Max Steel: Bio Crisis, 2008
The last time we checked in on Max Steel, he was the star of a clunky CG-animated TV series that ran from 2000 to 2002. (Click here for the ‘memberberries.) I drew storyboards for four episodes and then went on my merry way to other shows and other studios.
But good ol’ Max was not idle during this time. His TV series was produced by Sony, but originated with Mattel, the toy company that made the 12″ action figures and the toys that went with them. Sales were tepid in the US, but overwhelming in Mexico and Brazil despite higher-than-usual price points. To everyone’s surprise, owning Max Steel toys became a status symbol among the kids there. This poured new fuel into the gas tank and motivated Mattel to start producing a series of “longform” projects (This is an industry buzzword for a mini-movie about the length of two TV episodes, up to an hour.)
Starting in 2003, these became annual events. Mattel set up its own animation wing to create content with a Canadian CG studio named Rainmaker as a physical production partner. What that meant in terms of day-to-day work is that scripts were developed, written, and storyboarded on the American side (along with toy-based design work), the digital stuff happened on the Canadian side (modeling, animation, and output), and post-production (editing and sound) returned to the American side. (With a Spanish dub made later.)
The polite word for this is “international co-production.” The direct term is “runaway production,” which has been a reality for US animation ever since Asia became the world’s go-to hub. American studios also produce CG animation, but Canada got a head start with Reboot in 1994 and has held the crown ever since.
On the other hand, since US-based animation cultivated a strong storyboarding culture long before Canada, we always had a larger talent pool that gave us the edge. That balance has shifted alarmingly in the time since, and since Canada is cheaper on average, “runaway production” is now openly embraced in the post-Covid era. But that’s a story for another day. Let’s return to 2004 and see what’s going on with Max and his pals.
That was the year of the first Max Steel longform episode, titled Endangered Species (from here I’ll drop the word “longform” and just call it a movie). It essentially picked up where the TV Series left off, pitting N-Tek against various evildoers bent on ruining Earth’s climate. More of these adventures followed with enough regularity to set your watch by: Forces of Nature (2005), Countdown (2006), and Dark Rival (2007).
Various members of the creative team came and went, but a few became regulars. Greg Richardson, for example, became the regular director. That job title works a little differently in CG animation than in 2D animation. In 2D (hand-drawn cartoons), the director is chiefly responsible for transforming a script into storyboards to be animated. In CG, the director oversees the process of transforming storyboards into the animation itself. Some people, like Greg, can do both. It’s very helpful to have both skills sets in that job.
With the fifth Max Steel movie, Bio Crisis (2008) Audu Paden joined the team as a producer. If you’ve read about my Sony Animation days, you’ve seen Audu’s name before. He was my first TV cartoon mentor, enlisting me to draw storyboards on Extreme Ghostbusters and subsequently direct episodes of Godzilla, Heavy Gear, and Spider-Man TNAS. We endured a lot together on those shows and others (including our first movie, Stuart Little 3 and a challenging stint at Nickelodeon). That’s why, when Audu needed a storyboard artist to leap into the fray with him, he called me.
It was late 2007, and I was in the midst of Shaggy & Scooby Doo Get a Clue at Warner Brothers. I really needed something to work on that wasn’t Shaggy and Scooby Doo, and Audu really needed me on Max Steel, so it was good timing for us both.
Bio Crisis was to be about the length of two TV episodes, and I was going to storyboard it solo. To date, it would be the longest single piece I was responsible for, though I storyboarded all of my Heavy Gear episodes myself, so it was no more difficult than putting two of them together.
There were new characters and props in the movie, but it also made heavy use of previously-designed assets, since that’s where you get your real savings in CG animation. To explain, every time you see the Ecto-1 in a Ghostbusters cartoon, somebody had to draw it. Every time you see the N-Tek jet in a Max Steel story, it’s exactly the same CG model, like a prop pulled out of a warehouse. You can argue about which one is more interesting to look at, but you can’t argue with the economics.
This is why any time a new asset is designed as a model, you look for every possible opportunity to use it again. Over time, this practice created a “sameness” to the look of the Max Steel movies, which is inevitable. The way you balance that is by designing strong scenes to plug the assets into; unique and dynamic camera angles, dramatic lighting, and all the other film tricks in the toolbox. This is where you need an experienced storyboard artist to step in. I’d put one up against A.I. any day of the week.
Below is the complete movie, which I storyboarded from end to end. I didn’t preserve the storyboard itself, but this was only the beginning of a multi-year relationship between me and Max Steel, so there’s plenty to come.
BONUS
At this point, Mattel’s action plan for Max Steel had two paths: the regular yearly movie and a new series of short features called Turbo Adventures. These would run for 90 seconds each and would highlight a character or piece of Turbo Gear to be sold as a toy. If you wanted to be cynical, you could call them commercials masquerading as stories, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But they weren’t gonna storyboard themselves, so into the fray I went.
Shown below are all 14 of the Turbo missions released in 2008. I drew the storyboards for seven of these (indicated in red), and there would be plenty more Turbo Missions in my future. If I remember right, this was the first time my work ever went to widescreen 16 x 9 format, which was interesting. The production codes all start with a 5 since this project was grouped together with “movie 5.”