Cover: Taking Flight poster

by James Cassettari.
This page: Style frame by
Kenny Callicutt.

Taking Flight 2015 Radio Flyer Inc. All Rights Reserved.

For more information please visit http://takingflightfilm.com
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of Moonbot Studios. Nor can this
publication be circulated in any other digital or printed form without similar permission. Inquiries can be sent to marketing@moonbotstudios.com.
Design by Chris McDonnell.

Intro 4
Storyboards 10
Tony 14
Nonno 16
Teddy 18
Props 20
Environments 22

Lead lighter Gordon Pinkerton assembles Radio Flyer wagons

for reference material.

Left to right: Robert Pasin, W.G. Snuffy Walden, Brandon

Oldenburg, Will Walden.

Brandon Oldenburg and lead animator John Durbin.

Asset artist Kendra Phillips rides a wagon at Moonbot Studios.

Play Collides With Imagination

An Interview with Brandon Oldenburg

Left to right: Lampton Enochs, Robert Pasin, Brandon

Oldenburg at Radio Flyer headquarters in Chicago

Taking Flight is a short film inspired by the life and heritage of Antonio Pasin, inventor of the Radio Flyer
wagon. In this fictional tribute to Pasins legacy, what begins as a small boys boring day with Grandpa turns
into a larger-than-life journey.
Directed by Brandon Oldenburg of Moonbot Studios, the film utilizes a variety of animation production techniques and draws on a recurring theme in the studios work: the universal magic beneath everyday life that
most of us take for granted and the triumph of the power of imagination. Oldenburg previously co-directed
the Academy Award-winning short The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, as well as the Emmy
Award-winning films The Scarecrow (with Chipotle Mexican Grill) and Silent (with Dolby Laboratories).

Brandon Oldenburg at Moonbot Studios in Shreveport, La.

4

Cartoon Brew: Taking Flight fits in so well with

Moonbots palette, mood, and tone

Lets start there. Taking Flight has very warm

colors, and a strong feeling of nostalgia.

Brandon Oldenburg: Thank you for saying that. We felt

that way when we first got the call from Robert Pasin
of Radio Flyer. Wait, did he just say Radio Flyer? At
that point, he kind of had us, and we started to riff on
what a story could be. Now, a good year and a half
later, weve got this short film.

Oldenburg: When we first started to dig into the history

of Radio Flyer, a couple of interesting things popped
up. One is that Antonio Pasin came into the U.S.
through Ellis Island as an Italian immigrant. And with a
few bucks in his pocket, he built an empire of wagons.
He first called it the Liberty Coaster up until moving
to Chicago and setting up business there. During the

Worlds Fair in 1933, he built a gigantic Art Deco sculpture of a boy riding in a wagon, at the base of which
was the actual shop where they built and sold miniature
wagons. It was great branding for his young company,
which exploded. They were selling over a thousand
wagons a day, even through the Great Depression,
because theyre a vessel for the imagination. Theyre
also utilitarian; you can use the wagons throughout
your whole life. The Radio Flyer has a Giving Tree
quality to it, recalling Shel Silversteins poem, a lyrical
tone that is really appealing.
The company is still owned by the family?
Like his father and grandfather before him, Robert
Pasin is now the CWO (Chief Wagon Officer) of Radio
Flyer. He reached out to Moonbot as a fan. We started
playing around with story ideas. Robert shared with us
their vast collection of old Radio Flyer catalogs from
the 30s, 40s, and 50s. They had some beautiful,
wonderfully amazing Deco imagery, which were all
evocative of that era of the Worlds Fair, which is totally

in Moonbots wheelhouse. One of the images in the

catalogs had a line drawing of this little kid, who I kept
feeling looked so familiar. So I started to go through all
of my favorite vintage cartoons, and I realized that the
kid reminded me of Gerald McBoing Boing and Chuck
Jones Ralph Phillips. And so we started thinking about
Ralph as sort of a cartoon take on Walter Mitty, as a
boy with a wonderful imagination, and fell right into our
memories as children playing with our minimal toys,
from cardboard boxes to sticks to wagons.

Brandon Oldenburg with environmental designer James

Cassettari.

