A LUNAR ADVENTURE

Trevor Hogg gets the lowdown from director Glen Keane and his production team on Netflix’s new animated musical adventure Over The Moon…

- Trevor Hogg

A fond childhood memory for Fei Fei (Cathy Ang) is of her late mother (Ruthie Ann Miles) recounting Chinese folktales, in particular of the goddess Chang’e (Phillipa Soo) who drinks the elixir of immortality and is transported to the Moon where she is eternally separated from her husband. A personal crisis arises when the adolescent learns that her father (John Cho) is going to remarry, and she decides to prove to him that the lunar deity is fact not fiction.

Despite his feature directorial debut Over The Moon being CG, legendary animator Glen Keane has not left behind working in 2D and with low-tech tools. “For me, the pencil is an extension of me,” he says. “It is a design element and the simplest instrument. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. I did more drawings for Over The Moon than for The Little Mermaid, even though that was handdrawn and this is CG. I believe as Michelangelo said, ‘Drawing, or as it is called by another name ‘design’, is the fountainhead of all science, architecture and painting. Anyone who possesses this is a great treasure.’ I was drawing to communicate with the folks up in Vancouver [at Sony Pictures Imageworks].”