(dramatic music)
- I promise to do everything in my power
to protect this city.
- I promise.
- Our challenges on Miles Morales,
were following up this very successful video game
and changing the hero that people love so much
from Peter to Miles.
Now it was the creative spirit of problem solving,
the passion that everyone had behind the project
that allowed us to push through.
And Sony was just there the whole time,
like saying, "What can we do to help you guys
realize this vision?"
You know, not to put too fine a face on it,
there were
fans, you know,
some old school fans who didn't want to see
a black Spider-Man.
Didn't want to see a Puerto Rican Spider-Man.
So to me,
getting as niche as possible is sort of a,
it's sort of a pushing back
and saying, "No, you know what?
All of these characters, Matt Murdock, Daredevil was niche.
And just like being Irish Catholic from Hell's Kitchen
is a very specific place.
Being, you know,
black and Puerto Rican for Brooklyn
is a very specific place.
And there's no reason that one can become a,
a universal hero, right?
Just a superhero without labels.
And that the other one has to be like, no, this is
this superhero for these people kind of thing."
I, I try to fight back against that whenever I tell stories.
And, and again,
I've been pretty lucky that I've worked with, with,
with editors, and artists,
and folks at Marvel
who are just been super supportive of doing that.
- Getting the crew to be as diverse as the character sets
is an ongoing challenge in the animation business
and in the gaming business.
And we're doing better all the time,
but that is certainly a factor.
And one of the,
one of the benefits of,
you know, the intention
to have more inclusion on screen is that
you really,
it really compels you to have more inclusion
behind the screen.
- Absolutely.
I, I agree with that completely.
And I know like bringing, bringing him to life.
I don't think I was afraid of going too far
considering I'm a person of color,
but I do feel like,
I did feel like extra pressure
of making sure that we do it right.
And making sure that it feels authentic.
So a lot of things that we here, that we did here
was asking people like when we're animating,
when we're animating Miles,
and if he's doing a finisher,
a lot of us have seen Spider-Man fight before
because there's been so many movies
and so many games and TV shows with Spider-Man,
but it's always been Peter.
So we had this extra layer of what would be the Miles way
of doing that be.
Adding that personality to his character
to me, was extremely important and to the rest of the team.
We really wanted to push like, this is Miles,
this isn't just Peter Parker doing this as Spider-Man.
This is Miles doing it.
So adding that flavor into it.
Adding when he's swinging around the city,
I definitely took inspiration from Spider-Verse
with the way he would like jump off the building.
And that was one of the first tests I did
to see how would he go from that?
And then from a player's perspective
to make it not feel confusing,
letting the player know that this is something
that you can do as optional.
It's optional for you.
But in a way making the player,
putting the player in the shoes of Miles
so that they feel like they,
we are this character.
And when Miles is upside down,
when he's in his reverse fall,
it brings a certain uncomfortability to the player.
Because as a player, who's,
when you play games you're taught
when you're in a certain camera angle,
this is how it looks when you know you have control.
And what I wanted,
what we want it to do was say that,
get in a way, get comfortable being uncomfortable.
This is something that Miles is learning from.
This is something that this is his way of swinging
and he's comfortable doing both ways
and he's feeling it out.
And which ultimately makes him a better character,
a better, a better Spider-Man for this,
for finding it in his own way.
- And I think there is something,
especially during the quarantine,
very satisfying about being Miles
and swinging around free
and open in the world
and just exploring in a way that feels
like it's so hard to do right now.
- Ultimately, you know, when we make these things,
it's combination of a lot of different artists
and I'll include Nadji Jeter.
Who played Miles Morales so brilliantly
in Marvel's Spider-Man and in their sequel
Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales.
We'd often just ask Nadji to be Nadji, right?
It's like,
how do we make sure when he's doing any movement on screen,
that he's bringing himself into this character.
When he's in the sound booth,
how can he put a spin on the words that we wrote?
If something didn't feel right,
we would make changes on the fly.
And you know there is the other aspect
of his personality, too.
So we would have Spanish language experts.
We even had ASL experts that came in
because there was, we added ASL as a part of,
of our Miles Morales' repertoire.
And having, having these people come in to inform,
once again, I use the word specificity of the character
just made him more human
and made, and made you believe in him
and, you know, fall in love with him.
- You can see everybody's fingerprints in the clay.
But at a certain point you can't distinguish
whose hand it came from.
You know?
You can, you can see your idea clearly.
I can go, "Oh yeah, I thought of doing that."
But in the very next second,
there's a something that happens where you know that
Phil, or Bob, or Rodney,
or, you know,
Justin, our production designer,
or Chris took your idea and melded it with something else.
It all flows together so organically
by the time we were done.
(dramatic music)