Long Story Short, Netflix’s new animated comedy series from BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, uses a simple, graphic style to tell the story of one family, over time. The show jumps through the years as viewers follow the Schwooper siblings from childhood to adulthood and back again. The series chronicles their triumphs, disappointments, joys and compromises.
For Light Iron senior colorist Charles Bunnag (pictured), it was his prior work on the animated Netflix series My Dad the Bounty Hunter that led to working on
Long Story Short.
"Grading animation is essentially the same as live action," Bunnag shares. "In the end, it’s all about whatever looks good and tells the story. For me, this philosophy goes back to my art-school training, where I learned to see and break down every image in terms of its fundamental elements. Those fundamentals apply as much to animation as they do to live action."
Bunnag credits fellow colorist Pat Fitzgerald with his help on the show.
"The simple, direct style of Long Story Short pushed us to simplify our approaches to the grade and the specific tools we employed."
He points to one scene in which he needed to smooth the matching between characters standing in line for a movie.
"I first reached for Resolve’s Magic Mask, which is like an auto-roto, but the tool struggled with the stylized animation," he reveals. "Instead, I took a simpler approach with soft mattes, being careful the audience wouldn’t see the edges or gradients, and it worked."
Another challenge came in a rooftop scene, where characters are on opposite sides of a fireplace.
"I was tempted to add realistic glow and flicker, but any photoreal effects wouldn’t have felt right," Bunnag notes. "So, I resisted that urge and focused on simply lining up colors from shot to shot to ensure the animated firelight wouldn’t distract from the dialogue."
In animation, as in live action, Bunnag says he is not trying to impart my own vision onto the project.
"I have my own sensibilities, but I’m only going to use them to help the creatives tell their story. Once you build that trust and a relationship with the creative team, it gives them a sense of security knowing that, if and when they need to, they can take things further in the color grade."