Among the many animated gems unspooling at the Ottawa Intl. Animation Festival is indie artist Julian Glander’s self-produced feature, Boys Go to Jupiter. Animated entirely in Blender, the surreal coming-of-age story follows the adventures of a teenager (voiced by Jack Corbett) who hustles his way to making $5,000 by delivering food via the app Grubster! Oh, and he also makes friend swith a blue, donut-shaped alien who’s being hunted by juice mogul Dr. Dolphin (voiced by Janeane Garofalo)! Glander, who previously directed projects for Adult Swim, Cartoon Network HBO Max, and Disney and created the video game Art Sqoool, and made the acclaimed short Plant Room with Jeron Braxton, answered a few of our burning questions about his innovative new movie:
Animation Magazine: Congrats on the success of your wonderful and highly original new movie. Can you tell us about how it all came to be?
Julian Glander: During the depths of pandemic lockdown, I was spending a lot of time on Google Street View for some reason. I grew up in Tampa and zooming around Florida in 3D really made me feel like I was back there, in a dark digital way. It was easy to fall back into the mindset of a 16-year-old. The core ideas of the movie kind of emerged from that mindset. It’s a surreal story that takes some crazy turns, but it’s also a somewhat grounded ode to the odd jobs I had as a teenager.
When did you start working on it and how many people worked on it with you?
The main team of the movie is me and my best friend Peisin Yang Lazo, who worked as a producer, and we each did the jobs of about 100 people. A few local animators here in Pittsburgh did some of the character animation, and of course we had the best voice cast ever contributing to the movie. The credits are like 10 seconds long, what can I say, we kept it lean.
How long did it take to finish?
It took four years — a huge chunk of that was writing the script. Production was really fast once everything started moving. During the rough animation phase, which was the most intense part, I did 1 minute of animation per day for 90 days straight.
Which animation tools did you use?
Blender! Amazing program, amazing community. So many times throughout production I turned to the Blender forums for help. Really can’t say enough good things about it.
What were your biggest challenges?
One thing that was giving me nightmares at the time was getting the cast recorded. We did all the voiceover in the weeks leading up to the SAG strike last year. We were really scrambling, there was a fear that if we didn’t get the performances we might never get another chance. So I just have to give it up to my actors for getting on board with this. Jack Corbett plays the main character and sings five songs in the movie, and we only had him in the booth for 8 hours total. I look back and I’m like, wow that’s amazing!
What was the biggest lesson learned in the process of making the movie?
I ended up developing a workflow that I really liked which involved bouncing around a lot. A nice thing about a massive project is, there are always 100 things to do. So any time I was stuck on something, I would switch into another section of the movie. There were a few shots in the movie that I really wasn’t happy with, and I kept trying different things and nothing felt right. So I just left them alone for a few months. And of course in that time you have new experiences, learn new things, and when you come back to it it’s not so difficult. It’s a great way to work if you have the luxury of time and the autonomy to make changes.
What do you hope audiences will take away from the movie?
I’ve been really enjoying reading reviews and writeups from festivals : I know I shouldn’t even be looking at them. It’s cool to see what people are getting out of the film. Boys Go to Jupiter is a coming-of-age story about finding beauty and joy in mundane and bleak circumstances, and it’s an examination of capitalism and techno-feudalism and the hard choices those systems put on us. I see that resonating with people. I’ve also heard from a number of people who saw the movie and want to start learning Blender or make their own feature film, and I say “Yes, yes, yes, please go for it.
Biggest animation influences?
Gumby, The Point, the Charlie Brown animated specials, Rankin Bass, the claymation Frog and Toad series, let’s get Gumby in there one more time for good measure.
When was the first time you knew you wanted to get into animation?
I remember making flip-books as a kid, and loving cartoons, but what kid doesn’t. It took me a while to get into it career-wise. I went to school for creative writing and started making GIFs for fun after I graduated, just little moving drawings to post on tumblr. And those GIFs eventually expanded into short films, and short films turned into TV projects, and then wow here we are at a crisp 90 minute cartoon.
Your take on the big animation scene in 2024?
I live in Pittsburgh and I’m pretty disconnected from “the industry” but I really like what’s happening at the DIY level. The decades-long promise of animation being democratized by new technology is finally coming true, in weird ways. Everyone should check out the small screening series that have been popping up all over the place: Malt Adult, Loose Frames, Softscreen, there are tons of them and often they have more of a house party/underground show feeling.
For more info about the artist, visit glander.co and glander.co/filter/Animation/BOYS-GO-TO-JUPITER.