For me, Taking Flight speaks to our need

to embrace simple moments where play
collides with imagination.

Brandon Oldenburg

And then I started to realize that, yeah, in some ways

Bill Watterson riffed off of Ralph Phillips in Calvin and
Hobbes, and hey, maybe Chuck Jones had a Radio
Flyer and saw that little kid in the catalog. And so
I just started to use this sort of detective sense to
trace back the lineage of this style and tone, and pay
homage to that with one foot in the future and one foot
in the past.
All of this was playing into the creation of Taking Flight.
Every step of this project was so pleasurable and
5

Its interesting how Taking Flight reverts to this

2D approach when venturing into the imaginary
worlds of fantasy and sci-fi, but when it is rooted
in present reality, its all in CGI.
Oldenburg: Yeah, we still wanted to make sure it
popped. There was a bit of reference to the dancing
penguins and carousel in the park sequences from
Mary Poppins, where live-action mixed seamlessly with
the Disney style of background painting. So we intentionally chose to keep CG for our main characters, but
go with a more graphic style for everything else.
Can you talk a bit about the production design
and process of the transition scenes, and some of
their complications?

This spread: Catalog images

from the Radio Flyer archives.

exciting, and tapped directly into our mission as a company, which is if you can dream it, you can do it.

Did those early visual influences play a role in

the final look of the film?

Moonbot is a homegrown studio in Louisiana

between Hollywood and New York, making
homegrown animation. Its such a great
American story.

Oldenburg: Well, when I was looking at Ralph Phillips, I

was wondering who was doing the backgrounds and,
of course, it was Maurice Noble doing the layout. We
have a recently published book of Nobles work here at
the office, which is so beautiful, so we wanted to pay
homage to Maurice in Taking Flights background paintings during the fantasy section. We really wanted to
draw a line between reality and fantasy, so we thought
that during the fantasy scenes we would evoke the
wonderful montages of the Warner Bros. look of the
1930s, 40s and 50s. We intentionally went with this
sort of minimalist art card approach to multi-planing,
which illustrated our love of 2D, and overlaid that with
2D effects as well, for water and lasers and everything
else.

Oldenburg: We like to think so. Our films are handcrafted

and rooted in Americana, which I suppose could be
limiting to a global audience, but were just trying to tell
stories that feel true to us. While making Taking Flight, I
found a photograph of my mom and uncle, taken some
time in the early 40s. My mom is in the back of a Radio
Flyer, and my uncle, her older brother, has tied it up to his
bike and is pulling her. That was a special moment for me
that made Taking Flight more personal. I think thats
important when it comes to any story: You have to find
what makes it personal for you. It was a serendipitous
moment that told me that we were on the right path.
6

Oldenburg: There was certainly a lot of back and forth

to make sure that everything was correctly calibrated.
We wanted to have dynamic camera moves when we
made quick transitions. A sweeping camera move with
motion blur, and a dissolve worked well at times when
we needed to go from a full-CGI neighborhood, with an
entire city block that was built in a computer, to a
multiplane painting that was only made up of about
eight layers. So when we did a vertigo zoom, everything transitioned nicely in a quick movement.
Other times, we were more subtle with our transitions,
just through editorial. We would introduce a couple of
palm trees at the far end of the road, which were intentionally flat art cards that you perhaps wouldnt even
grasp on a first viewing. But if you go back and watch
it again, youd notice that were dropping in hints of
the fantasy world into the real world, so the transition
wasnt so harsh. Youd just have the sense that something is off-kilter.
Its refreshing to see 2D used in this way. Ive
spoken with other animators about how an
over-reliance of CG has pushed animation too

harshly into the real, whereas the resurgence of

2D is bringing back a much-needed sense of art
and play into the viewing experience.
Oldenburg: Right, theres something about the wonderfully minimalist background paintings that Maurice
Noble created that allow your imagination to go off
and invent things that werent even there. I suppose
that one of the reasons they went with something
more minimal and cubist back in the day is that it was
faster. Were making the same decisions here. Theyre
economic because of the budget and time constraints,
but you dont ever want the audience to think that. You
want them to think it looks that way because its an
aesthetic choice, which it is as well. But at the same
time, its an aesthetic choice balanced by art and
commerce. We were able to find a happy medium
using minimal paintings so we didnt have to build an
entire jungle set, which can be expensive and timeconsuming.

