Sydney Bright knows a thing or two about what it takes to make animation special. Her career in the animation industry began with her role in primetime animation at Bento Box Entertainment. Bright was tasked with managing in-house design and animation teams for acclaimed shows like FOX’s Emmy Award-winning series, Bob’s Burgers.
As the Co-Head of Global Animation at Wattpad WEBTOON Studios, Bright is now at the forefront of adapting original material into feature-length films and series. In an effort to always keep herself busy, Bright is also an animation professor at Loyola Marymount’s School of Film and Television where she teaches several courses.
We sat down with Bright to discuss what it takes to bring original intellectual property to life, the evolution of animation technology, and what makes her job so damn fun.
Matthew Swigonski: When did your interest in animation start?
Sydney Bright: I fell in love with animation and its ability to kind of suck you in and transport you into a world. There’s 24 frames in a second, right? So there are 24 still images that make up one second of something moving. In order to have that happen, you have to make the lines, you have to decide the pixels and what the color is. I always thought breathing life into something in the way that animation does is something just so magical. So I was captivated by that as a kid.
Early on, I thought I would be an animator. I thought I would be a storyboard director. I went to school for animation, I realized very quickly, I did not want to be a storyboard director [laughs]. My hat is off to everyone who sits in front of a Cintiq all day and can kind of jam out those panels, but that was not me. But I always knew I wanted to be really on the storytelling side. So I think I’m really fortunate in the sense that I found my way.
I think growing up when you’re younger, you don’t really realize how many people It takes on a production to actually get something made and how many jobs exist. If you watch the credits at the end of an animated film, there are hundreds of people who worked on that.
Matthew Swigonski: So you talked about those Disney cartoons, was there one show or maybe one person in particular that impacted you the most?
Sydney Bright: I would say the classic Disney films. When you think about [Disney’s] Nine Old Men and that pioneering of the Disney animation, the way we think of it now. That’s just so fluid and beautiful. That obviously sparked my interest. I think the comedic timing of Chuck Jones and the Looney Tunes camp…how do you not love that?
And obviously that has so much of its DNA splattered all over prime time, comedy animation. [Hayoa] Miyazaki’s a very easy one to point to because who doesn’t love the artistry and just the whimsical storytelling? But I also think Satoshi Kon is so great at kind of frame cinematic storytelling in the way that, if you watch a Hitchcock movie and anywhere you pause it, you’re like man, the composition of that framing is so impactful.
I feel like Satoshi does a very similar job. Watch Perfect Blue or Paprika and then you go back and watch Inception and Black Swan and you’re like ‘Oh okay, I see a lot of parallels here.’
Sydney Bright On The ‘Connective Tissue’ In Animation
Matthew Swigonski: Animation has come a long way in terms of inclusivity. Do you think enough is being done in recent years or do you feel like more can be done?
Sydney Bright: I think animation has done a lot better job but I think there’s still so much ground to be covered. And I think some of that is partially because of where the marketplace has sat for so long.
On the feature side, it’s been four quadrant family features, which are going to be inclusive, family-watching opportunities. I think we’ve seen good strides with Encanto and Coco. I think Coco is phenomenal. The Spider-Verse franchise has so much inclusivity which is fantastic. I think live-action counterparts, because they get to tell more stories in horror, drama, and those other genre spaces, have been able to expand and have more inclusivity. I think animation is a few years behind,
In terms of what Webtoon Studio does, I think it’s allowed us to have such a diverse slate and lean into the audience and the fandom to help amplify those voices. So I think the marketplace is really trying. I think creatives are really trying. There’s always going to be more room to grow and to do better. We’re proud of the slate that we’ve built because I think it represents a lot of that change and momentum moving forward.
Matthew Swigonski: Is Into The Spider-Verse now the gold standard in terms of animation? Do you think production companies try to shoot their own version of that movie?
Sydney Bright: I think that really did break the mold. Spider-Verse put us into an animation multiverse where we’re not as confined anymore. I think people have higher expectations in terms of that authentic representation and also the visual style. I think it’s the gold standard in the sense of just continued pursuits of making sure that you’re, you’re telling stories with real characters that people actually care about. And I think sometimes people get so caught up in the fact that it’s animation and it looks beautiful. That you forget that at the end of the day, you still have to care about these characters.
You still have to care about the world, you have to want to be invested in this place. Not just because it looks beautiful. But because you’re connected to that story. I think they’re just a great stepping stone and what will continue to be a phenomenal evolution of animation and the ability to progress forward, both from a visual perspective and a continuation of storytelling.
