The long-awaited Tiki Trouble book is now available, created by Disney veteran Dominic Carola. It was an honor to be a part of this book during the Kickstarter campaign and now to see it come true. Tiki Trouble is definitely a must for any fan of great art and history. We asked Dominic Carola a few questions on Tiki Trouble to take a look at the production.
Can you tell us something about yourself?
I have been very fortunate to work professionally as an artist and creative director in the animation, publishing and theme park industry for over 25 years. As far as I remember, I have always drawn and made little stories. I created my own comic book brand in elementary school and sold and distributed Xerox copies of some of my comic characters and stories.
What started me on this journey? Seeing Pinocchio when I was very young consolidated my love of classic Walt Disney movies. Then, a few years later, Star Wars also hit me as a filmmaker using my art.
This led me to create comics to become an animator and visual narrator.
Steven Spielberg summed it up well with his wonderful prospect of being an entertainer:
"I think all directors should be animators first, because you can really take the imagination to become something tangible, something you can hold in your hand and say, 'Can you see this? No? Well, I can." And then you do. , you make it happen. "- Steven Spielberg
In particular, I really wanted to be a Walt Disney entertainer, but I wasn't sure how to get there since I was a kid on the East Coast and I didn't know anyone who knew a Disney entertainer remotely.
Then, while visiting art schools in the East, I discovered the school founded by Walt Disney for character animation called the California Institute of the Arts. I had no idea how limited the slot machines were or how difficult it would be to get into, and that was probably a good thing I didn't realize at the time. It would really scare me when I was packing my bags.
After watching Disney's The Little Mermaid, I worked very hard over the summer to create a portfolio to send to CalArts. I also worked a couple of jobs to help save some money, as I would have to move around the country, and even then it was a very expensive school. This was when feature animation really was
explode with a rebirth.
It was an incredible experience and we had an incredible talented group in our class and the class in front and behind us. I look back, and it's really a list of many famous directors, animators, history artists and studio heads working in the industry today. Many of us are still close friends and, in a way, it still feels like yesterday.
Disney saw my second film and recruited me before I could use the rest of my scholarship. But here's the dream job that looks me in the face and 3 of us have been chosen to go to the Walt Disney Feature Animation. It was an incredible journey!
After my lifelong dream came true, I started working as the main animator for Walt Disney. And I've spent nearly a dozen years there working on many features from "Lion King" to "Pocahontas", "Hunchback", "Mulan", "John Henry", "Lilo & Stitch" and "Brother Bear".
In 2004, there was a consolidation of Disney Feature Animation and the wonderful Florida Animation studio was forced to close. It was one of those moments in life where you have to choose a new path. My options were potentially to lead a Disney sequel with the DisneyToons division in Los Angeles or to choose another dream that had caught on in my later years at Disney, which was to launch an independent studio…
… A place where we could develop our content and also choose the projects that attracted us, as well as being with wonderful friends who have worked well together. Several colleagues joined me in a new company we called Project Firefly. It was our first time performing for non-Disney studios. After a couple of years, we all took different paths and continued with Premise Entertainment, an independent visual storytelling and animation design studio. While supporting daily professional relationships with partner studios, thematic entertainment, editorial and co-production needs, I have been heavily involved in developing original family content and intellectual property.
Outside of commercial work, we are then back to performing again, ironically with Disney animation. While Disney is a longtime partner and client, we have worked with a number of other clients and studios.
In the past few years, I've decided to spend a little more time on my creative content and properties. They are all fully developed to be market ready as movies and shows.
I launched a publishing house called Premise Press, where I did a double job as creative director for both companies and we started publishing 3 titles, one of which is a love work called "Tiki Trouble".
Numerous other titles are in the works in and around the current commitments of the daily study.
What is the origin of Tiki Trouble?
"Tiki Trouble" was born out of this fertile period of creative writing focusing on Premise Entertainment original content. I really wanted to tell a unique story about being brave and facing your fears. It's a timeless story of living a life you never would have known if you hadn't risked everything to get there. It seems even more timely now given recent events.
Will they be the sequel to Tiki Trouble?
The original version I had for "Tiki Trouble" took place in the past, and as I wrote it and received some comments, a second version of the story emerged from what is happening today. After reviewing the two "Tiki Trouble" stories, it became clear that one story centers on the villain and his origin. It takes place in the 1700s. For general ownership, it was nice to release the current version, which is essentially a sequel to a prequel that no one has seen yet. So it's a bit exclusive to share this information. What is available now, a complete adventure in itself, is "Tiki Trouble".
How about a Tiki Trouble movie?
As I said earlier, "Tiki Trouble" was originally designed as a screenplay for a movie. The original treatment was around 50 pages, so I brought a good friend and writing partner to help develop the script. So there is definitely a lot more to the "Tiki Trouble" series. The special edition 60-page large format illustrated adventure book is part of the story, but definitely not the whole story. For example, many of the pages displayed in the large-format book are fragments of entire sequences in the script. The script is currently in the novel phase and has a planned release in the not-too-distant future as well through Premise Press.
Can you tell us some behind the scenes information on creating Tiki Trouble?
As a child, I fell in love with Walt Disney's large-format storybooks. Memories, such as "Peter Pan", "Sleeping Beauty", "Alice in Wonderland" and many others we grew up with. They don't make books like that anymore. And I really wanted to retrieve it and update it with the printing process. So, in keeping with this rich idea of the once-immersive way of enjoying an adventure book, I have moved on with this giant format and high quality paper so that you can see all the details of the meticulously drawn narrative pages.
I went ahead and did some short video demonstrations of drawing and explained my focus on our YouTube channel in a series called "LATE NGHT on the drawing board". You get a truly unique insight into my thought process and evolution of making scenes more dynamic than I could for each page of the book. It's kind of like BTS (behind the scenes).
Is there anything you want to add for your Kickstarter fans and fans?
A BIG THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart to all the first to adopt and support the "Tiki Trouble". His help with the presale made the Special Edition book possible. Knowing they were there gave me the encouragement I needed to complete the project. I am always so busy in my role as creative director supporting and guiding quality teams through various production stages for visual storytelling, pre-production, development and planning for our clients and studio work throughout the day . I wasn't putting my IP projects first, and as a studio partner for larger companies, it's hard to do. So this was literally the "kickstart" I needed to activate the original content to start launching it. We hope to see our IP shows and films in production in the not too distant future. For now, you'll get them as high-end adventure picture books. All existing and upcoming titles are meant to inspire the reader and take them on an intentional journey.
Anyone who orders the special large format Tiki edition directly from us at TikiTrouble.com will not only receive the beautiful large version.
Large format special edition hardcover with dust jacket available while supplies last: https://premiseentertainment.com/tiki-trouble
Hard cover or standard cover available on Amazon NOW: https://amzn.to/2Xh8kiu
