Jackie Nash and Naomi Wiener recently appeared at SCAD AnimationFest to talk all things Pinocchio.
The two SCAD alumni worked as model makers on “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” which was directed by del Toro and the late Mark Gustafon, and won Best Animated Feature at the 95th Academy Awards. They appeared at the festival on Sept. 28 alongside fellow SCAD alum and animator Andrés Eduardo to speak about their time working on the stop motion project. As model makers on the film, Nash and Wiener crafted some of the props and sets that you can see in the movie.
After the festival, Nash and Wiener sat down with Rough Draft to discuss their time at SCAD and their time on “Pinocchio.” Nash said the experience set a high standard for work.
“I’ve only been doing this for five years, but it’s been one of the best projects I’ve ever worked on,” Nash said. “I think that’s really because of the team that I worked with. That’s not only the model shop, which is one of the best model shops that I’ve worked in, but the team as a whole. Everyone was really supportive of each other, and tried to make the best experience for each other, and tried to make the best project.”
You can find the rest of Rough Draft’s conversation with Nash and Wiener below. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I would love to hear about both of your times at SCAD and what started you down the path that you’re on now.
Jackie Nash: I graduated from SCAD in 2017. I kind of went because I knew SCAD had a stop motion class, and I was super interested in that. I initially thought I was going to be an animator, but I didn’t really like that very much. I found my love of fabrication helping out on other students’ films and really working collaboratively with other people in the stop motion department, and then obviously of course learning a ton from my professor at SCAD Savannah, Nathan Asquith. That was a great experience, making connections and tons of friends that I still work with to this day.
I’ve been working in the stop motion industry for the past five years now. I’ve worked on advertising projects, TV projects, as well as feature film. Most recently, I worked on LAIKA [Studio’s] current feature film that they’re working on. Before that I worked on “Pinocchio.” So, I’ve got a little bit of everything in my career experience.
Naomi Wiener: I went to SCAD also, for stop motion and 2D animation – although, I wasn’t really sure what route I would be able to go in. Then once I took Nathan Asquith’s stop motion class I just knew that’s what I needed to do. I also graduated in 2017 and moved out to L.A. trying to get stop motion work, and did small YouTube stuff for small studios, and then made my way to Portland for “The Shivering Truth” and “Pinocchio” and LAIKA, and other shows.
My time at SCAD – kind of like what Jackie was saying – I still work with the people that I went to SCAD with. Stop motion is kind of a niche thing. I think we all were great about pushing each other and creating projects that we all could work on to push ourselves to get to this level. So it’s cool to still be able to be with these friends and that we all grew together, in a way.
Yeah, I can imagine it’s a pretty small community. Do you guys remember when stop motion really became an interest for both of you? You said you dabbled with 2D animation in school, or made varying decisions based on different aspects. When’s the first time you remember falling in love with stop motion?
Nash: I’ve always loved it. My mom used to show us – I used to watch a ton of animation as a kid, but her favorite film was “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” I just watched that constantly as a kid, and ever since then, I always kind of wanted to do that. Usually, telling your parents you want to be an artist, it doesn’t get the nicest reaction sometimes, or the most supportive reaction. But I always had that in my back pocket, as a thing I wanted to be involved with. When I went to school, I was saying I was going to be a 3D animator, but I really went to SCAD because I knew that they had one stop Motion class, and I wanted to take that. Once I started taking that, I just was like, okay – everything else is out the window.
And once I started taking that, I just was like, okay, everything else is out the window. I’m just gonna focus on this and do this one thing. It’s just always been something that’s been a thing that I’ve loved, and I just wanted to be involved in.
Wiener: I’ve just always loved animation. I used to sculpt a lot as a kid and do paper cut-out dolls and stuff. I remember my mom got a Toshiba laptop, and I figured out Movie Maker. I remember actually making stop motions with it. But for the longest time, I thought I would go the 2D route. Even though I was trying to do 2D, I was still making sculptures on the side and clay figures. So I think it was always just something I needed to do, and I realized, what am I doing? I think also watching the behind the scenes of all the great stop motions – I think it was really “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” where I was like – I gotta do this [laughs].
Watching the behind the scenes stuff does help. I watched the 30-minute behind-the-scenes documentary on “Pinocchio” on Netflix, and that puts into perspective how much time stop motion takes, which I’ve always found very impressive. How long did you work on this project, and as model makers, what exactly were you in charge of building and designing?
Nash: I was hired as a junior model maker in December of 2019. I worked for almost three years. I rolled off in August of 2022. Mostly, what a junior model maker does, or model maker does, is we build out the props and sets, or some of the smaller sets, for the movie – a lot of sculpting and building the things that populate the sets.
