'Corpse Bride', Character Designer, Carlos Grangel

0:00Jawad MirWorking with Tim is another experience. He's the guy that knows exactly what he wants. He's the guy who can do it himself, but he's delegating. And he's the guy that approvals process goes so smooth. He's an artist, so he's probably the one of the first directors that ask us, "Hey, which one do you like?" Because we do so many takes on each character.

0:25Jawad MirAt some point he said, "Why do you work and do so many versions? I just need the one. Which one do you like?" That, it's never been mentioned. In our, career, any director had ask us which one do, we like. You know? Any producer, and from Spielberg to Katzenberg to any one of those big guys, none.

1:01Carlos GrangelMainly for me, Corpse Bride is, you know, one of the most special films, that I have seen in terms of, like, you know, general animation, but also stop motion. So, really, a fan of that film. Tell me, tell me about your involvement in that film, and then we'll kinda go back to how your journey in animation world started.

1:28Jawad MirVery good. So here is what happened on Corpse Bride because obviously we didn't know Tim or Mike Johnson. ... But McKinnon and Sanders, that is the studio in England, in Altrincham, very near Manchester, close to Manchester. They had worked with Tim on other things, preparing the first Mars Attacks, working on some things with him. So they talk about this studio, Gran Giallo Studios, in Spain that, we did, some designs for a, for a short film that were done at McKinnon and Sanders. And I don't know why. I think Tim saw something of those designs over there in Manchester at that time be… because Tim was living in London, so, and they had a great relation. And, Ian McKinnon and Pete Sanders said, "Well, those are designers that are working for DreamWorks, Universal.

2:41Jawad MirThey did films for Amblin. They're in Spain." And, he was attracted to those designs for The Periwig Maker. That's the name of the short film. Long story short, Ian and I, we went and visit Tim on, in London at his house to talk about the next movie that he was planning to do. And he was there in his studio, talking about this movie, Corpse Bride, that he had intentional… intentionally for him. He wanted to do Corpse Bride not much after than Nightmare Before Christmas. He had already the idea cooking, you know? But, stop motion is something really difficult to be sell to big studios, you know?

3:30Carlos GrangelRight.

3:31Jawad MirBut when he had the occasion to work for Warner Brothers on, Planet of the Apes and Willy Wonka, he proposed that, "Hey, I'm doing these two films, but let me do Corpse Bride on the stop motion, you know, as a, as a pay roll for me and my artists." So Warner Brothers kind of agreed to do that film, too, so on that package apparently. This is what I heard. So, and we started... There are three films that we worked three years, the longest we work. One is The Prince of Egypt, second one is Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and the third one is Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. Those are the films that we stood the longest from the beginning to the end, even working with consumer products and merchandising, publicity. So wrapping up the entire package. So here at Gran Giallo, we do posters for the films.

4:32Jawad MirWe do credits titles and logos. We do the film title. We do props. We also really do art direction and backgrounds, but our specialty is character design, you know? So those are the three films we worked the longest, you know? For example, Hotel T was a year of work. El Dorado almost two years. Madagascar was eight month. Kung Fu Panda was almost a year for us. So those three films that I mentioned are the longest we worked. It doesn't means we're the best, but at least our involvement was the deepest, you know?

5:11Carlos GrangelRight. No, thank you for... Go on.

5:14Jawad MirNo, I just have to say one thing. W… working... We work on many films, and I personally, I worked with 42 directors on my lifetime to, up to now.

5:27Carlos GrangelYeah.

5:27Jawad MirNow we are on 12 other films, so it m… will be about 48 directors. 47, 48. Working with Tim is another experience. He's the guy that knows exactly what he wants. He's the guy who can do it himself, but he's delegating. And he's the guy that approvals process goes so smooth, and it's so cool, and it has a very artistic language. He's an artist, so it's, it's everything on the worlds, you know? It goes smooth.... As smooth as it can be. He's probably the one of the first directors that ask us, "Hey, which one do you like?" Because we do so many takes on each character.

6:15Jawad MirSome point he said, "Why do you work and do so many versions? I just need the one. Which one do you like?" That, it's never been mentioned. In our, career, any director had asked us which one do, we like. You know? Any producer, and from Spielberg to Katzenberg to any one of those big guys, none even, had even brought, "Hey, which one do you think should be the one for the movie?" You know? So Tim did in several occasions, in presentations in front of people, you know, turning and saying, "Hey, which one do you like? You did so many. They're all great. I can see seven, eight that can be candidates for the main character," you know?

