Posted in: Disney XD, Disney+, TV | Tagged: Armorsaurs

Armorsaurs Director David Feiss on Bringing Korean Sci-Fi to Disney

Director David Feiss (Cow and Chicken) spoke with us about bringing the popular Korean sci-fi action series Armorsaurs to the US and Disney.

David Feiss has been an institution in animation for over 40 years, since his debut as a director with The Body Electric (1985). Not only has he fronted multiple projects, but he's also worked as a storyboard artist, artist, producer, actor, and writer as a jack-of-all-trades. Some of his best-known works include Cartoon Network's Cow and Chicken and What a Cartoon!, the 2009 Astro Boy remake, and Illumination's Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022). His latest is that rare dive into live-action in the hybrid series Armorsaurs, which is based on the Korean sensation Armored Saurus, that follows a group of teenage pilots who are genetically linked to dinosaur companions thanks to the Avian Anomaly they have and are equipped with advanced battle armor to deal with evil extraterrestrial threats on Earth. Feiss spoke to Bleeding Cool about coming over to Korea to work with MGA to expand the series internationally, balancing between live-action and CG, the young cast, and filming what amounts to "live television" with script changes in real time.

Armorsaurs Director David Feiss on Bringing Korean Sci-Fi Live-Action Hybrid Series to Life

BC: What's the inspiration behind bringing Armorsaurs here to the States?

Feiss: It's MGA, and they're a toy company, and somehow, they were able to partner up with the Korean studio (Daewon Media) that originally produced. They ran a couple of seasons of Armored Saurus in Korea from 2021 to 2022, so they partnered up with them to redevelop it for the rest of the world. The idea was to get this new product out there. They thought they could probably make toys out of it, which I think they are doing, but my involvement wasn't with the toy part. My involvement was with directing the show and making it as good as we could possibly make it.

Was the show always going to be live action, or was it something that you considered going all animated for?

No, it was going to be a combo. The original series had live-action actors, and of course, the dinosaurs were CG. That's what we did, too. We were able to reuse some of the old animation to repurpose it for the new storyline.

What do you find the biggest differences in directing live action as supposed to controlling everything on the animation front?

Yeah, it was different because I spent my entire career working in animation as an animator, directing animation, and doing silly shows, too. Cow and Chicken is a comedy show, and Armorsaurs is not that. The first day on set in Korea, it was like, "Okay, I've directed many voices before, but now we're trying to imagine all the backgrounds on a green screen set," but the backgrounds did not exist. The actors had no frame of reference to what they were supposed to be looking at, so it was a bit of a challenge there, but it was also a lot of fun to be able to visualize and relate to the actors what they're looking at. It was a challenge and a lot of fun.

What did you like about working with that young cast and the energy they brought to the set?

Yeah, it was terrific, because I did not have a hand in casting, so I didn't know who I was going to have until I arrived in Korea. From day one, it's pretty obvious these guys like each other, and for the two and a half months that we were shooting, they spent most of their time together. They would go out socially and were pretty tight. It was a joy, actually, to be able to work with these people, who like each other because in the show, they're supposed to like each other too, so it was a nice little situation, I think.

I know CG is the norm these days, but was there any consideration of maybe doing like some practical effects with it, like animatronics, or was it just that some of this is more convenient to go the CG route?

Yeah, we were going to stick with the CG route, because we had some reference from the original series, and with some of the shots we're going to be reusing and retooling, there was never a thought to do anything other than the CG.

What was your biggest challenge during production?

Well, the biggest challenge was that the scripts were being written while we were in Korea. We have 13 episodes to shoot, and when you're shooting, even with a virtual set, you do have different setups. It's called block shooting, where you're just shooting a little bit of episode one, and a little of episode three sometimes. We're shooting episodes one and three as they're still being written, so a lot of it was like doing live television in the moment. There was a lot of spontaneity happening a lot of writing on set, so that was one of the bigger challenges, but also there was like a certain vitality to it that I really loved. It would have been great to have everything ahead of time, but if you don't, you deal with it and roll with it.

Season one of Armorsaurs, which stars Jalien Bates, Jacob Makabi, Avianna Mynheir, Sade Louise, Derrick Kwak, Yvonne Chapman, Andrew Russell, Carson Allen, Julien Kang, and featuring the voice of Michael Dorn, is available on the Disney Channel and Disney+.

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