Vera Brosgol shares her short "Snow-bo"

Vera Brosgol had a few minutes to catch up with Taylor recently to talk about her short film “Snow Bo” and shared some great background on the piece. It doesn’t sound like we’ll be seeing a new short from Vera anytime soon but you can visit Verabee.com for sample of her illustration. We’ll keep you posted on the graphic novel she hints at. After you’ve read through this and watched "Snow Bo" I’d really recommend checking out the Lambchop video she mentions for a dose of wintry magic.

Vera Brosgol
Snow Bo

What burning idea did you have in you that you had to get out with this short?

My burning idea is I guess that kids are mean but hobos are meaner.

What were your duties on the short – animation, character modeling, direction, art direction, editing, sound?

I did everything on this short except the music (my friend Sam Allison and his banjo obliged). My roommate Jenn Kluska came in about halfway to bail me out by animating about half of it, and doing most of the color and compositing while I did cleanup.

Talk about some artists that have influenced your design style.

Old pinup artists, Japanese manga, Russian animation, and a little bit of UPA in there somewhere maybe.

What found materials did you surround yourself with for inspiration?

I looked at folk art and various snowy animation backgrounds for ideas – there’s so many awesome graphic ways of handling snow. Lambchop’s video for “Is A Woman” got watched a lot, as was Samurai Jack and that wintery Mary Blair short. I was going to go in more a quilted-looking folky direction for a while, and I guess there’s some of that left in the little stitches. I also looked at pictures of trees. There are a lot of trees.

How long did the production take from start to finish?

Eight months, or my last year of college.

That college being?

Sheridan College in Ontario.

Are you test-driving any new skills or technology here? Or working with anyone for the first time?

It was pretty much the culmination of my animation schooling, so all the stuff I learned came together into the film. Nothing groundbreaking, but using all the skills at once was pretty neat.

What was the biggest technical challenge?

I don’t enjoy animating very much, so I wasn’t exactly cranking the scenes out. If it wasn’t for Jenn I never would’ve finished. Other than that it was pretty straightforward. Compositing that big camera move was kind of a nightmare, though.

Talk about your scholastic background and your professional background. What led you to animation?

I liked it as a kid and as a teenager, so it seemed pretty obvious that I should go to college for it. The animation program seemed like a good way to get better at drawing while developing some skills that are actually marketable. I guess it worked!

What’s your latest opus? Any medium.

I’m working on a graphic novel.

Where is the web home of all things Verabee?

Why, it’s verabee.com!

In “Snow Bo”, did you create any of the original artwork in the Meat Zone, i.e. with real ink/watercolors/gouache/other, or was it all digital? If you traipse willfully between the two worlds, is one easier? More fun? Quicker?

The animation, cleanup, and backgrounds were all traditional (pencil, ink, and watercolor in that order), but the character color is all digital. Paintbucketing things in a program was pretty easy and pleasant, but all the scanning and cleaning to get to that point was not...really, really not. Painting the backgrounds was probably the most fun, though brush-inking the cleanup was nice in kind of a masochistic way.

Is “frozen guy immersed in frozen lake coming back to life and absconding with youth in red bindle” a common theme in Russian folk lit? Canadian folk lit? Lake Oswego folk lit? Anyone’s folk lit tradition that you know of? Or are you riffing on something else entirely?

I am not aware of any frozen man lit, but I did get the seed of a little kid in the snow from Tale of Tales, a Yuri Norstein short I watched as a little Russian hatchling. That image really stuck with me and it kind of went from there. What do kids do in the snow? What would you do in the snow if no one would play with you? Is there some way to make it kind of creepy and stupid? And so on.

When did you leave the Rodina, and are there any heavy Russian cultural nutrients lingering in your artistic marrow?

I left in 1989. In typical teenager fashion, I wasn’t interested in my culture at all until the last few years. Now I’m digging it up more and more, and I’m hoping to go back to Moscow in the spring.

What’s the skinny on your Laika gig? Be as specific as possible without blowing the confidentiality agreement.

I flew on an airplane and when I got here they told me to draw some storyboards of a little girl glaring a lot and then I did. I’m still not really sure how it happened, but I get to draw all day with interesting subject matter. It’s a pretty good fit for me, though I’m getting a little sick of staring at computer monitors.

Regarding the “smallfruit” in front of the @ sign in your email, I must ask the obvious – are John Bigboote and John Yaya in your book club?

I... I don’t know who those are. I just picked some cute words and now it’s too late.

Sorry, that was a Buckaroo Banzai reference. Apologies. I geek. Speaking of, what are your movie influences?

I’m not really sure. I could dig up some names to sound fancy but really I’m not particularly influenced by film. I looooove watching movies, though. Lately I’ve been watching a lot of Coen brothers films. They’re pretty bitchin’.