7:07Carlos GrangelThat's incredible. I mean, Tim Burton is... I became familiar with his work, I think very first film or first two films were Batman and Beetlejuice, the original one, right? And…

7:20Jawad MirYeah

7:20Carlos Grangel... And then obviously Edward Scissorhand came. And I think what really hooked me onto his work was, it's probably one of his most underrated film, Edward… ... The story of, the filmmaker.

7:35Jawad MirYeah.

7:35Carlos GrangelAnd then from, I mean, from there on, like, you know, Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride. Mars Attacks is an awesome movie. But Tim Burton is definitely, you know, he was, he's still at it, and I think sign of... Like, I've said this many times on this podcast, we, you know, we talk about certain people, and those people are brought up and we always talk about leadership skills. Like, you know, to have that kind of a skill it… which encourages people on your team to be motivated, like you said, like, you know, "Which one do you like?" It makes a huge difference, and it just makes the other people work even more harder and feel valuable.

8:13Jawad MirYeah. You're right. You're right. For us, for us, and we are still, Tim came to Barcelona a month ago and invite us to join. We were on a deadline for another movie. We couldn't join, but we still preserve some friendship. And he's, he's a director that has the artistic language talking. You know what I'm saying? He…

8:37Jawad MirI mean, he started at Disney, for God's sake. He is a guy that work at Disney on a desk with John Lasseter and, you know, all these great guys, you know? Brad Bird, all those guys that, you know, Glen Keane at that time. All the new young guys after the Mill Calls and Mark Davises and, Frank Thomas, et cetera. So he's an artist. And all his films, they can have stronger stories or weaker, but visually, they are beautiful. I got really struck by his Batmans, you know, with the Joker, Jack Nicholson, and then the one with the Penguin with Da… Danny DeVito, you know?

9:20Carlos GrangelYes.

9:20Jawad MirThose were great. I remember, I saw them in London when I was there working in, at Amblimation, and I said, "This guy is phenomenal," you know? So…

9:31Carlos GrangelYeah, I'm glad you mentioned, I'm glad you mentioned Batman Returns, because that's not really a popular Batman film. But to be…

9:38Jawad MirYeah

9:38Carlos Grangel... Able to have, like, Danny DeVito as Penguin when, and then the penguins, and just that world that he creates…

9:46Jawad MirThat world, you know?

9:47Carlos GrangelYeah.

9:47Jawad MirI mean, it's

9:48Carlos GrangelIt's amazing. And he, I mean, we all know he's very much connected to, like, darker tones or, you know, death or, you know, like as Beetlejuice and Corpse Bride is…

9:59Jawad MirYeah

9:59Carlos Grangel... You know, pretty much about the same aspect. Tell me, Carlos, you talked about a few things, about your journey as in, into the caric… animation world. How did that start? What inspired you? And just kind of like, you know, step by step your path has been like.

10:23Jawad MirWell, actually, I was an illustrator and worked for comic strip for Disney and other publications. I'm talking about… ... Big, you know, comic strips. And the market on comic st… I was very young. I started 17 years old. So, I did, I did wanted to go into drawing my illustrations and comic strips, and the family said, "Okay, do what you wanna do." And with my brother the same. He, we both had the drive. I am five older, five years older than my brother, but we love it to sketch, sculpt, and paint.

11:00Jawad MirSo the comic strip market went down in Spain around the '80, '85, '88. So for young fellas, I'm talking about having 18, 19, 20 years old, it was devastated because, it's, more or less what's happening n… now with animation. The many people are out of jobs. You know what I'm saying?

11:24Jawad MirSo anyway, I went and studied animation techniques, you know, in a school and prepare myself. So when I finish, and I had my demo, I find out that in England, in London, they had Amblimation, the studio of Steven Spielberg, that they were doing Fievel Goes West, okay?

