Marvel Artist Will Sliney is in the Director's chair for the first time for Droid Academy, a new animated short made for RTÉjr. This weekend it gets its World Premiere at Animation Dingle.
We spoke to Will about his new work and another busy 12 months...
It's been a brilliant year so far with so many projects kicking off for me. For Marvel, I've worked on the Rise of Skywalker comic book which launched in February. I've had a how to draw book launch with Simon and Schuster. There is a new season of Draw With Will on Sky.
But finally, after a really fun year of creating it, Droid Academy is coming out, which is the start of our whole new universe of stories which will be Art Force.
So, how was directing?
So much fun. I'm obviously involved with everything art and storywise so I've been there from the very first sketches of our little droid. What a thrill it's been to see her come to life.
When it comes to Directing, I'm so used to telling stories as a comic book artist, so I did most of my directing when creating the storyboards. Just like I would approach a comic book page, the hard work is done when laying out the thumbnails of a page, here it was the art on the boards, and timing them all out. We used the animatic (the animated storyboards) then as a master guide throughout everything else.
Tell us about the project?
Droid Academy is part of RTÉjr's fabulous animated shorts initiative, the series this year is titled 'School's Out, which provides animators from all over Ireland with a great chance to create something special for TV. For us, this was an opportunity to move into 3D animation. We knew our story and character design was strong, and we had shown our 2D skills before, thankfully RTÉ took a chance on us moving into this new type of animation.
What I love about that, is that our move to 3D was all done using Blender, which is a free open source 3D software. All of my learning came from online tutorials, so it really is accessible to anyone. I would highly encourage any young animators out there to give it a go.
And what about the story?
We introuduce our droid, named 3DP, and she is inspired by all the artists out there who have that little bit of self doubt creeping in about their art. But your own positivity and belief can be something that shines through in your own art and even inspire others.
And is this the start of something new?
Yes. Absolutely. It's something we are more than excited to build on. I've built universes in Star Wars, in Spider-Man. This will be my own universe where we make art a Superpower. You will find out more about it very very soon!
Droid Academy will be coming to your screens this June, as part of the School's Out series from RTÉjr. The series will also feature animations from Boulder Media, D11 Stories, Flickerpix, Little Moon, Taunt and Wackala.
Nationwide spent the day with Will at home in Cork and follow him to his old stomping ground, Munster Technical University, where the School of Music record the soundtrack to Droid Academy.
Stream the show here on RTÉ Player
