would have told me if they saw any problems.

I am over the moon. A crazy dream come true. From JUNGLE BOOK to MUSHKA.

Full circle for me.

Fromt row:

Ariel Goldberg, voice acting and dialogue coaching.

Fabrizio Mancinelli, composer axtraordinaire and Roger Viloria, post production and a lot more. Then Andreas Wessell-Therhorn, animator . Followed by animator  Courtney Di Paola. Ambrosio Garcia, character opaquing and painting. Me, Elisabeth and Richard Sherman.

Background painters Craig Elliott and Tooba Rezaiei. And background supervisor Natalie Franscioni-Karp.

Way in the back, Craig Peck, associate producer.

Many thanks to Kai Loebach catering for the wonderful food!!

MUSHKA Industry Screening

 

Last Tuesday we invited the animation industry to attend a special screening of MUSHKA. 

The old Fine Arts Theatre on Wilshire Boulevard turned out to be the perfect venue because of its superior sound and picture quality. 

We showed the film in 4K with full blown surround sound. 

With Dave Bossert, my friend and colleague. We both started at Disney on the Black Cauldron.

Checking sound and picture quality just before the actual screening.

We had a full house, about 400 people. What an amazing feeling to share the film with industry colleagues.

Two standing ovations...I was literally flabbergasted. What a lovely reaction.

The guest of honor was of course Richard Sherman who loved connecting with old friends that night.

The musical dream team behind Mushka..Richard with composer Fabrizio Mancinelli.

Richard and Bruce Reitherman. These two go back to the original Jungle Book!

Richard with two amazing friends of mine: Leslie and Mike Iwerks.

The lovely and super talented Holly Sedillos, who sang Mushka's lullaby for the film. The song was written by Richard.

Two old friends who both worked on the Jungle Book. That's story man Floyd Norman.

One of the best nights of my life.

Mushka Teaser Poster Ideas

I was determined to hand out some kind of teaser poster at last year's CTN Expo. Well, I did, but not before exploring several visual ideas that would represent the overall mood of the film. Here are some of the outtakes. I am not going to post the two final designs, it makes owning one of the two posters a little more special. (on the poster there is a tag line missing, because I haven't copyrighted it yet.)

As a general Mushka update:
I just about finished work on the story reel/animatic, even though some changes and improvements will happen as production continues. I am in love with this story, it is emotional, exciting (as in action) and funny.
I am extremely thrilled to announce that the one and only Richard Sherman has written a song for the film!! I'll tell you later how this came to be, but I am pinching myself knowing that Academy Award winning Richard Sherman, who cowrote the songs for Jungle Book with his brother Robert, among many other groundbreaking films, is a creative part of my film. As King Louie says: "Craaazy!"
As I am getting into full production on Mushka, I am looking for local LA 2D animation artists.

- Effects animator, experienced or new. But with high standards.
- Inbetweeners, experienced or new. But with high standards.
- Animators, experienced or new. But with high standards.
- Interns

If you are interested, leave your email, and I'll contact you. I won't be able to pay studio rates, but I WILL pay independent film $.

MUSHKA Sequence 14, Scenes 63 and 64

 

I loved animating these scenes. The tiger is being pushed from a cliff into a river. By Sarah and Alex. I won't give you the story context here, but this moment is part of the MUSHKA trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnTL5h3GC6g&t=4s

It is extremely comforting when you realize that you can animate such a scene without any reference. These are actually poses for the storyboard, but I also used them as a guide for the animation. After drawing tigers at the local zoo, studying footage of them frame by frame, you get to a point where you just wing it. Gut feeling, intuition. Of course Daniel Ernesto's beautiful water splash animation sure helped to make this a convincing scene. 

At Disney I hardly ever had the chance to do action scenes. I needed to focus on personality shots. But on MUSHKA I was able to do both, and I loved it. Figuring out the proper pacing for an action sequence was absolutely thrilling. You try to escalate the danger before things come to a halt. And then the resolve. 

Woolie Reitherman talked about this in several interviews. And I definitely kept that in mind.

Quick Mushka Update

 

Early this week I got up with the sunrise and discovered our Mushka maquette looking amazing in this natural light. 

See below a Mushka mug made for our crew members. 

Right now I am actually animating the last scene for the film. That's it, animation is done, just some post production left to do like final sound mix. Negotiations with streaming services will begin as early as next week.

Merry Christmas

... Happy Holidays to all of you!
This is a vintage photo to promote Disney's 1967 release of The Jungle Book.
Thumper is a trifle oversized in the back, but who cares...
Growing up in Germany meant that any Disney animated release (or re-release) was around Christmas time. That's why it is impossible for me to separate Christmas from Disney.
Best time of the year by far!!

During this holiday season we are working hard to push our 1/2 hour film MUSHKA to the finish line. I think we need one more year. There is plenty to do, but also plenty has been finished.
Recently a lot of new color scenes have been added to the reel, and I am beyond ecstatic.
We are using TV Paint, so the characters drawings need to be opaqued in white first, before getting the color treatment. We then add minimal highlights and shadows as well as some color pencil texture and film grain.
Beate, Ambrose and Ihabo, thank you so much for your hard work to get the characters to color.
And Natalie, your background paintings are always breathtaking. The look of the film is so beyond what I had imagined.
Matthieu, your staging and continuity work is stunning.
Courtney and Andreas WT, thanks so much for your outstanding animation.
Daniel, your effects animation is FANTASIA like.
And Richard Sherman, you are THE inspiration for our film. Your musical contributions are miraculous. I pinch myself every single day, realizing that you and your brother Robert wrote the soundtrack to my childhood. And to have you write music for MUSHKA is beyond words.
Fabrizio, thank you for arranging Richard's music, and for scoring our film, you are the greatest!
And of course a special thanks to my partner Roger, who wears so many hats on this production.
Editing, prepping BG work and X-sheeets, sound etc.

Here is a frame from MUSHKA, just taken off my TV screen.

© Andreas Deja

A Recent Mushka/Sarah Sketch

 

I still draw characters from my film MUSHKA occasionally. In order to show my gratitude to certain artists who contributed so generously, a special sketch seems appropriate.

There recently has been another mention regarding MUSHKA in Variety magazine. In the article I talk about my fabulous experience at ANIMAYO, the animation film festival in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. It was truly an honor to head up the voting committee for the best animated short films.

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/animayo-oscars-animation-andreas-deja-disney-1235615346