In Netflix’s comedy-drama Carol & the End of the World, a rogue planet is hurtling towards Earth. Imminent death is completely unavoidable. Most of humanity races to the heights of hedonism as they attempt to live their last days to the absolute fullest. But not Carol.
Despite the urging of those around her, Carol just wants to continue with her regular routine. At the end of everything, she finally achieves connection and understanding with like-minded people, and starts to live for the first time – on her own quiet, mild-mannered terms. Animated by Bardel Entertainment, Carol & the End of the World is a very unusual animated series, in the very best way.
We had the chance to speak with Bardel Entertainment’s Johnny Tesoro (head of animation) about the subtle animation in Carol & the End of the World, unlikely heroines, and creating an apocalypse story during a global pandemic.
Johnny: Sometimes we have varying asks from clients. Sometimes they provide a script and then we do everything else.
[Netflix] had an art director on their side. They had a storyboard team on their side, so we did everything we call post pre-production. So backgrounds, builds, character, animation, effects, animation, and compositing and editorial. Which is very similar to how we contribute on Rick and Morty and Solar Opposites.
And then for character animation, that’s relatively obvious. We do all the posing and animation for the effects. Sometimes there would be a very specific effect that the client was looking for, and they would provide a design. But a lot of times our effects team was just tasked with doing some research and development on our own.
And our magic trick to the audience is not to reveal that we’re doing a cut out pipeline, so that requires a lot of hand drawing. Not every single piece of the characters are redrawn. But really we’re really judicious about redrawing hands, for example, or facial features, or torsos, to give it a really three-dimensional feeling that you would see more in a live action or 3D pipeline.
Johnny: I’m very pleased that that’s your reaction. Because if there was a moment of doubt in your mind that it was a cut out pipeline, and we’ve done our jobs correctly.
I have to also acknowledge the power of Toon Boom Harmony when it comes to character animation. Because a lot of times when we’re doing nuanced details in performance, especially for acting. The use of deformers and the way Harmony allows us to rig allows us to have a really high quality performance that you wouldn’t get in any other software.
And that just keeps on getting better and better. We recently saw a demonstration for Harmony 24, and how amazing the power of these new deformers are! And we were still already relatively happy with what was already existing in Harmony 20, and currently in 21 for us. I think the power of Harmony allows creators and studios like us to be able to tell stories that you wouldn’t normally be able to tell in other software.
Johnny: It was refreshing to try something different in mood and tone from what we’re used to seeing in the animation medium.
In my opinion, though, I don’t think there was a connection between the pandemic and the story. The way we were telling the story was at the forefront of our minds. We were doing the work during the pandemic. There’s a lot of uncertainty. And working was a welcome distraction during that time. So I think we were just focused on making something beautiful and really artful.
But Carol’s story is more about finding a place to fit in, despite the chaos of her situation. She finds a tribe of like-minded people who are coping with their impending doom the same way, with distraction and repression.
I think the parallel with the pandemic is a little limited, because in the real world we all had hope. In the end we all had hope for a vaccine. We all hoped that this was going to be temporary. Carol’s story is more about how we would behave if there was no hope. But entertainment during the pandemic was our industry’s calling, and we hope we provided some much-needed levity at that time.
Johnny: You know, it was really refreshing that the creator decided to use a female lead in this story. And also a middle-aged woman. And a woman who has a very flat affect.
Especially in the beginning of her arc, she suffers from depression. From an animation point of view, she’s very muted and understated. And so that’s the antithesis of cartoony movements, which is what most animators are used to animating. So we had to find a way to make her interesting, yet still be true to her stoicism.
However, her character arc changes, and she becomes more animated – pardon the pun – as the series progresses. It was really really fun and amazing to try and change the way she behaves from the first episode to the last. A lot of us enjoyed having her on a motorcycle and surfing around the world. That was a very compelling and gratifying way to approach the animation.
In character animation, for example, we always are looking for accents in the dialogue. It changes in volume, changes in tone. And with Carol, she’s just really, really flat. We would talk a lot about it in meetings. How do we make her still interesting?
She’s the lead character. Is the audience going to gravitate towards her? Are they going to be repulsed by her because she is so flat? And the solution we found was the juxtaposition between her and the more animated characters, like Louise, who’s just a ball of positivity. That was a lot of fun.
I love food, so I’m going use a food analogy. It’s like a pie. You have a little bit of salt to make the sweet taste even sweeter. What made the overall sequences and scenes more compelling was showing her play across her parents, for example, in the first episode. They’re nudists.
