Scoop: It Makes Perfect Sense
A few minutes ago at the Steven Universe panel, they announced what many have wanted, but nobody knew was coming: there’s going to be a feature-length movie. In era of leaks, this has been kept quiet, without so much as a whisper of a hint of a rumor. And the newest addition to the Crewniverse is none other than Becky Dreistadt. It’s early days on production, and naturally she’s limited in what she can share, but she sat down with Fleen to let us in on her experience so far.
Dreistadt is the lead character designer; it may seem odd to need somebody in that role when Steven Universe has been on the air for five seasons, but there will be new costumes, new treatments of major characters, and presumably new characters we haven’t seen yet. Dreistadt was insistent that she couldn’t say if we’d see major new heros or villains, but it stands to reason. Me, I’m holding out for finally seeing White Diamond.
In her role, she works closely with SU creator Rebecca Sugar; Sugar does concept art, Dresistadt adapts to rough sketches, and they go back and forth to refine the designs. She’s also working with another designer named Amber Cragg who’s working on the non-major characters, but she adds Amber’s great!.
Dreistadt’s been on the production for about month, but it’s a long process and at this early date neither release date nor title have been announced.
My chief question was about how Dreistadt came to work with Sugar; they’ve known each other for about a decade, having met at SPX, but haven’t collaborated previously. Dreistadt said that she was looking around for a new job after leaving Star Vs The Forces Of Evil at Disney¹; Sugar contacted her shortly after and things happened from there.
My other point of curiosity was about how Dreistadt adapted her very swoopy, watercolory, heavy-on-cute aesthetic to the very geometric look of Steven Universe. After working on Star for three years, she’s more than capable of working on model. The biggest adjustment, she said, was that much of animation features characters with three fingers plus a thumb, but Steven characters have four fingers plus a thumb. That, and Star‘s characters feature a more pronounced “big head” style than Steven, but she’s making it work.
Asked if she could share the full plot details and development sketches with Fleen, Dreistadt very politely did not call me an idiot. Asked if there was anything she did want to share, she said that Everybody on the crew is really nice, Rebecca has been super sweet, and it’s going to be great and everyone will love it. She’s seen the full animatic, so she’d know.
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¹ She’s not the only one. Various social media channels are full of people mentioning that they’ve left Star, which means either vast swathes of the production team are getting swapped out, or the show is wrapping up. No announcements either way, but I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.
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