First beginning as a passion project for writer/director Shannon Tindle over 20 years ago, Tsuburaya Productions & Netflix’s Ultraman: Rising is an epic new chapter in the saga of an iconic Japanese superhero.
The film follows all-star baseball player Ken Sato (voiced by Christopher Sean) as he takes on the legendary mantle of Ultraman, a title previously held by his own estranged father. While protecting Tokyo from a devastating new threat, Ken rescues an orphaned newborn kaiju — the offspring of his sworn enemy — and decides to raise her as his own child.
Tindle and co-director John Aoshima joined forces with Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) to craft dynamic visuals that breathe new life into the beloved franchise while celebrating its heritage and mythos. Merging classic Japanese manga and anime aesthetics with cinematic camera movements and realistic lighting, the film is animated in a brilliantly-immersive style that pulls the audience directly into the heart of the action.
At VIEW Conference 2024, director Shannon Tindle and ILM visual effects supervisor Hayden Jones — who previously collaborated on the acclaimed miniseries Lost Ollie in 2022 — gave us an inside look at the process of bringing Ultraman: Rising to life on-screen.
DIRECTING - Shannon Tindle
Can you tell us a little about how you launched your career?
Shannon Tindle: “I grew up in rural Kentucky, where nobody does what I do. I never remember a time when I wasn’t drawing, but it just didn’t seem like something that you could do.
“I was a biology major — I thought I wanted to be a doctor for a while. My parents are both nurses. My dad said, ‘You know, you’re doing well in school, but you don’t really seem to be into it.’ I was going to the University of Louisville. I said, ‘Well, I want to get into animation, I want to get into film.’ And so he said, ‘All right, well, let’s see if we can figure it out.’
“I applied to CalArts, and I never put a portfolio together. I was rejected, but then I tried again the next year, and I got in. I was there for two years, and my first job was working on a show called Mickey Mouse Works. I was working on that my second semester of my second year at CalArts, which was great because I had no money — I’d used it all on school. To have a little bit of money in my pocket and actually getting to do character design on that show was pretty incredible. So that’s where it all began, and I just kind of worked my way up from there.”
How di
d your background in character design influence your approach to directing?
Shannon Tindle: “I always approach character design from the perspective of story. Like, if you have costume design, you want to tell things about the character without them speaking — how they stand, how they fix their hair. Do they wear makeup? Do they not wear makeup? All of those things. What choices do they make?
“I always knew that I wanted to tell my own stories. I grew up in the South. We’re always telling stories. Conversation is a big part of our familial relationships. Even from the early days when I was a character designer, I was pitching to studios, wanting to do my own things. So it really came out of that tradition that I’d grown up with of telling stories and wanting to tell stories to a broader audience.”
What led you to direct Ultraman: Rising? It was a very long journey to the screen.
Shannon Tindle: “I was first introduced to Ultraman on, I think it was WDRB Channel 41 in my hometown of Shepherdsville, KY. I didn’t know anything about the character. I didn’t know how big the character was. I just saw this giant red & silver man fighting monsters, and it blew me away, and it stuck with me.
“When you go to Japan, you can’t escape the character. I have friends who grew up in Japan and it’s like Ultraman is everywhere. I could buy toys, comic books, coloring books. I didn’t have any of that. When I moved to LA in ‘97 and I went to Little Tokyo, Ultraman was everywhere, and Ultraman Tiga had just come out, so it kind of rekindled my love for the character.
“Then I thought, ‘While he’s big in not just Japan, but all over Asia, could I tell a relatable story about parents and children that might appeal to a broader audience and bring a character like that?’ So I had this idea called Made in Japan. The character was called Gamma Man, because I was like, ‘I can never get the rights to Ultraman.’
“So for 20 years I pitched this idea everywhere. I had it set up at Sony for a while, and we had a different set of creative opinions there. But Kristine Belson, who runs Sony Animation, she’s incredible. I love her so much. She was very generous and said, ‘We’ll let you take the film out.’
“When I went and brought it over to Netflix, they said, ‘We love this script. We love this story. What if we could actually get you the rights to Ultraman?’ Then they flew me to Japan and I pitched it to Tsukagoshi-san and the folks at Tsuburaya, and they loved the idea and have been very supportive.
