Netflix have another classic on their hands which some viewers are comparing to the likes of Toy Story and Homeward Bound.
Lost Ollie, based on William Joyce’s children’s book Ollie’s Odyssey (2016), is a four-part miniseries following the eponymous toy searching for the boy who lost him.
Cue the waterworks.
The series, set in Kentucky, combines genius CGI work with live-action scenes. With the central characters all being animated, you might be curious to know who is responsible for the stunning work. Let’s take a look at the animation and production studio behind Lost Ollie.
Lost Ollie | Official Trailer
Meet the animation studio behind Lost Ollie
The animation studio responsible for creating Lost Ollie’s animated toys is Industrial Light & Magic. Hayden Jones served as the visual effects supervisor on the show.
Industrial Light & Magic’s official Twitter account tweeted that “It takes a village to bring a character like Ollie to life” alongside some behind-the-scenes shots.
The visual effects company are responsible for a number of animated hits such as Chicken Little (2005), Wall-E (2008), and Rango (2011). Since they were acquired by Disney back in 2012, have worked on the Marvel blockbusters from The Avengers onwards, as well as a number of franchises such as Transformers, Fantastic Beasts, and more recently Netflix’s The Sandman. Industrial Light & Magic are also responsible for the CGI for Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings series, The Rings of Power (2022).
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Industrial Light & Magic has a link to Star Wars
Working on some of the biggest movie and TV franchises is hardly uncommon for the team at Industrial Light & Magic, considering the company was founded by George Lucas.
Lucas founded the company as a division of his film production company, Lucasfilm, as he was beginning production on Star Wars (1977).
So, Industrial Light & Magic was founded as a way to bring the Star Wars franchise to light. The company has worked on all Star Wars films over the four decades since the first film’s release.
About the production process for Lost Ollie
A number of crew members have shared behind-the-scenes pictures from the making of Lost Ollie. In one Twitter post, a crew member from the animation team shows that they had puppets made of Ollie to use while filming the live action sequences.
These will have then been edited with CGI in post-production.
Brandon Oldenburg, the executive producer behind Lost Ollie, shared an insight to how the character of Ollie was sketched and realised by the animation team.
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Lost Ollie has an award-winning team behind the series
It comes as no surprise that the animation for Lost Ollie was as good as it was, given the team responsible for the miniseries.
The series was created and adapted by Shannon Tindle, who has a number of hit animations under his sleeve. Tindle worked as a designer on Coraline, wrote Kubo and the Two Strings, and won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation for a Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends episode titled “Go Goo Go”.
Peter Ramsey is the series’ director, who also directed Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Rise of the Guardians.
You can stream Lost Ollie on Netflix now.
