Through Brisbane’s Like A Photon Creative, Ricard Cussó and Tania Vincent have forged a partnership that has spanned various titles, from the ‘Tales from Sanctuary City’ franchise, including ‘The Wishmas Tree’, ‘Combat Wombat’ and ‘Daisy Quokka: World’s Scariest Animal’, as well as ‘Scarygirl’, ‘Combat Wombat 2: Back to Back’ and ‘The Sloth Lane’. IF asks the pair how they developed their shorthand.
Ricard Cussó
I first worked Tania in 2018 when she was hired as an animator on The Wishmas Tree, which was my feature directorial debut.
She was brought on as one of the leads and she was just incredible; her way of understanding the story and her actual animation skills were so good. We very quickly got on the same page and from there, we did Combat Wombat and Daisy Quokka: World’s Scariest Animal. With those films, Tania cemented her role as a lead animator within the studio.
A new studio executing three films back-to-back like that was something I don’t think had been done before and within the production team a lot of us hadn’t worked on features previously, so it was a great experience. We made sure to surround ourselves with experienced heads of department and have people like Tania on board.
We had the opportunity with Scarygirl to bring on a director’s attachment, which was orchestrated by Like A Photon. At the time, there had never been a female director for an animated feature film. Tania had shown incredible skill, not only in animation, but also in her understanding of story, so we thought we would give her a crack.
She came on as co-director and very quickly became an instrumental part of the production. I come from a live-action point of view, so I have more of a cinematography approach, but my understanding of animation is limited – I’ve never studied animation and I don’t know the lingo, although I did my best to learn by talking to animators. Tania has that experience because she has been in the industry for who knows how long.
She’s an incredible screenwriter as well. Her understanding of story and character was incredible, and she brought in a lot of insight to Scarygirl. We were hand-in-hand directing the film together and getting that story from the script to the screen.
We’ve got very similar sensibilities towards cinema in general. She’s an incredible person and human. She is so giving with everything, and she’ll put her heart and soul into absolutely everything she does. It makes my life so much easier to have the constant support of someone that takes ideas and gives you ideas. In collaborating, we find great ways to enhance a story and the look of the film, but all that is supported through a great friendship.
Tania Vincent
I started at Like A Photon working on The Wishmas Tree as a senior animator, whose job is mainly to get the hardest shots in the film.
Everyone I’ve ever worked with in the animation industry has come from animation, but Ricard’s background was in live action. One of the things that I really enjoyed was that he approached the animation more like a live-action director, which means he would just talk to us like we were actors. It wasn’t about the technicalities of everything, it was about, “This is how the character thinks and this is how the character feels”, and I think, as an animator, you dream of having that direction given to you.
He went out of his way to learn all the technical terms that we use in 3D animation, which really bonded him to the team. He’s followed on through that in all the films, in terms of trying to learn what every department does and ingraining himself in the animation world.
Prior to co-directing Scarygirl, I had been an animator for 16 years and been an animation director on some smaller projects, but the film was my first big step into that role and it’s something that I’ve always dreamed of.
I’d heard horror stories about the role of co-director, one of which was that they sit you in a corner and they just call on you when they need you. What Ricard did amazingly with me was brought me into the fray. In every single meeting, he would say his ideas to the team and they would pitch ideas back to him, at which point he would always turn to me and be like, “Tania what do you think?”. It really shocked me early on how involved he let me be.
By the end of film, we both found where our strengths were in the animation industry, and I really appreciated that he completely fully embraced the knowledge I could bring to the project.
I really admire Ricard’s cinematography. Coming from animation, we care so much about the acting and the story side of things like they do in live action, but he really brought a care and attention for what the cameras are doing, which is something actually quite rare in animation. It shouldn’t be but it definitely is. I’ve learned so much from him in regards to that. It’s a skill that I almost didn’t realise how much I wanted to learn and I was really grateful that he imparted so much of that knowledge to me.
Recently, the two of us fully directed an animated movie called The Sloth Lane. That was one that I got the chance to write on. He just took this massive step back and just really let me run with it.
He’s directing something on his own, which I am going to animation direct on, so I think me and him are always going to be intertwining. I love bringing my animation knowledge to his stuff, and a lot of what I make is under the umbrella of his company, Cosmic Dino, so it’s cool he’ll always be the person that I go and show the reels to. I think it’s going to be a creative friendship that just keeps growing.