11:44Jawad MirSo I said, "Let me go and try." I had a, an English girlfriend, a great partner, and we said, "Okay, do you wanna go back to your country?" So we arranged it to go. And I brought my portfolio, so I show it at that time to Steve Hickner, Phil Nibbeling, and Simon Wells, that they were there. Steve Hickner was a k… the producer with Cynthia Woodburn, I remember. And they said, "We… We just need a character designer because our main guy, the main character designer, Uli Meyer, an extraordinary artist, you know, just left us on Friday and you arrive on Tuesday, so when can you start?" And I said, "You mean…

12:27Carlos GrangelOh, wow

12:28Jawad Mir... You mean now?" Said, "Yeah, we need someone. Your portfolio looks quite decent. What did you work on in animation?" I said, "Nothing. It's my first job." And they said, "Well, you know, people doesn't usually start on feature animation. They do TV, and they do video games or whatever." And well, I did my comic strips and they say, "Well, do you wanna try some weeks and see if it's working?" And I said, "Well, you will have to see if it's working for you because I, of course, I try." So I studied in London. And you know what happened on that three weeks, one month that I was, two weeks I was trying, Spielberg came.

13:16Jawad MirCame and, they show him some of the designs, and he s… Steven… And we had the meeting. They were so kind and nice and that bring me to the meeting with Steven, you know? And, he said, "Wow, that's impressive. You draw like the Disney guys." And I said, "Well, I did comic strips for Disney, but I'm not a Disney guy, you know. I wish," you know. He said, "Well, I believe we have a character designer now." And then after Steven saying that, you know, everyone was like, "We need to sign you on a contract because apparently you're gonna stay." So this is the way I started. But I already had my studio, Grangella Studio, with my brother established, you know.

13:59Jawad MirSo the plan, my brother said, "Okay, you stay in London. If you need any help, send us some work. If not, we are doing publicity, we are doing other things here. We keep doing small jobs for commercials, animation, breakfast commercials, all these kind of jobs that..." And you keep on going on feature animation because feature animation is kind of the highest level. This is what we think all in animation, you know. The highest level. There is no high level. You can be enjoying doing a short film in a stop motion. It's about how you enjoy it. But everyone sees from the outside that, wow, that's feature animation at Disney, at Pixar, at DreamWorks. That's the highest, you know? So from that moment, I started on feature animation up to now nonstop because, thanks God, the studios that I were working on, they relay. I became a kind of an asset for them. So after one script became another and another, and then proposals from Warner Brothers, from Universal, from Disney, from Paramount, from Sony Pictures, like Hotel Transylvania.

15:09Jawad MirSo I could do other things in between the other movies I was working for DreamWorks which I work for the last 27 years there, you know. So that is pretty amazing that... And little by little, what I am happy is that we build this relation, that it wasn't not a deal for Carlos Grangella. It was an studio deal with the majors, you know. So finally, they recognize my studio. They recognize my artists here. They recognize the team, you know, the team of workers that can supply with other things that can help those big productions, you know. So finally, we succeeded. After Prince of Egypt, we started to collaborate in a bigger role, helping other departments, anyway.

15:59Carlos GrangelThat's, that's so amazing. I mean, I'm sure you know, I've had… I've spoken to Simon Wells on this podcast, like seven, eight times.

16:07Jawad MirYeah.

16:07Carlos GrangelAnd Steve Hickner a couple of times, once for Bee Movie and once for Prince of Egypt. And, ama… amazing folks. And it…

16:16Jawad MirThank you

16:16Carlos Grangel... Such a great story that your timing is so remarkable, that you just showed up four days after somebody left. And…

16:24Jawad MirYeah. But…

16:25Carlos Grangel... That started a journey

16:26Jawad Mir... That started the journey, but the guy who left was Uli, and Uli was a phenomenal, still is, artist which I admire. If Uli wouldn't had left, I wouldn't had the opportunity. You know, sometimes a… animation, like every job, is about if the door is open, it's okay. If the door is closed, there is no way, no matter how much talent you have or that you can do the job, yes, but if they don't allow you to do it's, it's no way you're gonna get there. You know what I'm saying?

17:00Carlos GrangelYeah. Yeah.

17:00Jawad MirStarting, you have to think that it's true. It's not sounding pretentious, but character design is the look of the characters, for God's sake. Those are driving movies based on character driving, you know? It's the look of those images, you know? Like art direction or production design, the look of the backgrounds and everything. To relay all that on a new fella that comes to the studio and hasn't done anything on animation, that was pretty brave from Steve, Simon, Phil Nibbelink, Bonnie Ratner, main producer from Hollywood who was coming to supervise everything, to say, "Hey, guy, here it is. Give it a try." Y… it's pretty remarkable, you know?