“We got to tell that story. But my thing was, I want to tell this story about parents and children. To me it’s not a Superman film. It’s a film about relationships that happens to star a superhero.”
Can you tell us about your ongoing collaboration with ILM?
Shannon Tindle: “My good friend Teddy Biaselli, who’s an executive over at Netflix, had asked if I would consider adapting a book called Ollie’s Odyssey, written by William Joyce, about a toy that gets separated from his little boy. I loved the idea. I read the book, and there had been some initial work done on it, but I had a different take on it. I wanted to set it in my hometown.
“When you start a project and you know that there’s going to be a big CG element — a live action series with CGI characters in it — you’re going to test a lot of different studios. There was an executive on the Netflix VFX side, and they said, ‘Look, all the bids are coming in at about the same amount. ILM is going to get it done the right way, so maybe you should work with them.’
“I love working with them so much because they are so malleable. They’re so open to new ideas, trying new things. That’s a place I wanted to work with when I was a little kid. I thought, ‘Man, if I could work at ILM one day, that would be incredible.’ Of course, I was basing it on the kind of practical effects work that they were doing on the Star Wars films and in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
“Now I want to work with them on everything. We’ve got a rapport. And when you have that chemistry with fellow creators, you know that you can get a lot more bang for your buck because you’re kind of speaking the same language, and you’re finishing each other’s sentences. I’ve loved my collaboration with them so far, and I want to continue to work with them on everything I do.”
You encouraged your animators to bring their personal experiences?
Shannon Tindle: “I would start to tell a very personal story about something that happened to me. And the animator’s like, ‘I’m trying to understand what’s going on. He’s not talking about animation. He’s not talking about posing.’ Until I got to the end of the story and said, ‘That’s what this scene is about. That’s where it came from, and that’s what I want you to put into it.’
“I tried to encourage that with the team, where I was telling stuff that was deeply personal. I was getting emotional talking about it, and I wanted them to feel the freedom to be able to express their emotions in that way, in that room, to be able to say, ‘I went through something similar.’ Because I feel like the more open and vulnerable you are, the more open and vulnerable they can be in their work. And you see it up on the screen. You see those moments up on the screen where they’ve gone through something.
“In Ollie, Ollie [a CG character in a live-action environment] can only be seen by Billy, except in one instance where Billy’s mother is dying, and she can see him. She says, ‘Can you give me some water?’ It was something that I’d gone through with a family member, lying in bed dying. That scene I knew was a tricky one. They put the cup on a rod, and I told them, ‘Look, if done wrong, people will laugh, and they cannot laugh in this moment.’ They were so thoughtful in the approach. Ollie is so gentle in it.
“But again, because I was willing to express something that happened to me, they felt they’d been given permission to express that in their work. It’s one of my favorite scenes in anything that I’ve done because the animators allowed themselves to be so open and vulnerable, and understood what we needed to accomplish in that scene.
“These things take a long time to make. That’s why I have to have an emotional connection with anything that I make. Even if it’s a big character, I have to be able to find my way into it in a personal way because, especially in animation, it’s going to take four or five years sometimes to make.
“That’s what gets me through it, knowing that, at least for me, there’s an importance to it. It’s not just throwaway. It’s not just a commercial for something. It’s something that’s meaningful for me. That helps justify the hours that I’m working. Because when you’re in the middle of a project, you’re never not thinking about it. So if you can incorporate your life into your projects, I think you can find a nice balance, which is what Ultraman: Rising is all about — finding balance."
How did you integrate real lenses and camera rigs into the film?
Shannon Tindle: “It was one of the things that I loved about Pacific Rim. I’ve gotten to know Guillermo [del Toro] and he’s…not just an incredible filmmaker, but an incredible person. Hal Hickel, who’s a good friend of mine and was the animation supervisor on that film, was like, ‘We use real rigs.’ If it was a Technocrane, or even if it was a digital version or a virtual version of that camera, Guillermo wanted it to be grounded. Because even if an audience doesn’t know what lenses you’re using or what cameras you’re using, they’ve seen enough movies. They’ve got a pretty good education and can feel when something’s off or when you’re cheating.
