Bruce Timm has been involved with many of Warner Bros. Animation's recent hits. He has helped bring DC's heroes to a new level and helped introduce many characters to a new generation of viewers.
Here is a Q&A with Timm:
QUESTION:
There was no downtime for you and director Lauren Montgomery between
Wonder Woman and Green Lantern: First Flight. How did you two make
that quick transition, and what kept it fresh for you?
BRUCE TIMM:
Lauren did such a great job on Wonder Woman, she was immediately my
first choice for Green Lantern. I thought she might be a little
burned out after the massive Wonder Woman project, but to my immense
relief and gratefulness, she was eager to do it.
All that said, Lauren definitely needed to take a little bit of a
break in terms of character design and I wasn’t about to step up to
that role, either. The tricky thing about Green Lantern is that we
wanted to have a unique style sensibility. We've done quite a bit
with the Green Lantern and characters on the Justice League, including
the entire Green Lantern Corps, and we certainly didn’t want to go
back and reuse any of those designs. Another really talented young
artist named Jose Lopez, who had worked with Mike Goguen and Jeff
Matsuda on the recent The Batman series, was brought to our attention.
I looked at his portfolio and I thought, “Wow, this guy is really
cool.”
Jose has a completely different design sensibility than I'm accustomed
to working with. He's a little bit anime-flavored, but not
specifically anime. We brought him in to do some designs on Green
Lantern, and he ended up being pretty much our entire character design
department. He designed not just Green Lantern and most of the major
characters but zillions of background aliens. Jose brought a really
unique visual sensibility to the movie.
Did you need to restrain Jose Lopez in any way, or did you just let
him run wild with the character design?
BRUCE TIMM
This is a total science fiction film – we spend maybe 10 minutes on
Earth at the beginning of the movie and then the rest of it all takes
place in outer space and in several different alien environments. So
while we did base the initial, broad strokes design on pre-existing
comics characters, we still needed armies of Green Lanterns and tons
of aliens. Jose designed virtually all of them – literally hundreds of
unique alien species for all of these different polyglot worlds. And
they are all really cool. I mean, some of the designs are really out
there. Sometimes they’d hand me his designs and I’d say, “Wow, what
am I even looking at? That’s a sentient being? You’ve got to be
kidding me.” It’s funny because both Lauren and I encouraged him to
think way outside the box. And he did – maybe further than we even
imagined. Jose came up with some really weird, bizarre life forms and
they’re all good.
You’ve always been the driving, controlling influence on your projects
in terms of all aspects of the production, and especially design. Are
you enjoying letting go of the reins slightly and allowing other
artists to explore new directions with these films?
BRUCE TIMM:
The nature of these projects, and the sheer volume of films we’re
working on now, means that my involvement must be in an overseeing
capacity – guiding and supervising, but not leading the way
design-wise. That’s both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it's
really great to let somebody else come in and drive the boat. On the
other hand, my instincts are to step in and say, “No, do it this way.”
So it’s tough to just limit myself to giving notes purely on a
technical level, to only say “Okay, I know that’s not going to animate
that well.” Otherwise, whether it's Lauren or Jose, other artists will
do things in a way that’s completely different from what my natural
instinct would be. It may be valid in its own right to say “No, let's
do it the Bruce Timm way,” but I literally have to stop and think
“Okay, forget about the way I would do it. Does this work on its own?”
I just have to be practical about it and not aesthetic. It's
ultimately really rewarding and fun for me to look at these movies
because it's interesting to see other people's design approach. I've
been working with these familiar characters for so many years – it’s
nice to see them interpreted differently.
You and Alan Burnett have been working together for a long, long time.
What's that relationship like, and what does he bring that makes
these projects so special?
BRUCE TIMM:
Alan is the quiet man of Warner Brothers Animation and, to a degree, I
feel bad because he doesn’t really get enough credit for all that he
has done over the years – going all the way to Batman: The Animated
Series and all these shows he's worked on since. He actually kind of
prefers to stay in the background and just do his job and not get in
front of the cameras and go to conventions and speak in front of
crowds. He doesn't enjoy that aspect of it. He’s never been about
tooting his own horn, but he’s always been the rock on our projects.
Alan is the stabilizer. I think it was Glen Murakami who referred to
Alan as the glue that binds everything together. And it's true. He’s a
really solid professional. He knows all the ins and outs of story
construction and character dynamics and then all of the extras that a
good writer knows to plus out a story. At the same time, he likes to
push himself to do things that he hasn’t done before and explore
different avenues of story lines. He's got a sense of humor that
sometimes comes out in really odd, unique ways. On BTAS, he would go
down story lines and even I would be saying, “Wow, you really want to
do THAT in a children's cartoon?” He’s funny that way – he likes to
upset the apple cart and take chances. So Alan is really solid and
dependable and at the same time he’s also very experimental. It’s
like the best of both worlds. That makes him the perfect collaborator
on these films.
For more information, images and updates, please visit the film’s
official website at www.greenlanternmovie.com