17:41Carlos GrangelFor sure. It i… it is, it is so remarkable because believing in other people sometimes is the best you can do because it actually puts them in a place where they want to make sure that they live up to that expectation, right? And i… it is so cool, and I… You know, you talked about character design. You're so right. It's one of the most pivotal things, if you look at Prince of Egypt, right? Like, the character designs in those film, in that film was just very different. Spirit Stallion of Cimarron, to design a horse or a bunch of horses and get them to express themselves without even talking… And then, and then Corpse Bride, like, you know, c… again, a completely different film where you have... It's gonna be stop motion, yeah, but character design, like, you know, giving those darker tone, bringing it to life, from those visuals so that the actual team can make the actual, you know, figures and, for the lack of better word.

18:47Carlos GrangelBut it is, it is very important. And I wanna talk about Corpse Bride. What was... Which characters did, character or characters did you or your company, design, and which one was the most challenging one, and why?

19:05Jawad MirListen, you're gonna believe it or not, but this is what happened. The day we visit Tim, he had these wonderful watercolors, and he was playing with some characters, you know? And, they were, they were extremely good, you know? So I'm playing here with some characters. I did some other sketches. Here is everything. I got you copies. So I took all that material. We spent the entire day with him. We went for lunch, and we were talking in the afternoon. So at the end of the day I say, "Well, I'm taking it, everything to my studio. We're gonna work on it, a small team, four or five people, trying to discover and see what we can do." And he said, "Listen, I want you to do some new things. I just don't want you to trace my drawings, you know? So see what you can do and surprise me," you know? And that's something actually remarkable to, you know.

20:06Jawad MirSo we were very intimidating because obviously, we were fans of Tim, but now we are working with him. So we have to please the guy, you know? So the thing is that I took it to the studio and I said, "Listen, Tim, it's gonna take us two or three weeks, you know?" He says, "Take the time you need, you know. We don't have the production set. It's gonna be shot in London, and the characters may come from your studio, and the design of the props, but, hey, we have time, you know? We're not... The studio is gonna take a month, two months, three months. We are getting the facility and blah." So after three months, well, after two weeks and a half, we presented these lineups, you know, on, of silhouettes. Because we need to... We cannot work on only one character. We have to set the style on a lineup, you know? And then when you do one, five, six, seven, 10, 12 characters, 20, you establish the language of shapes.

21:08Jawad MirYou understand what I'm saying? So…

21:10Carlos GrangelYeah

21:10Jawad Mir... So a character doesn't says anything. And we brought it to him with some pages, with some faces and other takes on Victor, Victoria, and Corpse Bride, Emily. And he really enjoyed seeing the lineups and seeing the, all this Victorian world of Land of the Living and, a… and the only skeleton or zombie that we did was Emily, Corpse Bride. And we said, "The zombies, they need another chapter. You need, we need... First we will be working on Land of the Living, and then we will do Land of the Dead."

21:50Jawad MirHe said, "Wow, this is, this is actually phenomenal. How... What did you took apart from my sketches?" And I said, "Well, I went to Charing Cross, bought books about photographs on London, 1920s, Victorian time. Got information from McKenna and Saunders that sent us stuff from old books and old images and photographs from, black and white periods of England." And he said, "Well, this is actually some of the things that I wanna see on the movie, the way I envision." He said that, so it was a very good start.

22:26Carlos GrangelWow.

22:26Jawad MirAnd to tell you the truth, from day one it was a good connection. It's not, it's... I'm not joking, you know? And for example, with Simon Wells, I didn't had such a good connection until working in London for f… for three, five years, you know, on different movies, until we work on The Prince of Egypt. Because Simon is a guy who knows exactly what he wants on every frame, okay? And Tim knows what he wants, but he's gonna allow you to do it yourself. Two phenomenal directors, fine. But to work with Simon, you have to really know where are you navigating, and the river is shallow. You know what I'm saying? So…

23:18Carlos GrangelYeah

23:18Jawad Mir... So I need, I need to take a deeper water to navigate. So it took me more time until I... It happened that I knew Simon after the third movie I worked with him, you know? We're Back, Balto, and then The Prince of Egypt, the first one done in the US. H… What he meant and what he wanted, talking about Simon Wells. While with Tim, from day one said, "Really I love this," you know? "go ahead and start nailing down the main characters." And Emily is the one that it took us longer. But when I say…

24:00Jawad Mir... It took us longer, here is the comparative. On Corpse Bride, creating Emily, it took us about a month and a half, okay? To have signed the final approved character. On The Prince of Egypt, but that wasn't Simon only, was Jeffrey Katzenberg too.

