Spencer Wan never expected to “accidentally” create an animation studio. But here he is, the lucky owner of Studio Grackle. While his best known positions are director for seasons 1 and 2 of Castlevania and supervisor for season 1 of The Owl House, Wan himself is best known for his tendency to go above-and-beyond and animate some of the craziest fight scenes I’ve ever seen.
 |
| Wan with a beverage of some sort |
Many of his greatest moments of
creativity come from forcing them into existence by challenging himself, and
none is more famous than his hand in the creation of the Hades trailer.
In a humorous exchange on Twitter,
users admired the musculature of main character Zagreus in the trailer,
speculating that the animators did such a good job since they wanted a good
piece of eye-candy to work on. In comes Wan, who admits that he, as the lead
animator, had no such intent (though that was no drawback). He just wanted
practice drawing “that weird muscle on the shoulder that shows up when the arm is
raised”! The end result certainly was eye-candy in all senses of the word, and
a creative triumph among video game trailers. But not because Wan wanted to
animate “something sexy”. He just wanted to see if he could. So he did.
 |
| The improvisation that started it all |
 |
| Now in color! |
In another instance of absolute
madness, he was invited onto lighthearted and relaxed art show Drawfee.
The prompt was simple: draw a Castlevania character in the style of
another show. Instead of following these simple instructions, Wan proceeds to animate
an ENTIRE 2 buttery-smooth seconds of Trevor Belmont in the style of The Owl
House. With a whip, no less! When working on Castlevania, they
literally coded a program to predict whip movements to make things easier on
the animators, and this guy just whips this out with no aid whatsoever. Everyone
else of course was aghast at this and asked him what he was possibly thinking.
They didn’t want him running himself into the ground for a fun little YouTube
video! He simply replied that he didn’t feel like the initial drawing he did
took enough time. Okay then, Spencer.
 |
| It should be illegal to do this in 4 hours |
Despite this crazy amount of work he puts into his passion, he’s surprisingly humble about it. You won’t catch him talking about his many achievements unless somebody else brings it up first; in that event, he’ll beam with pride and give them the praise they deserve. Even then, he tends to credit his team first. And for someone so utterly disciplined, he isn’t afraid to play around either: one of his trademark moves when interacting with others is to completely obliterate them with the worst non-sequitur puns ever. It seems he has to channel his creative energy somewhere when he’s not actively drawing…
Currently, Wan is working on visual development for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, alongside many as-yet-undisclosed projects of Studio Grackle. I bet they'll be just as outrageous as the man himself.
 |
| One more for the road! |
The work ethic of animmators absolutely amazes me. There is so much effort put in with only so much of a return. A four hour to two second ratio sounds like a painful experience to me, but it makes perfect sense for someone who is so obviously immensely driven. The combination of efficiency to put out that Trevor animation with the attention to detail seen in the Hades animation is unlike anything i've seen before, but i guess that duality is what makes him so special.
ReplyDelete