JYN: Often we choose the director in the animation studio according to their specialty and making sure that it fits for us. If we have two tentpole episodes that look a certain way then we want to make sure that those episodes are going to look vastly different from each other. So you’ll go to a studio that, say, if you have a realistic science fiction one, then you want to go to a studio that might be able to do stop motion for another story instead. Not every studio does all these different things well. You need to find their thing.
It’s important for us, especially for this series, to make sure that we’re really showcasing the whole breadth of animation. What you can do with it and to see the limits and beyond of what these new innovative styles can be. And sometimes these directors are very much pioneers in what they do and no one else is doing what they do. That’s why we end up working with them.
TM: We push it in the initial direction and then the directors come in and do their pitch. They’ll build off of the initial concept. So when it comes to, let’s say, design the characters, we let them take their best shot at doing that and try to give them as much freedom or rope to hang themselves – if you prefer – as we can.
Building off of that, Tim, your “Golgotha” segment is really wonderful, but also has the series explore live action territory. How did live action fall on this segment and is that something that you could see more of in Love, Death + Robots’ future?
MILLER: Part of it is me just saying, “Look, we can do anything we want, motherfuckers!” So it’s just planting a stake there, but I’d love to do a whole series of, like a live action version of Love, Death + Robots because I like that format. I love animation, but I also like visual effects and I think you could make a case for doing a story that required some really innovative and cutting-edge visual effects to tell the story. But that one just felt right. You know, a lot of times the story speaks to you in a–not in a mystical way, but just a way that feels right to tell that story. Live action felt like the most grounded, right way to tell “Golgotha.”
Jennifer, one of the exciting things about a show that’s now in its fourth batch of episodes is that there’s an opportunity to tell sequels and return to past worlds, like with “Spider Rose.” How did you decide that this specific story was an old idea that you wanted to build upon, rather than another past entry?