24:21Jawad MirOn The Prince of Egypt, to work on Moses, it took us six months until we got Moses approved. And I'm talking about Carter Goodrich, myself, Peter DeSeve, you know? Three ma… I mean, two masters I don't wanna be on that podium, you know what I'm saying? On American Illustration, you know, Carter Goodrich, Peter DeSeve, and then we asked Nicolas Marlet to help us on the animals. So these were The Beatles, and I was, I was playing the drums. I was Ringo, you know? But they were the McCartneys and Lenons, you know? What I mean is that with Tim it went so smooth that there is no comparative on another movie. I cannot e… I don't even think I can compare it to Hotel Transylvania too.

25:12Jawad MirCorpse Bride, the process of approvals, and then Mike Johnson, don't forget about it. Because Mike was the guy that was 24/7 there, and obviously Tim was checking, keeping an eye, but Mike was there. And Mike was an, a decent, great guy too. So Mike Johnson, the co-director, you know? Both the process of approvals and the flow of production, it was probably the fastest one we ever been in a show, you know? Probably we can compare it probably with Spirit too, with, Lorna Cook and Kelly Asbury, yeah. Spirit was good. The only, the bad part about Spirit was making those horses to move like horses and looking like horses. That's another story, you know?

26:02Carlos GrangelYeah, we'll keep that conversation for a later episode sometime down the road. But, you know, w… with Corpse Bride, it's so cool to hear your story about working with Tim and character design. I'm not an animator, right, in any way, but, as a storyteller I do know, and being an animation fan I can tell that how important it is to have... You know, instead of having, like, five different companies or two different companies to do character design of 10 different characters, it could be all over the place, and that's where if things don't start in synergy in the beginning, then everything else falls apart. So w… the character design in Corpse Bride... W… sorry, I should say this. So the animation in Corpse Bride and the characters in Corpse Bride wouldn't have been the way they were if the character design wasn't in place, wasn't in sync. So it's a collaborative effort.

27:02Carlos GrangelAnd, you know, it's such a weird concept with Corpse Bride, but it's, it's so weird. I saw it again recently after a long time, and you still connect with it, right? Like, I mean, how many of us have actually are around that have, that have been dead and come, came... You know what I mean? It's just so cool to…

27:21Jawad MirYeah, no, I know, and I have to say I saw it in February because they, on a film they were doing these cycles about Tim, and they invite us to present Corpse Bride. And it's aging well. It's, the film is aging well. There are two or three films that they are aging well. Prince of Egypt is aging well too, you know? And Corpse Bride is aging well. And I say, "Well, it's still striking," you know? And it's still, it's still beautiful to look at, you know? So the thing is that we were so involved. When we say we, it's the team here in Barcelona, the team in Manchester, in Altrincham, where the puppets were fabricated in Mackinnon & Saunders, and then the team in London, where they were shooting the film, you know, on those big hangers because stop-motion needs space, you know?

28:23Jawad MirAnd for all, everything, the props, the villages, the trees, the church, the Victoria's house, Corpse Bride Forest, you know? The, that bridge where Corpse kisses Victor. Everything was so in synTony. Everyone, every person of the crew, you know, were so excited and giving their best to make the best movie possible because we knew Tim had done Nightmare Before Christmas, okay? With an excellent team, you know?

29:04Carlos GrangelRight.

29:04Jawad MirA film from many years before, you know? We couldn't not do something worse. It had to be at least at the same... It had to be at least…

29:15Carlos GrangelYeah

29:15Jawad Mir... This close to that level. Everyone knew. That's why the animators, they gave the 100%. The mechanics that Mackinnon & Saunders built in England, they were fantastic, phenomenal, that we could do things that they never were seen before on any stop-motion movies, you know? They could move the heads through scrolls on the ears, you know, and expressions. There were not many replacements, you know, for the mouth. You know, everything was moved, you know, on a mechanic head, you know? A… and but it still had to be beautiful to look at, and elegant. Tim is coming from these films like S… Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, the all classic ones, you know? Where everything has to be top-notch on the screen, you know?