“Even though it’s a big, broad film — we have a 35-foot-tall baby — we’re dealing with issues where I wanted people to feel like it was their child. I thought one way to get there, and to understand Ken’s story and the loneliness he feels, is to try as best as we can not just to have practical prime lenses, but also to have the artifacts that you get with those lenses.
“So Hayden Jones, who is our visual effects supervisor on not just Ollie, but also Ultraman: Rising, did this deep-dive research. They found examples of what lens flares look like on TohoScope lenses, and how do we recreate that in this style? All those elements, even though we had a stylized look, felt like a practical camera was on it.
“There’s that scene when Emi [the kaiju infant] is being born and she’s out in the ocean. A lot of times the way that you show scale is by showing a small object next to a big thing. You have a bird fly off the shoulder of Ultraman. I knew I didn’t want to do any of that stuff, so our head of final layouts said, ‘What if we had a little helicopter jitter?’ Because when you’re shooting a helicopter shot in a film, it’s because you’re shooting something big and wide that’s expansive. You need to be far away from it. So he put just a little bit of helicopter jitter in there subliminally.
“Again, the audience may not know what a helicopter shot or a drone shot is, but they’ve seen enough films that incorporate it and they know when they have it. Bringing those very grounded elements from real cameras and lenses into the filmmaking helped us tell a believable story.”
Can you share any career advice you wish you had known when you were starting out?
Shannon Tindle: “Listen as much as you talk. Hire, not just people who are great at their jobs, but who are just good people. We had an incredible production team, led by my producers Tom Knott and Lisa Poole, on the film. They’re just good people and they treat our folks well.
“I think that a lot of times people think in order to make good films you have to be a bully, or you have to be uncompromising. What I say is, you can’t make films without your team, and they need to have a good balance between life and work. If you allow that, and you allow them to participate in a real way in the movie, you’re going to get a much bigger film in a way that’s not going to be detrimental to people’s health. The film is going to be better and you’re going to feel better at the end of it.
“So I would just say, be cool, be sweet, be thoughtful. Think about what other folks are going through and listen to them.”
VISUAL EFFECTS - ILM VFX Supervisor Hayden Jones
Can you tell us about your career path and what brought you to ILM?
Hayden Jones: “Many, many years ago, I actually started in car design, so that was my degree. But after four years of drawing cars, I decided I maybe wanted a little bit of a change. So I started doing video games, first of all.
“Then a few years later I realized I was fooling myself and I always really wanted a job in the visual effects industry. So I took myself off to a SIGGRAPH and interviewed everywhere. I finally got a job at Cinesite in London, and it was great.
“I’ve kind of been at every style of company. I’ve been in big companies, small 10 to 15 people outfits, and everything in between. It’s been a great, really-fun career, having such a variety of effects.”
Tell us about your ongoing collaboration with Shannon Tindle, and how your work on Lost Ollie led to Ultraman: Rising?
Hayden Jones: “Lost Ollie was just such a joy to work on. I think the reason why we hit it off, and the reason that Shannon’s such a good writer, director and showrunner, is he’s so collaborative. He’s always sharing the backstory behind every character. You’re hearing what his thoughts are for music. You’re hearing how your work is going to form into the pattern of the whole piece, and so you always feel so included at every level. And it’s not that he’s just talking to me, the supervisor. Literally every single artist on the team, he’ll talk to and listen to ideas from, and it feels like such an interesting and just a fantastic way of running a show. It’s just beautiful.
“I remember one time when we were doing the original test, and we were still working out how does he likes things presented, and how is he going to give feedback? We had an artist, who was a very junior animator, do one of the shots in the test. Shannon, with the animator in the room, said, ‘Who did this shot?’ And I was thinking, ‘Oh no, maybe Shannon’s not this nice person.’ I said, ‘Well, Shannon, you know, it’s Anna. And Anna’s in the room with us here if you’d like to give any feedback.’ And Shannon went, ‘Anna, come up to the screen.’ So Anna moved up. He went, ‘This is the best shot! I love it!’ And he just gushed about what he loved about the shot. You could see this junior animator thinking, ‘This is absolutely the best experience ever!’
“That’s what Shannon’s like. He’s never dissecting something to say what’s wrong. He will always show you what’s right as well, and where he sees your ideas can bolster his and move the whole story forward. It’s just a wonderful thing to behold.”
How did you establish the film’s distinctive visual style?