Brandon and the Moonbot

team really understood the
importance of imagination for
kids and the special memories
a Radio Flyer wagon holds in
peoples hearts.

Robert Pasin

to go places, liberating me and also making me think

about what it means to be a filmmaker. When I walked
out of Raiders of the Lost Ark, I wasnt thinking that it
was something amazing and awesome that happened
for real. No, I walked out of there wondering how they
pulled it off. I wanted to learn more; I want to figure out
how to do that as a career. Thats what inspired me to
go out and get a camera and start making movies.
Today, theres a sense that animation and liveaction films want to terrorize kids into growing
up too fast. Taking Flight does have its dark
moments, but it also has a sense of wonder and
levity.

Those constraints often allow creativity to

blossom in unexpected ways.

Above: Color and light explorations

by James Cassettari.
Above right: Still from the film.

Oldenburg: That pretty much says it all. Its the Jaws

shark: The robot shark doesnt work, but were all
better off for it. Now, its even scarier because we
dont show it. And the same is true with pretty much
any production in animation. Limited financial resources
shouldnt be frowned upon, because theyre actually a
gift that needs to be unlocked. You just need to crack
the nut and find a creative solution, and when you do,
its always going to be better.
Thematically speaking, Taking Flight picks up
on a recurring theme in entertainment, which is
that kids parents are too busy to engage their
creativity.
Oldenburg: Its a subtle commentary on helicopter
parenting these days, compared to the free-range

parenting of the past. I didnt want to be too preachy or

heavy-handed. Its a less-is-more concept of play that
understands how powerful the imagination can be, and
how, as parents and grandparents, its important that
we dont forget how to stimulate that.
This goes back to something that we realized internally
at Moonbot, as far as our mission statement. We are
crafting stories here for the child in the adult, and the
adult in the child. We want to be able to reach both
audiences. It just happens naturally for us; its not
something thats forced.
At Moonbot, we all go back to the stories we loved as
kids, some of which were serious, dark, and complicated,
whether youre talking E.T., Time Bandits, or The Dark
Crystal. These kinds of films arent being made today.
They were speaking to the adult side of me when I was
seven years old. They were serious, but at the same time
they were also fantastic. They allowed my imagination

Oldenburg: There is so much entertainment today that

fills in all the blanks for the viewers. We give everyone so much information that there is nothing left for
the imagination. We do all the work for the audience,
whether it is with a film or a toy. Sometimes these
things are so intricate and detailed, with so many bells
and whistles, that the audiences are wondering, Where
do I get to have fun? The filmmakers already had all
the fun, so where do the viewers get to have it? Where
is their imagination allowed to channel in?
Tell me more about the sound in Taking Flight,
which was quite evocative.
Oldenburg: We had an opportunity to work with W. G.
Snuffy Walden, a composer who I have been a huge
fan of for decades and who has scored shows like
Thirtysomething and The Wonder Years. Specifically,
the music he composed for The Wonder Years really
spoke to me in a very nostalgic way, and seemed like
the right tone for Taking Flight. We reached out to him
and he said yes, although he had never composed
anything for animation before. We were very flattered
that he agreed to do it, because he was surprised that
we would think of him for something like this. If you go
back to his work on The Wonder Years, theres just a

certain tonality to his guitar work and sensibility which

played really well into the tones and themes of Taking
Flight. An added bonus was that he brought his son,
Will, to the table. He has equal talent as a guitarist with
a contemporary, indie sound. Between them, as a
father and son, its the best of new and old sounds.
Also, through our relationship with Dolby, we were able
to mix this short in Dolby Atmos, which was a huge
treat.

Above: Still from the film.

Storyboards

I wanted to bring the point of view down to the childs

level (Radio Flyer wagon height). Starting off objective but
transitioning to subjective as he gains a voice in the piece.
Ultimately, this would crescendo with the discovery of the
wagon and opening to the possibilities of his imagination
world taking over in a cinematic fashion. Kris Pearn

Previous and above spread: Dropping off Tony storyboards by Kris Pearn.