30:11Carlos GrangelYeah.

30:11Jawad MirWhere visuals have to be amazing. Tim is one of these guys. Then the story obviously is the most important thing, you know?

30:19Carlos GrangelI was gonna say that. You know, whether it's a big budget visual effects live action movie or animation, nothing matters unless you have a strong story. Once you have a strong story, then, and everything else works out, which most of the time it does. When you have a strong story, then everything works out. Right? So it's, it's a, it's, it's imp… everything is important. But, you know, again, character animation is a phenomenal thing, and people... It's, it's... You know, you talked about losing jobs when you were in the '80s and the comic strips were dying away, and now we have come back at the same place, you know, with AI and, so many other things. How is that playing out in your world, or is it gonna play out in the f… near future?

31:10Jawad MirI think exactly the same like Tim. Tim was making these quotes on the, on the newspapers talking about AI. What is the point of an artist of using the computer to do the job because it will look different or better or worse? The pleasure is just doing the job yourself. We don't get it. The challenge is to push yourself to do something new, like I do on every style on every new movie. You know what I'm saying? What is…

31:44Carlos GrangelYeah

31:44Jawad Mir... The pleasure of living up to the computer, just typing some words or texting, and the computer doing the job? I'm not interested on that. There is no AI on my entire studio. I'm not saying that doesn't helps. I'm not against AI. I am pro artists doing the job, you know? I think AI will help on some shows, but we will make more lazy people. And human beings, we have the tendency to do less, the less is possible, and to have the more money possible, get better pay for less. No. Artists, we don't have that tendency. If Picasso will be alive, you talk to AI, to Picasso, and he's gonna say... Or you talk to Sargent, you go and talk to van Gogh and tell him that the computer is gonna do the job. And he says, "What's the point? I wanna paint. I wanna do the job." That's the most wonderful thing.

32:45Jawad MirThe ones that we have the drive inside, we wanna do the job. We don't know if it's gonna look well, you know? But we're gonna put as much as we can our entire day. You know, we're gonna be monks on a monastery to bring the best possible job. What's the point to... Right now I know designers that are using AI, and they are presenting on every meeting 30 pages, 30 images, while I am presenting five, seven, 10 maximum, working 12 hours a day, you know? So but they print out everything they get from AI, and it's all there. It's overwhelming. Some of the directors are responding. At the end of the day, you know, I don't criticize them. I keep on doing my job. Some of the directors are responding to my job. So it's okay whatever they wanna have. I just don't... I, first of all, I'm too old to use AI.

33:48Jawad MirSecond of all, I still have the drive to create new things. I wanna do it myself. Third of all, I don't trust the computer because everyone, if you take the same words, it's gonna give you the same. You understand what I'm saying?

34:03Jawad MirIt's gonna be a lot…

34:04Carlos GrangelOkay

34:04Jawad Mir... A lot of copycat there on presentations around the planet. So I don't know if you…

34:11Carlos GrangelAnd…

34:11Jawad Mir... If I answered your question, but to…

34:13Carlos GrangelNo, you did, and I think it's also true. So it's interesting time right now, right? Like, you know, when the internet came out…

34:21Jawad MirYeah

34:21Carlos Grangel... Around the time when Prince of E… you guys were working on Prince of Egypt. Obviously it was a different type of progression. But I remember, I remember at the time it was the same thing. Like, you know, "What's internet?" And, "I don't need a website," and this and that. And now, you know, everybody has it. But at the same time, one of the things we talked about the artist, I genuinely believe it's not just artists. I think even human beings who are, who have a 9:00 to 5:00 job that they probably don't even like to a certain extent.

34:54Carlos GrangelIt's the idea of working towards something and getting paid for it.

35:00Jawad MirYeah.

35:00Carlos GrangelI think that's, being rec… being recognized for your work. And I think that's... El… Elon Musk said that in one of the interviews, too, and he, I think he's so right on that eventually what's gonna happen is, you know, y… you probably see them online. Like, there's so many videos now of not just AI, but robo… robots, right? Like, robots that are cooking, robots that are cleaning. And, you know, it's just going in that direction. It's that having, not having a... E… even if you're getting universal basic income, like, for not doing anything, and you have all this time.