Hayden Jones: “I think with Ultraman, as with most shows, you always have to start with the artwork. We were so lucky to have Marcos [Mateu Mestre], the production designer, and Sunmin [Inn], the art director, producing such a large volume of amazing artwork.
“Sometimes in the early stages there was a backwards and forwards because they were dual 2D concepts. You would go, ‘I have no idea how to create this in 3D. We’ve got a lot of techniques, but even this is pushing it.’ So we’d work through it together and there was a lot of communication.
“We had amazing teams at ILM — some doing shader design, others with lighting and compositing, texture, look dev — everyone pulled together and communicated internally really efficiently so that we could work out which methodologies got us as close as possible to what Sunmin & Marcos’ look went for.
“Most of the time you’d look at something like the linework that we surround every character with, and rather than having one solution, we’d always end up with four or maybe five. There would be some that were automatic. There were some that were literally hand-drawn by the animators onto faces. Some that were rigged into the faces so we could make sure they’re consistent. And then others that were Houdini. Then there were some other moments that were Houdini-generated inclines, which really gave us a great baseline. We managed to get it looking so it almost felt like it had been drawn by a human hand, which is great.”
Tell us about the layer
s and shading that you employed to achieve that look?
Hayden Jones: “So, to create the look, you have to dissect all of the art images. Sunmin was fantastic in sending us the Photoshop layered files, so we could actually almost see her process in how she built them up. We could start to examine whether we could build up our images in the same way.
“One of the big key pieces was this idea of Copic magic marker work. What we didn’t want to do was to bake in too much of the lighting. Sometimes when you’re working in a stylized world, you really want to bake in as much as possible, so you have the stylization there and then the lighting just as a kind of light touch over the top. We wanted to go to the other side, where we were baking in as little as possible, and we were allowing the shader to take on most of the heavy lifting.
“We created a technique where we used Kuwahara shading. This is a technique where it takes normal images and adds a kind of watercolor feel. It softens the edges. It’ll preserve certain sharp changes of contrast, but it creates a very nice, soft feel. This was great, apart from the fact that if you just applied it to the whole image, it was completely blurred.
“So what we had to do was work out a system between look dev, shader design, lighting and comp to have information pass through about the model so that we could keep each piece of marker work just blurry to certain areas of the image — certain areas of skin or certain areas of their clothing, and really have fine, art-directable control over every aspect of the image. It was a tough challenge, but we had such a fantastic team at ILM across the whole group that really rose to the challenge.”
How were you able to bring Tokyo to life on-screen?
Hayden Jones: “Creating Tokyo was a really interesting challenge. Shannon and John Aoshima, the co-director, really wanted Tokyo to feel authentic, so we actually had a cultural committee on the show of people who would literally look at every single aspect of our Tokyo model and advise us when road markings weren’t quite correct. All the street furniture had to be the street furniture you find in that specific area of Tokyo.
“Our build team put together this great library of parts that they could build Tokyo streets out of, but then the cultural committee would say, ‘Ah, yes, but these parts only exist in this part of the city.’ So we refined our process and we did a lot of communication, and we really pushed hard to make something really, truly authentic.
“Also, my pet peeve in filmmaking is when you know a city and you know a shot has been filmed in two locations, and the filmmaker makes it feel like they’ve just turned the corner, and you know it’s five miles apart. In Ultraman: Rising we tried to have Tokyo as our groundwork for each shot. Every shot is located perfectly in Tokyo. We never cheated where the Tokyo Tower is — it’s always in the right place for the shot. So it always feels really quite authentic. Every detail was important to us.”
Can you share any career advice you wish you had known when you were starting out?
Hayden Jones: “I think it’s a really exciting time for artists at the moment. I think it’s a scary time as well. There’s lots of change happening.
“Keep creating. Really push yourself to be not just trying to emulate what other people are doing. Try and also listen to your inner artist as well, because everyone has a voice and everyone’s voice can be heard through art and animation. I think it’s really important when you see artists have their style really visualized on-screen.
“I often say that one of the hardest things when you’re reviewing show reels is that you’re seeing somebody execute someone else’s vision. I also like to see not only that, but what their vision’s like as well. Even if it’s just drawing, painting or something else creative, showing that they have another creative aspect to their personalities is fantastic.”