Posted on February 18, 2025

Max Steel vs. the Toxic Legion, 2010

On this, my third annual Max Steel movie, I achieved something I never thought possible.

When Producer Audu Paden reviewed my storyboard, he gave me NO REVISION NOTES.

If you’ve ever worked for Audu, you know that’s a monumental achievement. If not, some context is required to help you understand why.

As recounted in previous outings, I met Audu back in the fall of 1996 when I was looking for an animation job and he was about to begin his role as the supervising producer of Extreme Ghostbusters for Sony Animation. I didn’t have a lot of experience back then, but he needed storyboard artists and my meager portfolio passed muster, so he brought me on board.

We fought the ghost wars together for the next year, and I received a “battlefield promotion” when he decided that I (and a few other beginners) had the chops to be a director. I had a knack for it, and my work made his job a little easier, so he put me in an “advanced mentoring” track that laid the foundation for my entire subsequent career.

When I made creative choices, I guessed right most of the time, but I was never 100% right. Revision notes kept on coming. Even on later shows we worked on together, they never let up. Neither I nor anyone else ever got it 100% right, no matter how much skill we brought to the table. The best we could do was learn from the notes he gave us, identify patterns, break bad habits, and eventually get final approval when deadline day came. If not for the deadline, there may have been even more revisions.

This created in me a determination to one day reach that coveted 100% mark. So many times I thought, “This is the one. This board will get me there. He can’t possibly find anything wrong this time.” And then revision notes came at me anyway. My solace was that my success rate was at least consistently high, over 90%. Getting to 100 sort of turned into a game. Playing that game meant I was constantly improving my craft.

What I learned in retrospect was that achieving 100% really wasn’t the point of all this. Getting everything “right” wasn’t really even the point. The point was being flexible and open to new ideas rather than stuck on what came out of my head. In some cases, Audu spotted technical errors or storytelling mistakes. But in other cases, he saw the seed of an idea and came up with a way to make it bloom bigger. In other words, he saw greater potential. Which is exactly what a creative person is supposed to do.

It takes a while to recognize the value of that when you’re on the receiving end of revision notes, because getting them means you haven’t reached the finish line. That can be discouraging, especially near the start of your career where you still get notes on really basic stuff that you haven’t quite learned yet. Nobody likes to be reminded that they aren’t perfect. It can make you feel lost and inadequate. But one of the slices on the professional “pie chart” is labeled “humility.” If you don’t have it coming in, it will be handed to you in the form of revision notes.

By the time I moved on from Sony Animation and began working for other studios (2003), I’d learned just about everything Audu could teach me. When I applied it to other productions, I understood exactly how valuable it all was. I got to work for Audu many more times on projects that came and went, and he was always happy to have me back even though he still had to give me revision notes. After all, I made his job easier.

Our Max Steel collaborations began when he brought me in to storyboard the 5th movie, Bio Crisis, in 2007. Two years later, we got to the 7th movie, Toxic Legion. I received the script and all the reference material and got to work. I knew the world, I knew the characters, and the scenes came to me quickly. Some time in the month of December, I reached a point where the whole storyboard was ready and I sat down with Audu for the review. Our routine was well-worn by now. He’d flip through the pile and I’d stand by with a post-it pad to jot down his notes and stick them to the pages.

He kept flipping. And flipping. And flipping. Occasional questions came up, I’d answer them, and he went back to flipping. The pile got smaller…and smaller…and smaller. And then the last page…and that was it.

An entire 45-minute movie. NO REVISION NOTES.

We gave each other the same look of amazement.

100%. I’d finally done it. It was a first for both of us.

That didn’t mean there would be no changes. After all, this was just the first review. Others would happen after the storyboard was converted to an animatic, combined with the voice recordings, and shown to higher-ups at Mattel. Of course, new ideas would pop up and be filtered back to me. Scenes would be cut or restructured for various reasons. Further revisions would be made on the fly (by other artists) once the animation got started. But that just comes with the territory.

The true victory here was that I’d finally given my mentor 100% of what he was looking for on the first try. I’ve worked with him on other things since then, and never achieved that level again. But I’d proven it was possible, and once was enough.

Ultimately, these years of experience made me a more conscientious director. Being hyper aware of the effect revision notes can have on a member of my team makes me more attentive. First, revisions can’t be arbitrary – every choice needs some logic behind it. Second, they need to improve on what was offered, not just be different. Third, and most important, they need to be explained in a way that doesn’t discourage the recipient.

In other words, revision notes should never be perceived as punishment. Rather than “you got this wrong,” the framing needs to be “here’s another way to do it.” Then the logic muscle kicks in. Maybe a different camera angle would make the scene clearer. Maybe different staging would make it easier to animate. Maybe a character performance is inconsistent with other scenes. Or, and this is a big one, maybe seeing the path they went down helped me to visualize a whole different path.

There have been times when an artist turned in a storyboard to me that ended up not getting used at all. But here’s the thing: they still performed a valuable service, even if not a single frame survived. How? By helping me (as the director) to see a stronger path that I might not have found on my own. Then it’s incumbent upon me to communicate that this was not a failure by the artist whose work I just tossed out. And that’s hard. I haven’t always succeeded in achieving that goal. But maybe one day I’ll get to 100%. I know it’s possible.