35:38Carlos GrangelAnd then the idea is then you do something that you enjoy. But what is that gonna do? Where is that going? You're just keeping it to yourself. I genuinely believe that we all need so… need to do something where we do it whether we like it or not, obviously preferably we like it, but we get recognized by getting paid for it.

36:01Carlos GrangelAnd I think that's the key thing that a lot of people are not seeing. I'm not against AI at all. I do think it's gonna become a very strong part of our lives. But the question is how much? Because a lot of people are losing now. You know, like, I don't know if you... Well, you don't know about AI that much, like you said. But just recently, I think two days ago, Google and OpenAI released the most recent software.

36:28Carlos GrangelAnd, it's, you can actually talk to the AI on the phone, and it's so realistic where the AI is responding back with a very human emotion-oriented conversation.

36:40Jawad MirNo, I haven't heard about that.

36:42Carlos GrangelYeah.

36:43Jawad MirBut, I'm, I'm pretty sure that things, all these things that are gonna be speeding up and arriving to a level that you will have no idea if there is a…

36:54Carlos GrangelIt will be a…

36:54Jawad Mir... Human being on the other side or a machine. You know what I'm saying? So…

36:58Carlos GrangelRight. But the positive side, I think, to it is, like, and you've mentioned that if everybody... I should say if a lot of people, like 80, 90% of people in our world… ... In the film and animation world, start using AI, eventually, like with storyboards or character design or whatever, eventually the people who are not doing it as much or not doing it at all…

37:23Carlos Grangel... They're gonna s… they're gonna stand out.

37:25Jawad MirYeah. They're gonna stand out. Yeah.

37:27Carlos GrangelRight? So that's a positive thing.

37:30Jawad MirThat's a positive thing, and I must tell you that we are right now helping two feature films. This is the maximum capacity we have. This is a small facility, a small studio. And we are seeing directors very challenged and really full of life when they see something from us compared to AI, you know?

37:51Carlos GrangelYeah.

37:52Jawad MirSo they call and they say, "Well, we cannot say this to the other designers, that they are using AI, but your characters, they have life, they have a heart, and they talk to us. The others are a bit cold, a bit, you know, great render. It's final look, but this is not really what stroke us, you know?" So they are saying on a petite committee, you know? They are not saying loudly because they know AI, and we don't fight it back either. It's gonna take over. So they say, "At the moment, we see good things on those things, but we relate more on yours." I don't know. They are talking to us, you know?

38:28Carlos GrangelYeah.

38:28Jawad MirSo expressive. And, I think we will be safe. I think at the same time, I'm not fighting the guys who are working on AI, you know? I'm, I'm... We are having great relations, you know? We are all working on the same movie. You know what we want? The very best of.

38:49Carlos GrangelOf course.

38:50Jawad MirI saw, I saw a few things from AI that I was kind of impressed. Then I knew from where those two things were coming from, and I was less impressed because they told me the process. But I can see them working with our characters, you know? So…

39:09Carlos GrangelYeah

39:09Jawad Mir... At the end of the day, what we will be doing is taking the AI characters and doing a pass, you know? This is what the director had asked. Take a pass on the AI, give your look, but use what we like. And a final pass, it means that the humans, we are gonna do a final pass on top of the machine's work, you know? So…

39:32Carlos GrangelFor now, at least.

39:34Jawad MirYeah. It wa… it's gonna be the human blender at the end, you know?

39:38Carlos GrangelYeah. And, Carlos, you mentioned, you guys are working on two movies. Unless you're not willing, able to talk about it, would you like to share what they are?

39:48Jawad MirYeah. I can, I can only share two things. One is a stop-motion with a new director, a new company, you know, that it's been really pushing for doing stop-motion movies, you know? Is, the company is based in LA, but mostly of the work is gonna do… be done overseas. And the other one is a CGI movie, you know? Original ideas. We don't work on sequels.

40:15Jawad MirLife is too short to repeat yourself. When it comes to design, we don't wanna do second, third, or fourth parts. We had big battles with studios, that they came for the sequels. It's not interesting for us. We wanna be challenged on each movie, and we work just on original ideas. So these two, one is stop-mo... Obviously, we cannot talk about the studio who is doing that. The subject of…

40:38Carlos GrangelThat's fine

40:39Jawad Mir... Is very early on, so it will take two, three years to be finished. But yeah, a stop-motion movie and a CG one. And we're very happy that stop-motion after Pinocchio is having another

40:54Carlos GrangelRebirth

40:54Jawad Mir... Revival, you know? So it's, it's coming back, you know?

