

Casey Leonard

Nickelodeon is about to sham-ROCK your world with the new, animated Nickelodeon Original Movie, premiering Friday, March 8, at 7:00 p.m. (ET/PT) on Nickelodeon USA, just in time for St Patrick’s Day! The movie follows the hilarious adventure story of Hap, the unluckiest leprechaun around, and the search for his family's lost gold!In, unlucky leprechaun Happy McSweeney is in for the adventure of a lifetime when he and his friends - Sammy, the kind one; Shannon, the brave one; and Reggie, the weird one - set out on a daring mission to retrieve his family’s long-lost pot of gold that was stolen by the evil Houlihan from the McSweeney family years ago. Can Happy get his family luck back?The hour-long film stars the voice talent of Mark Hamill (), Kira Kosarin (), Ron Funches (), Flula Borg () and Gunnar Sizemore ().tells the story of Hap McSweeney (Sizemore), a leprechaun cursed with horrible luck after a dragon stole his family’s pot of gold many years ago. While on a field trip to the mansion of the luckiest and most mysterious man in Fortune City, Houlihan (Hamill), Hap and his three best friends Shannon (Kosarin), a hotheaded elf; Sammy (Funches), a gentle giant; and Reggie (Borg), a wild gremlin, stumble upon a particularly familiar pot of gold and must form a plan to pull off the ultimate heist to steal back the McSweeney gold and restore the family’s luck. All of that and more is teased in the TV movie’s first trailer!The movie is directed by Casey Leonard () and written by Bart Coughlin (), Bill Motz () and Bob Roth (), with Darren Thomas and David Steinberg, Nickelodeon’s SVP of Animation Production, serving as executive producers.is produced by Nickelodeon in Burbank.To celebrate the upcoming premiere of Nick's all-new movie,has unveiled a super first-look at Nickelodeon's newesttrailer, which you can watch here on Collider.com , and behind-the-scenes shots of the cast voicing their roles for, which you can check out below!:Nickelodeon USA has confirmed plans to premierein March 2019!star Kira Kosarin will be voicing a character named Shannon in!:Following its U.S. premiere,is expected to roll-out and premiere on Nickelodeon’s international channels and branded blocks across 170+ countries and territories:Friday 15th March 2019 at 6:30pm.is produced at Nickelodeon Animation Studio in Burbank, California. The film went into production in Fall 2016.To celebrate the release, Nickelodeon has partnered with Random House Books for Young Readers to release a tie-in book inspired by the movie. Titled, the hardcover book is written by author Bart Coughlin and features illustrations by illustrator Leticia Lacy. Boys and girls ages 3 to 7 will love this beautifully illustrated hardcover Big Golden Book that's based on the television movie. Released on Tuesday, January 8 in North America, the UK, Canada and Australia, the book is available to purchase now on Amazon.com Amazon.ca and Amazon.com.au Also, from Animation Magazine Nickelodeon debuts a new, original animated movie titled Lucky on Friday, March 8 at 7 p.m. The movie centers on an unlucky leprechaun named Hap McSweeney. After a dragon stole his grandfather’s pot of gold, the McSweeneys have been cursed with horrible luck. However, Hap doesn’t let all the misfortune get him down. One day, on a field trip to visit the mansion of the luckiest man in Fortune City, Hap stumbles upon a particularly familiar pot of gold…The film is directed by Casey Leonard whose credits include storyboard artist and director on Breadwinners and animator on Out of Jimmy’s Head. He is also the supervising producer for the new Nickelodeon series based on next month’s Wonder Park feature. He was kind enough to answer some of our questions about his work and influences (and share an exclusive clip, which you can catch below the interview!):OK, let’s go back to Casey’s early years! When did you know you wanted to work in animation?As a kid, I consumed as much animation as possible, filled sketch books with comics. I couldn’t stop drawing. However, growing up so far away from where animation is produced, it really didn’t occur to me that it being an animator was an actual job until I was 18. Then it was decided. I didn’t know how to get there, but figured the first step was art school. So I went. I got my degree in SIM (Studio for Interrelated Media) from Massachusetts College of Art and Design.I grew up on the hits! DuckTales, Inspector Gadget, Transformers — they had the best animated intros! Then Dragon Ball came to the states. I watch a lot of that and Batman: The Animated Series.My first job in animation was out of pure luck, perfect timing, a studio on a hiring frenzy, and a buddy who was about to start but then broke his arm snowboarding, so he recommended me – it was at Soup2nuts in Boston, MA, as a character animator. To this day, it’s still one of the most challenging gigs of my career.All of Mamoru Hosoda’s films completely blow me away. Every shot, moment and character is pouring with sincerity and specificity. His character relationships and stories are incredibly relatable and genuine and really funny too!Lucky is about an unlucky leprechaun and his best friends on a mission to retrieve his family’s stolen lucky pot of gold, thus restoring his luck. The first act is comedy, the second act is heist and the third act is all action. It’s really fun! At its core, Lucky is about friendship. All the luck in the world’s got nothing on love.Wonder Park is great, too. It’s really exciting to inherit this great group of characters and a giant amusement park to tell stories in. The CG department at Nick is doing really exciting, cutting-edge work that is truly bridging the gap between TV and feature quality animation. It is quite the honor to be along for the ride.Lucky was enormously challenging in every way. Learning to tell stories in a new, longer format and in a new medium was so exciting! And we made it really fast. At one point in production I was launching animators up at Bardel on the second act of the movie, while rewriting and reboarding massive sections of the final act, and doing pose by pose animation revisions on shots from the first act. Intense!One thing I never anticipated falling in love with while working in CG is live-action style cameras and lenses. It’s probably my favorite thing about making the Wonder Park series as well.I really had no business directing a CG movie. I had zero experience in CG or movies. But when David Steinberg showed me the original draft of the Lucky script, I fell in love with the potential of the characters, their relationships, and their story. So I spent a week thumbnailing my vision for the intro to the movie, pitched it to David, he got on board. Then I pitched it to the head of movies, Mike Sammaciccia, and then I was in. From there, I spent six months putting together rough designs and a five-minute test animatic, got the official greenlight, then went into full production.The movie took about 14 months from greenlight to final lock. In house at Nick, we did everything from boards to design to character and set modeling, texture, rigging, etc. Then the animation was handled at Bardel in Vancouver, which took roughly four months. Then the lighting, rendering and comp were done in house.Around 30 people at Nick and 25 animators at Bardel.My goal for the look of the movie was to be able to watch it 10 years from now, and for it to still hold up. So, I knew we needed to create something that felt as timeless as possible. Coupled with that, I needed to be able push poses and expressions in a really broad cartoony way. So we landed with a look that feels really tactile with a classic stop-motion vibe, while fully embracing the amazing tech and toolsets of CG.We animators tend to be introverts and fully focus on our assignments. My advice is: Do more! Reach out to animators you look up to, seek advice, network, learn to enthusiastically communicate your ideas. And most importantly, when you get notes, drop the ego, seek the note behind the note, and address said notes with the confidence your work will be stronger and smarter as a result.I plan to keep striving to tell stronger, more engaging stories. I’m itching to make another movie. Maybe I’ll do that!Lucky premieres Friday, March 8, at 7 p.m. (ET/PT).###