Tony

I had so much fun playing with different proportions and emotional

qualities for Tony. Once animation on Tony began, every time I saw
the little guy on the screen at dailies I wanted to squeeze his little
cheeks and pick him up for a hug.

Renee Bates

Top: Tony expression studies

by Renee Bates.
Above: Tony orthographic by
Kendra Phillips.
Near right: Tony character
exploration by Renee Bates.
Far right: Tony pose sheet by
Joe Bluhm.

14

Left: Tony color exploration

by James Cassettari.
Top: Character exploration by
Renee Bates.
Above: Tony hair and color
options by James Cassettari.

15

Nonno

Top left: Style frame

sketch by Kenny Callicutt.
Above: Nonno character
exploration by Renee Bates.
Left: Nonno expression
studies by Renee Bates.

16

Above: Nonno color exploration

by James Cassettari.

In Taking Flight, Nonno represents

the joy of imagination by tapping
into his inner child and helping Tony
discover the adventures a wagon can
take you on.

Robert Pasin

17

Teddy

18

Top and middle: Teddy exploration by Brandon Oldenburg.

Bottom left: Teddy character exploration by Renee Bates.
Bottom right: Teddy color in context by James Cassettari and Kenny Callicutt.

This page: Material call-out

sheet by Renee Bates.

There are very subtle differences on the teddy bear when he

shows up in the fantasy world. Aside from his different outfits,
we altered the paw so he would be able to use them like hands.
We also changed up his eyes so he felt more alive.

Megan Deane

19

Props

This page: Concept designs

by James Cassettari.

I think that everyone has an image in their

mind of what their grandparents garage
looks like, how things are cluttered into
dusty boxes next to old rusted tools and
a push mower. It always seems to turn
into an impromptu museum of American
suburban life for their generation and we
here at Moonbot wanted to capture that
feeling of time standing still.

Gordon Pinkerton

The designing of the garage was a great

opportunity to show a little bit more about
Nonnos backstory while also dropping some
subtle hints of the story to come. I took
inspiration from memories of my grandfather,
a sculptor who emigrated from Italy. A lot of
what you see in the garage comes from my
childhood memories of his workshop.

James Cassettari
This page: Garage ephemera
designs by James Cassettari.

20

21

Environments

This spread: House color and design

exploration by James Cassettari.

22

23

Left: Alligator character

exploration by Kendra Phillips.

This spread: Jungle matte

painting by Renee Bates.
Inset left: Monkey character
exploration by Kendra Phillips
and Brandon Oldenburg.

From the flow and rhythm to an environment to

the shapes and wonky colors, it was an honor to
recreate the background paintings in Maurice
Nobles style. I studied tons of background
paintings from the old Warner Bros. cartoons
(especially the creations of Chuck Jones) in order
to replicate the textures and quality of the old
hand-painted gouache backgrounds.

Renee Bates
24

25

This spread: Detail of colorscript

by James Cassettari.

When working on the

films color, we had to
account for two realities
coexisting side by side.
Most importantly, we
needed to be able to
smoothly transition back
and forth. Therefore, the
fantasy sceneswhile
differentwere designed
with the color state of
the real world in mind.

James Cassettari

28

29

Above: Space color and lighting

studies by Renee Bates.
Below: Space matte painting by
James Cassettari.

This page and inset: Space

look development and UFO callouts by Renee Bates.
30

31

My grandfather used to keep a

wagon on the front porch. He
had a very strong Italian accent
and it was difficult for me to
understand everything he said.
When I was with him, he would
bang on the wagon and say,
Strong. I now realize he was
trying to tell me that its built
to last and withhold the test of
time. He wanted to keep the joy
and imagination of kids going
through generations with high
quality products. He had a
passion for high quality design,
just as Moonbot does.

Robert Pasin

Right: Antonio and Robert

Pasin in 1970.
Far right: Nonnos photograph by James Cassettari
and Brandon Oldenburg.

32

I tear up every time

I see this special
relationship between
three generations in the
film; it gets me every
time. I especially love
the relationship between
Nonno and Tony. The
grandparent and
grandchild relationship
is so pure and
uncomplicated.

Lampton Enochs