40:59Carlos GrangelThat's really great to hear. I'm a huge fan of stop-motion. I think my first encounter with a stop-motion, knowing that it was stop-motion…

41:09Jawad MirYeah

41:09Carlos Grangel... Was Chicken Run.

41:10Jawad MirOh, great.

41:11Carlos GrangelRight?

41:12Jawad MirWonderful film.

41:12Carlos GrangelYou know, wonderful film. And Aardman, I mean, does incredible stuff with Wallace and Gromit…

41:17Jawad MirYeah

41:17Carlos Grangel... And then all those shorts that they created over the years.

41:19Jawad MirYeah, Creature Comforts and all the shorts and,..

41:23Carlos GrangelYeah. So, and again, it goes back to that conversation. Stop-motion, because you're physically creating these characters, right, after character design and, storyboards and all that, even that has more power in my view, and it evokes more emotion than 2D animation or 3D animation does. Because these are, like, real physical characters…

41:51Jawad MirThings. Yeah

41:51Carlos Grangel... That are ro… roaming around, right? And it is…

41:54Jawad MirYeah

41:54Carlos Grangel... It is so cool. It is so cool.

41:56Jawad MirI love a stop-motion.

41:58Carlos GrangelYeah. It's incredible. How big is your team, at the studio, Carlos?

42:02Jawad MirMaximum 14 people. 10 to 14. Yeah. It's people that we…

42:08Carlos GrangelAnd how many…

42:09Jawad MirWe've been working together…

42:10Carlos GrangelSorry, go on

42:10Jawad Mir... For many years, you know? So my brother and I, we design and we delegate on other things, but we mainly are on, focusing on the look of characters. And the other ones, they create from, credits to posters to backgrounds to props to anything that goes with characters on the film. So, and the thing is that we've been finding some real, very r… high-quality people… From here and there, and we established a great bond, you know, and we've been working together for more than 20 years, you know? So it's people that probably we met in England or some in France, or many locals, you know, that we established that bond and they know exactly what we want. And we are very demanding, but we are more demanding with ourselves. The only thing is that it's, it's true, we are very tough when it comes to quality, presentations, take care of the last detail, create elegant designs, work on shapes.

43:18Jawad MirYou know, we need to see something new. There are so many elements, but those guys, they've been great through all these years, so yeah. Yeah.

43:28Carlos GrangelThat's, that's really great to hear. And one of the key things you said, I think, which is so important for anyone's success in any part of the, career, whatever they're doing, is that we have to impress ourselves. We have to be tough on ourselves, and I think that's what drives excellence, and you guys are doing that. That's, that's awesome.

43:50Jawad MirThank you. Thank you. You're very kind. I don't know if we reach that level, but we are, we're definitely every day encouraging ourselves to get better, you know?

43:59Carlos GrangelI don't, I don't think anybody c… should reach that level, because once you reach that level, then there's nothing after that, right? So it's like a constant strive to making yourself better every day with no end in sight. So, Carlos, this has been great. I had a great time chatting with you. We didn't touch upon Hotel Transylvania that much.

44:18Jawad MirNope.

44:18Carlos GrangelThat's fine, because I…

44:19Jawad MirYeah, another time

44:19Carlos Grangel... I lo… I loved, I loved talking about Corpse Bride and a bunch of other stuff that you mentioned. Would love to do it again in the future whenever you have time.

44:27Jawad MirYeah.

44:27Carlos GrangelIt was great having you on. Thank you so much for your time, and thank you for all the work that you and your team have done that a lot of people have grown up with. I mean, you know, character design, not people... You know, when you see an animation film, you just see an animation film and that's it, right? But it's a whole team behind it who brings it to life at different stages, and nothing be… happens before character design, so thank you so much.

44:49Jawad MirThank you so much, and, thanks for your interest in what we've done, okay, and what we keep doing. Thanks. All the best to everyone. Take care of yourself.

44:58Carlos GrangelThank you. You too.

44:59Jawad MirBye.

45:07Carlos GrangelBye-bye.