Julie HindsDetroit Free Press
Show Caption
When Amy Smeed landed a key job on "Moana 2," it wasn't just another assignment. It was a reunion with one of her favorite heroines from her numerous Disney projects.
“We work so hard on these films, and we really fall in love with our characters. I think Moana, specifically, she is a character I admire so much. Maybe this sounds silly, but I feel like I’ve learned a lot from her. She is someone that is a risk taker. She believes in herself,” says Smeed, a head of animation for 2016’s “Moana” and the "Moana 2" sequel, which opens Wednesday.
Smeed, who grew up in Royal Oak, broke a glass ceiling eight years ago with “Moana.” She became the first woman to hold that title on a Disney animated feature.
“Moana” was a hailed for its cultural representation. Inspired partly by oralhistories from the Pacific Islands regionknown as Oceania, it reflected both the history of early Polynesian ocean-navigating explorersand the efforts of the filmmakers to honor that heritage while weaving it into an adventure saga led by a courageous 16-year-old girl.
As entertaining as it was groundbreaking, “Moana” wound up earning more than $640 million at the worldwide box office and brought fresh energy to Disney’s new generation of empowered princesses.
“Moana” followed the daughter of the chief of Motunui Island as she undertakes a journey to save her homeland with the help of a demigod. “Moana 2” takes place three years later as the title character, now about 19, sets off on another dangerous, seafaring expedition to far-flung stretches of Oceania after being contacted by her ancestors.
This time, however, she is joined by a crew consisting of an enthusiastic young engineer, a crabby senior farmer and a history-preserving storyteller.
For the “Moana 2” voice cast, Auli’I Cravalho returns as Moana and Dwayne Johnson is back as demigod Maui. So is Nicole Scherzinger as Moana’s mother, Sina. Among the new voice actors is Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda a Moana’s toddler sister, Simea, who strives to be her older sibling’s mini-me.
Behind the scenes, there have been changes in the past eight years, too, according to Smeed. “With each of our projects, in terms of character animation, we get stronger and stronger,” she says. “Just in terms of technology, on the first film, we spent a lot of effort on the water and hair. With technology advancing, those things look even more amazing this time around.”
As for the status of women in animation, Smeed is encouraged by the efforts she has seen to bridge the animation gender gap, both at the schools and colleges she regularly visits and within the ranks of Disney, where she has seen more leadership opportunities for women.
”What I love is seeing this new generation of females being interested in character animation. We’ve seen that in terms of how many women have been applying for animator jobs. It seems like every year, we have more and more females presenting their work with their reels and, because of that, we’ve been able to bring in more female animators into our studio as well.”
The metro Detroit native grew up going to see the Disney animated movies that often arrived during the holidays. After graduating from Royal Oak’s Kimball High School, she studied art for about three years at Western Michigan University before transferring to the School of theArt Institute of Chicago, where she began to take computer animation courses and fall in love with the process.
Smeed started her career at Disney Animation Studios, where her credits have included animation work on “Chicken Little,” "Meet the Robinsons," "Bolt," "Tangled," "Wreck-It Ralph" and "Frozen," which was helmed by Jennifer Lee, the first female director of a Disney animated movie.
Originally planned as a streaming series for Disney+, “Moana 2” shifted to a feature film after Disney put its emphasis back on the big screen. Because it's opening on Thanksgiving weekend, “Moana 2” likely will boost what already has been a great year for Disney movies, thanks to “Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool vs. Wolverine.”
Smeed says she was brought on to the project after “Moana 2” shifted from a series to a film. As someone who knew the cinematic character well, she was more than qualified to help oversee the subtle changes in Moana now that she is three years older.
”She’s more of a leader of her community. She has more confidence. She’s still the same genuine character that we fell in love with on the first film. … But this time around, she has been on the sea for the last three years journeying,” notes Smeed.
As an example of what has changed, she points to a subtle difference in Moana’s body language that reflects her growth as a person. In the first movie, she stood more up on her toes in anticipationof what would happen next. Now she stands more back on her heels, which indicates she's more grounded and self-assured.
Smeed describes her role on the film (she and Kevin Webb are both heads of animation for “Moana 2”) as one that requires monitoring the big picture and paying attention to small details. “At the end of the day, my job is to basically get the directors’ vision up on screen,” she says, referring in this case to the “Moana 2” directing trio of David G. Derrick Jr., Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller.
She describes Disney as a “super-collaborative studio” and says she's constantly checking in with the many teams involved in feature film animation. One of those groups is the character-rigging team, which essentially creates the digital skeleton that controls the ability of characters to move so realistically.
The rigging for a main character can take six to nine months to complete, notes Smeed, and is a piece of the puzzle that happens in pre-production.
During production, Smeed says one of her usual activities is sitting in with the directors and giving feedback as they watch the animation dailies. ”We’re looking at every single scene and making sure that we’re getting the most out of that for what’s important for the moment,” she says.
Computer-generated animation is a painstaking process that takes extreme patience, because, as Smeed explains, it consists of 24 frames every second. “The average animator animates about 3 to 4 seconds a week, and that’s if you have two characters waist up,” she says. “If you have a character that’s full body, then it will take longer.”
According to Smeed, it was bittersweet to finish “Moana” and “Moana 2” because “there’s a feeling of almost like, I miss her.” She says her three favorite characters from her Disney experience are Moana, Rapunzel from “Tangled” and Anna from “Frozen” (who was voiced by another former Oakland County resident, Huntington Woods native Kristen Bell).
“While they’re very different and unique from each other, they still have this spirit about them,” says Smeed of the trio. “We used to say on Rapunzel (that) she has an irrepressible spirit. And I think that fits for each of them in slightly different ways. I love that our characters can be inspiration for other females out there.”
Smeed is especially grateful to be able to inspire girls like her 16-year-old daughter. “I love, especially raising a daughter, that they can look at these characters and find something they can resonate with and hopefully that they can strive to have that same, like, none of them let anything get in their way,” she says.
She may have three favorites, but for now at least, consider Moana as the first among equals. As Smeed says, “She’s always thinking of others and nothing can stop her.”
Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.
'Moana 2'
In theaters Wednesday
Rated PG; action and peril
1 hour, 40 minutes
This story has been updated to add video.
