ComingSoon Senior Editor Spencer Legacy spoke with Dora and The Fantastical Creatures director William Mata about the short film that precedes Paw Patrol: The Movie. Mata discussed working on such a popular franchise and redesigning the iconic titular character. Paw Patrol: The Movie and Dora and The Fantastical Creatures are now playing in theaters.
“In Dora and the Fantastical Creatures, Dora (Diana Zermeño) and Boots (Asher Spence) embark on an incredible adventure to the land of alebrijes, the most magical and colorful creatures in the rainforest,” reads the synopsis. “There, they must band together against Swiper (Marc Weiner) to save the beloved alebrijes and their Copal Tree Celebration.”
Spencer Legacy: How were you first introduced to the franchise? Did you have younger family members that watched Dora?
William Mata: I got started in animation around the time Dora was introduced to the world, so I was always aware of Dora, you know? That’s how I knew of her. She’s had such a long career and been around for a while, so I knew of her that way for sure. And yeah, there’s tons of family that watched her, so I would get a lot of input from that. [Laughs]. Then I started watching since I work in the business, so I have to know what’s out there. So definitely well aware of her.
What was it that drew you to Dora and The Fantastical Creatures, then?
When we talked about the opportunity to create a short with Dora, I snapped to that quickly and easily because, for me, just looking at her as a character and her traits, she’s a female lead — which isn’t very common — and she’s a Latina lead, which is great. So she embodies curiosity and exploration, and those are the things that I personally, in my life, always try and follow. So those are the things that pulled me to that. And I thought, “Okay, you have a well-established character, fleshed out, and it’d be fun to create a story around that.” So it was an easy one.
Having aired for so long, there are so many different characters and elements to the world of Dora the Explorer. How did you choose which characters and elements to bring back for the short?
In a short, the initial instinct is always to try and do everything, and then you realize, “Well, it’s a short, so we can’t do too much.” And then we have to slowly simplify and, like you said, pick and choose what we want. We know Dora needs to have Boots with her on her adventures, so that’s an easy one. We need Swiper because he’s always around the corner and he’s the best antagonist and allows for Dora to deliver her message and her story throughout her episodes on TV.
So we’re like, “Okay, those are our trifecta characters.” Then we looked at it and thought, “We need to create a special world for her — something that’s unique [and] that’s outside of the box for her.” We landed on this magical world of alebrije and those were the main basis of what’s going on the short.
One of the things about that world is it has these different animation styles that mix together really well. What inspired the decision to mix these different styles together like that?
It’s one of those things where we leaned onto the Mexican folk art of alebrijes, and we looked at the tradition and how these figures are made, and they’re all made out of this copal tree, which is a tree that grows in Oaxaca. So we started to kind of make all our world building rules based on that — hand-carved and made of wood. And we’re like, “Then if that’s the case, Dora moves fluidly in animation, and if these guys are made out of wood and hand painted, how can we … ”
So we started playing with animation. “Let’s do it on fours on twos.” Our goal is always to aim at … this has to look and feel like it’s handmade. So once we figured that out, then we just leaned on everything — our landscapes, everything had that handmade feel. They are on fours and they do move a little different than Dora, and that’s how we did that.
You also did a lot of work as a storyboard artist in the past. How did that help prepare you for directing?
Yeah, storyboarding is a fun gig, but it’s a problem solving and sorting out kind of gig. You’re always spinning plates, like, “Where’s the camera go? What’s the character say? What’s the best place to put like that story point?” A lot of it is troubleshooting story, and it helped greatly, but, of course, story only goes so far. We work with editorial and the writers. At a certain point, once it goes into layout and animation, we just kind of go, “Okay, we’ll be around if there are any story change that need to happen.” But I think storyboarding helps tremendously because it does train you to be versatile that way. Story is about iterations and about finding the right solution, about simplifying things and about being clear about what the message is and what you want to say.
There are so many plates that you spin as a board artist that I think are super useful when it comes to directing, because once you figure out story, once you get into the other departments, it’s the same thing. I think the thing to aspire for directing is that you’re equipped with a huge talent base, right? Every department has people and you just let people get invested on the project and let them do their thing.
It’s a very fun experience to have where you see people just go through the stages and elevate things. I have a vision of what it’s going to look like, and then a visdev artist will do a painting and I’m like, “That’s even better than what I was thinking.” So it’s trying to coordinate that inspiration through every department. It was really fun.
Speaking of working with all these different departments and collaborating, Dora looks a little different here than the original look. So what was the process like — everybody coming together to figure out how to make Dora both recognizable but also new and unique in this take?
Yeah, that’s always a fun back-and-forth, right? Because this was our opportunity to introduce her or reintroduce her in a way that we’ve never seen before. It’s CG, right? So immediately, you’re like, “Well, what’s that mean?” With character design, it’s so interesting, being a part of the conversation. When I came in there, it was kind of the tail end of it already, but with design, one little tweak can make that character feel older.
Then what does that do? Does that create a different vibe or, “That character’s too young,” so the shape language and everything is such an interesting conversation, but I think we landed in a really fun place where she’s still youthful and playful and she’s got a really fun design and I think reads well in CG, and Boots as well.
You have to kind of have enough. It’s a balance thing, right? You have to have enough for people to recognize, but also push things a little as well, if not, you’re just kind of extruding a 2D character into 3D. So I think it was fun to be a part of that. Also, once we took her into the alebrije world, we were able to enhance that even more. Her outfit changed, there’s cool factors to it. But yeah, it was great.
You touched on it a bit earlier, but since the beginning Dora’s been a really great part of introducing younger audiences to Latin culture. So what was it like to carry on that legacy in this new short?
Yeah, I think that was definitely one of the key reasons why. I was very proud to be a part of this because I try to value authenticity as much as I can, and I try to put as much of that into my work whenever I get a chance to. In this short, we really dove into the folk art and the alebrijes world and how they were created and who made them. They’ve been around for almost a century and we try to put in as much as we can, again, within reason, because this is a short. We can’t really spell the whole thing out.
But if you notice in the story, our central ceremony takes place around the Copal tree, which is a tree that’s indigenous to Oaxaca, which is a tree that’s currently used to carve out the alebrijes, which is the folk art that many artists continue to do. So that defined the look that defined the world. Even our clouds look like they’re hand-carved. So we try to be as authentic to that as much as we could be. At the same time, dig a little deeper beyond just going, “Oh, those are cool, pretty colorful characters.” We try to infuse it with a little more history in there.
Makes sense. Are you interested in directing more in the future?
This is it, I’m tapping out now! [Laughs]. No, this is great. I had a great experience. I’ve heard so many stories and I’ve been in projects that can become treacherous situations, but I had a great experience and that has to be for many factors, like really talented artists I worked with. The characters’ so well developed. It was an easy one to take and play with. Now I had a great time. I’ll do it again, for sure.