So some things I worked on – I worked on a team [that worked] on the hourglasses, which aren’t technically in the movie. It’s a CG replacement in the movie, but they still were a big project. I built a record player – I’m trying to go back and think – some balloons, some chess pieces. Just a lot of little things that kind of pop up here and there.
Wiener: I came on just a month after Jackie. I was there two and a half years, a little less than Jackie. Let’s see – a lot of background stuff. I did the Mussolini chair. In terms of designing stuff, we had some art that we had to follow, but it was fun to think about how we wanted to build things. We got to be a little creative in that aspect, of knowing what it’s used for and engineering how we wanted to make it work. So anything from steel to brass, and wire to plastic, wood – just whatever it called for.
What kinds of materials do you like to work with the most?
Wiener: I think we both kind of have our favorite tools. I found a real love for working with metal. That’s kind of been my favorite. A prop, depending on what you’re doing, it doesn’t need to be out of metal. So sometimes, if you have time and you really want to make it super sturdy – different studios will tell you different things. But metal and probably sculpting are my favorite.
Nash: A lot of model makers, like Naomi said, have their favorite things. But as a model maker, it’s best to know a lot of materials and a lot of ways to make something. Naomi said she liked working with metal. I found a love for the wood lathe, and I kind of used any excuse I could to use a wood lathe to build a project. But wood, foam, plastic, metal, clay … there’s a ton of materials that are in the model shop. You walk down our supply aisles, and we’ve just got shelves and shelves and shelves full of stuff.
I remember I built a wheelchair, but we only had a week to build it. So we do this thing called kitbashing, where we’ll take already made objects or things or aspects of those things and put them onto a prop. They bought a little miniature bike with these wheels, and we took the wheels off and put them on the wheelchair, because I just didn’t have the time to build it out myself. Sometimes it’s kind of just grabbing stuff and puzzling it together.
Did you guys get to be on set during the actual filmmaking? I’m sure things break all of the time in this world – how do you deal with that when it happens?
Nash: I transitioned into what’s called the skeleton crew for the team. For the model shop that means that there’s not really anything much left to build, but if there’s anything that needs repairs or adjustments that need to be made, I’m the person who helps to do it. I remember there were these marionettes that were in a scene that were being heavily involved in an animation. Typically, the puppet department would handle something like that. But somehow, the model shop ended up with those puppets. I remember the animator was animating it, and the marionettes were just constantly breaking. I think she would come back to me like, every other day and she would hand me a new little marionette, and she would be like, “I’m really sorry! Can you fix this?”
With stages too, because they’re under such a time crunch, it’s trying to just do the fastest fix possible to get the animators back on track, to make sure that the film stays on track. That was a little bit of what I did within the last year-ish that I was there.
Wiener: We’re also building while they’re shooting shots. They’ll have one scene that needs to be shot, so we’re trying to get all the props ready for that so by the time that’s ready they can start shooting, and then we’re onto the next one, depending on the call sheet.
Nash: Sometimes you’re building stuff months out too. So, there’s something that I maybe built at the beginning of the project that suddenly a year or two years later, they’re finally throwing it on stage to build it out or to animate with it. Sometimes it’ll come back after you haven’t seen it in a while, and you’re like, oh they need that little thing adjusted. Oh my god, what did I do? [laughs]
It sounds like you guys started right before COVID. HOw did that affect your work life?
Wiener: It felt like the studio kind of right away was like – how can we still continue on? There were animators that were able to set up shooting stations at their house. And then for a lot of the fabricators, it seemed like a lot of people had garage spaces, or little art studio spaces. For myself, I turned my room and fire escape into a little sanding station outside. It was just whatever we could do until they felt comfortable enough to have a skeleton crew come in.
Nash: They were super gracious with the time and space that we were working with. I know some people didn’t have that kind of space to do fabrication work, which is notoriously kind of dirty and messy. It was like, whatever you were able to do from home, they tailored what projects you got based on that as well.
Do either of you have anything you can share right now that you’re working on, or anything you’re looking forward to for the future?
Wiener: For right now, I’m at a puppet shop in Oregon. We build puppetry and animatronics for theme parks and cruise shows, and things like that. But I’m also waiting for the next stop motion movie.
Nash: After “Pinocchio,” I rolled right into LAIKA as a model maker, which is another feature film studio here in Oregon. I was a model maker on their current project, “Wildwood,” which is still ongoing. I did roll off from that project at the end of March, so I haven’t really had much in the way of stop motion work or just work in general since then. It’s a bit of a slow time in animation, and I think in entertainment as a whole. It’s been a little difficult in that sense, but I’m hoping that there are going to be new projects. There’s always talk of what’s happening in stop motion. Everybody communicates really well together, and kind of keeps everyone up to date. So I’m definitely hoping for the next stop motion project to start soon. I love it so much. Hopefully next year will bring us some good projects.
