ANIMATED SERIES
Uprooted: the plantemic
Uprooted: the plantemic is a story about life during the pandemic – told from the perspective of five houseplants.
KEY ROLES: ART DIRECTOR, CHARACTER DESIGNER, STORYBOARD ARTIST, ANIMATOR
Seeing my love for houseplants, Canadian director Betty Xie approached me to design the characters for her show. She had a clear vision of which plants each character should be and I took it from there, using bold shapes to create five uniquely charming characters. It was a very small production and after the character designs were completed, I stayed on to art direct, storyboard, and animate the show! The series launched on CBC Gem in January 2022.
Key crew / Writer, director: Betty Xie / Art director, character designer, animator: Joyce Hui (rurupoi) / Editor, producer: Aram Siu Wai Collier / Producers: Lillian Chan, Tony Lau, Joseph Chung
The full series is currently available for streaming in Canada.
Process
Join me for an in-depth look behind the scenes.
I, along with Betty Xie (director) and Andrea Bang (voice actor), chat with Lillian Chan about how the story, art, and voice acting all came together in this panel. Presented at the 26th Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival.
Character design
Being quite the houseplant lover, I was lucky to have all of these plants in real life to study! I started with a series of sketches, breaking the forms down into simple shapes.
The plants don’t have faces, so I focused on giving each character a baseline pose with a distinct, recognizable silhouette. Because the pot was an extension of who each character was, I took great care in selecting one that fits their personality.
Excerpts from the character sheet.
Storyboarding
One of the constraints was a limited animation budget, so I focused less on motion and more on compositions that really put each plant front and centre. Working closely with director Betty Xie and editor Aram Collier, we spent a lot of time developing a visual language and flow in episode 1 that we carried over to the rest of the episodes. I was very grateful to receive guidance from veteran story artist Raymond Xu and animation filmmaker Lillian Chan.
Episode 2 was particularly challenging because the story was driven a lot by Liz (the human), not just the plants. I needed to show enough of Liz so story made sense, but not so much that it distracted from the plants’ story. After much deliberation and many revisions, I think we were able to find that sweet spot in the end!
In episode 4, I was given a lot of freedom to play with how Allen and Wally’s Shakespearean moment was told visually. I wanted to surprise and delight the viewer by taking them out of the Uprooted world they had grown accustomed to by serving up a unique look and feel for that sequence. The animator for the scene, Lucas Higgins, completely took the idea to another level!
Early explorations of style
Look & feel
When Betty first approached me, she really gravitated towards my watercolours, so I wanted to try painting the characters in traditional media. However, as the tone and scope of the animation changed, we decided to go with a more digital approach but with a hand-crafted feel.
I mocked up different styles for the background. We landed on a mixture of whimsical, almost child-like line drawings and flat fills to allow the plants to really stand out from their environment.
Colour palette
I tested a few colour palettes early on and the team immediately gravitated towards the warm tones, as it felt nostalgic and storybook-like.
Motion
As we started to think about animation, one big sticking point was how much the plants should move. In these early tests, I gave plants smooth motion but it soon became clear this looked a little odd and unnatural. We landed on a pose to pose, limited motion style for the series.