Matthew Swigonski: You just touched on it. But in your mind, what’s the primary thing that elevates animation into something truly special?
Sydney Bright: I think it is that real connective tissue. I mean, animation already has such a unique ability to kind of transcend and take you somewhere else. Think about a show like South Park, it’s a bunch of [school kids] dropping f-bombs and saying things that are really offensive. But you aren’t as offended because there’s a level of suspended reality that happens with animation where you’ve kind of bought in. So I think you have to first sweep that audience away. You have to have that buy-in and lean in where you feel like you have been taken to this other place. In order to stay there and not tap out, you have to connect to the characters.
You have to care about them. Whether you care to hate them, or you care to love them, or you care to laugh at them or laugh with them. Going back to Looney Tunes, they were hilarious. You wanted to know what Bugs Bunny was doing. You wanted to know what shenanigans he was pulling on Yosemite Sam. And you wanted to see all of the mayhem that just would ensue because you cared about the characters. It was so fun and you were leaning in. So I think for something to be great in animation, it has to sweep you away, and then it has to emotionally connect to you in some way.
The Past, Present, and Future State Of Animation
Matthew Swigonski: So you talked about Looney Tunes, you talked about South Park, then all the way to Into The Spider-Verse. Do you think with the advancement in technology, teaching animation is still the same? Are the core principles still the same or is teaching animation evolving?
Sydney Bright: As technology evolves. I think that core principles are still the same. If you went to school for animation, you’ve probably done the bouncing ball test. Which is basically the exploration of what squash and stretch looks like. You squash a ball down flat and then pop it up and kind of its full form. But when you play that back in real-time, it just looks like it’s bouncing and has more fluidity to it. So I think those technical skills will always be foundational to understanding how animation works in the same way that figure drawing will always be fundamental for character designers and storyboard artists to really understand the weight of characters in space.
I think we’re at that precipice of ‘how do we utilize the technological tools that are available to us today?’ I don’t think we’ve fully figured that out in the production process or in the teaching realm. But I’m excited. I think we’re at a cool place. I’m looking forward to seeing what that next step will be.
Matthew Swigonski: I mean speaking of the advancement of technology, AI is certainly the hot-button topic these days. How do you think it’s going to impact animation?
Sydney Bright: From an animation production process, I think AI will definitely have an impact. I think it will probably have an impact everywhere, but at the end of the day, it’s still a tool. In the animation production pipeline that will be beneficial, that can help expedite things. And allow artists to focus on art as opposed to kind of Focusing on. ‘How do we optimize the production process?’ In terms of Wattpad Webtoon Studios, we’re a creator-first company and we always will be. On the webtoon side, we already have a tool available to our artists. It’s an AI painting tool that allows them to paint things faster. Just optimizing their time so that they can focus more on story and drafting the characters. As opposed to the paint bucket [laughs].
The world is changing. We’re always developing new technology and that’s not new to right now. If you go back as far back as… now this is an old reference that you might have to look up but Gertie The Dinosaur. It was an animated pencil test where a guy basically did it on paper. All these drawings of a long neck dinosaur and he physically tossed up a melon or a pumpkin off screen and then the dinosaur caught it. This is back when audio was not synced with Video yet. That was revolutionary at the time. Technology will always be a part of our lives. How do we embrace it and use it as a tool so the creatives can continue to spend their time and effort on the fun creating part?
Matthew Swigonski: What do you look for in terms of trying to find the most promising IP?
Sydney Bright: We have a responsibility to our audience. If a billion people have read about a little pink lady and a hunky blue guy. There’s probably some importance to us servicing those titles for adaptation. The Lore Olympus fandom is one that is impossible to escape from in the best way possible. So I think we definitely look at those titles. But the other piece is finding titles on the platform that we love and that has all of those pieces that we talked about. Having the emotional beats, having the characters that we become really invested in. Those are the titles that we can easily see that there’s a path forward for this.
Matthew Swigonski: What’s something that when you go home you just can’t believe you’re actually doing this for a living?
Sydney Bright: I joke all the time that when things get stressful, I’m like, ‘We make cartoons for a living.’ I have the best job in the whole world. Here specifically at Wattpad Webtoon Studios, just having the opportunity to call someone and say, ‘Hey, we want to make this into an animated show.’ For someone to get choked up on a Zoom call because it wasn’t even in the realm of something that they ever thought was possible. Those types of calls are the coolest thing to get to do in the whole world. That’s the coolest stuff. Getting people excited because they know we’re excited about their projects.