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The hilarious hazmat suited bunnies first introduced in Apple Original Films and Skydance Animation’s 2022 feature Luck take center stage in the studio’s latest animated short, Bad Luck Spot. Billed as an extension of the Luck universe, the new project finds the three lucky rabbits on a quest to save their magical world from a bit of bad luck.
Bad Luck Spot is directed by animation veteran Matt Youngberg, an Emmy- and Annie-nominated director and executive producer best known for his work as showrunner and EP of shows such as Disney’s DuckTales, Transformers: Animated and Ben 10: Omniverse as well as serving as storyboard artist and director on Batman Beyond and Teen Titans. We caught up with Youngberg to find out more about his recent adventure in the Land of Luck:
Animation Magazine: So Matt, congrats on your new short adventure. Can you tell us a bit aobut how you moved from DuckTales to the Luck Rabbits?
Matt Youngberg: So, I came over to Skydance after I finished DuckTales at Disney in 2021. I saw there was this opportunity to push myself creatively in a way that I hadn’t done before. I have have been doing 2D, TV animation for so long and I’ve always had this love for computer animation. So I knew I couldn’t pass this up. When I came to Skydance, I began working in development, and then the opportunity to work on this short came up. I jumped at it because we have a new studio and whole new animation pipeline, which provided me with a great boot camp.
So, the movie Luck was already in production when you started on the short.
Yes, they already knew they wanted a short about the bunnies. Everyone on the crew loves these bunny characters, and there’s a lot of fun built around them already. I worked a little bit with some of the key players from the movie, especially a lot of the people who worked day to day on it. It gave us a great chance to guide them in the story and also for me to learn from it. It allowed me to feel more familiar and comfortable with the show studio.
How many people worked on the short and how long did it take?
I don’t know if I could tell you the exact number, but we started really small. It was just me and two or three storyboard artists, just sitting around and coming up with ideas. Then, the animators and layout and lighting team came on board. But it was still a relatively small crew, no more than a dozen. It took us about six to eight months to finish the short.
What did you love most about working on this project?
I loved the fact that we were able to tell a new story with new characters. I always love trying something new. This short gave us the chance to explore the Land of Luck and see some more of it, while making it feel like a classic cartoon with modern sensibilities. The short was set in the land that was created for the movie, which meant we had certain constraints. But it was fun to play with what we had and push the cartoony elements before it breaks.
It really helped to have the bunnies in hazmat suits, and we could accentuate their buoyancy without them getting hurt. We could push the comedy and use squash and stretch and rely on old-school types of gags within a modern context.
What would you say were your biggest challenges?
We were dealing with the studio’s team in Spain while we were in L.A. Of course, everyone’s used to working remotely these days. They were very easy to work with, and we found a way to make the difference in time zones work for us. Sometimes it can feel like the rest of the team is far away, but we’ve all got used to the remote working. I remember we had to stop going to the studio back when I was working on DuckTales at Disney. We had to find a way to make that work.
Now that you have had your first taste of a big studio CG project, what do you love about it and what drives you nuts about it?
Since the very early days, I’ve always loved to learn animation and devoured it. One of the things I love is its consistency and stability. Even if you’re doing realistic rendering, you can do amazing things, more so than ever before. But, there are limitations. It is easier sometimes if you want to change an expression on a character to just draw on it. You can change the expression intuitively. There is a little bit more limitation on how you can change a character’s expression. You can’t just draw your way out of problems — but you have a lot of really smart people who have to jump in and tackle a problem!
What is your take on the unpredictable, fast-changing world of animation in 2023?
For many of us, it’s a familiar world. Animation has always been pushing technology forward, from the early days of black-and-white shorts to the multi-plane camera, etc. There’s so many things that animation has done that you don’t get in live-action feature films. I’ve worked for over 20 years in animation, and I’ve seen a lot of cycles and changes. I think when there’s constant news coverage about all the changes, it feels pretty crazy. But you just have to look at it as another cycle. We just adapt and keep our eyes on focused on creation.
As long as we are creatively true to ourselves and put ourselves into these characters and stories, audiences will connect with them.
Bad Luck Spot is available to stream on Apple TV+ and on the platform’s YouTube channel.
