Moana 2: our exclusive interview with Amy Smeed, Head of Animation – Walt Disney Animation!

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At VIEW Conference 2024, we sat down with Amy Smeed to discuss her work as Head of Animation on Moana 2. She also told us about her career and other movies she worked on, including Wreck-it-Ralph 2 (the Disney Princess sequence!), Tangled, and Dinosaur. Last, but not least, we asked her about her take on the future of new trends in animation.

We would like to thank VIEW Conference for their help. This interview was made possible thanks to this event. The next edition will take place 12-17 Oct. 2025 in Torino, Italy. We loved the 2024 edition, so don’t miss out and attend the event!

Here is the official Moana 2 trailer, followed by our interview with Amy Smeed.

3DVF: Hello Amy! Moana 2 wasn’t supposed to be an animated feature at the beginning. How did a TV show ended up on the big screen ?

Amy Smeed: Indeed, originally it was conceived as an episodic. And then as the filmmakers and I think everybody at the studio started seeing it evolve, it seemed like “this has to be a feature. We have to see this on the big screen.”
So they started making story changes and turning it into a theatrical release.

3DVF: Were you involved in the show when it was still a series?

No, I was not involved at the very beginning. I got involved once it was decided it would be a theatrical release.

3DVF: You worked on the first Moana. So in a way, you were in known territory. But at the same time Moana is older in the second movie, and there are new characters. How did you approach this new challenge? What was your mindset?

When I was asked to come on to Moana 2, I was so excited because I got to be with one of my favorite characters again. So coming in, getting up to speed with who the new characters were, Moana has a whole crew of characters and some really interesting ones. So it was exciting for me to get to know all of them. Moana has her baby sister, Samaya, who’s probably my new favorite character in this one.

But it was basically just coming into the project and getting up to speed with who all these new characters are. Like you were saying, Moana is now three years older, so how is that going to change her performance?

And so there’s just some subtle acting differences. You probably noticed her hair is slightly different. That was inspired just from her sailing on the open ocean for three years. And how that would affect something like her hair.

3DVF: Let’s talk a bit more about her hair. At VIEW Conference, we saw during your talk that there was already hair moving at the blocking stage, so quite early in the overall workflow.

Basically what happens is we have a simulation setup team that’s on very early in pre-production as we’re developing the character rigs. And then as we’re blocking out our performance, there is something we can do. It’s a sort of render where we can ask for an auto sim and it will give us kind of an out of the box sim that the team has set up for us. And then once we go to final animation and send our scene downstream, then it will go to our technical animation team. They’re really hand crafting and tuning that simulation and art directing that hair. So it’s not the final hair that we see in blocking, but it gives us something. It gives us movement.

3DVF: Very interesting, and indeed quite useful for animators! Is that something that was already in place on the first Moana?

I don’t think we had that on the first one. It was something that evolved, I want to say, a couple films after that, I think.

3DVF: As a franchise, Moana features massive characters. And in Moana 2, there’s a clam that is literally as big as an island. How did you approach such a character?

It’s complicated because you need to sell the weight and how large it is. So, for instance, if the clam is moving too fast, you’re not going to sell that weight and it’s going to appear smaller than what it really is. A huge part of us in animation is just figuring out things like the movement and the timing and spacing of that. What makes it feel very large is we’re kind of slowing in and then gradually getting faster.

3DVF: Matangi a memorable antagonist, and she is also a bit different from what we are used to: let’s talk about bats! Which team was in charge of animating them?

That was a collaboration between us and our crowds animation team. So basically what will happen is we will create cycles, for example, the bats and flying and doing whatever sort of performance we’re looking at. Then that’s given to our Crowds team and then they will put all the hundreds, thousands of bats.

She’s one of our more interesting characters. I loved seeing her in this film and you’ll have to watch the film to see how she evolves!

3DVF: This time you worked alongside three directors: David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, and Dana Ledoux Miller. This was their first animated feature. How did that work on a day to day basis? Were you in touch with one of them, with all of them?

Dave and Jason both came from the story department and I remembered, especially Dave from the first film. Dana was our writer and ended up getting added as director as well. So basically most of the time it was the two, Jason and Dana, in the room with animation dailies, which is basically the meeting where animators will come and get feedback from the directors.

The directors needed to divide and conquer, so Dave was often in areas like lighting and effects. For us in animation, Dave was part of the journey, but as we got busier in production, Jason and Dana were the most involved in animation dailies.

3DVF: One of your tasks as head of animation is to make sure that characters remain consistent throughout the movie. What is the most common issue on this side?

It’s hard because when you have a very large team of animators you have to make sure that every character stays true to who they are, on the acting, performance side.
Moreover, we have so many hundreds of controls that we can use in the computer as we’re crafting performances. And sometimes if you move a control a little bit too far, then our characters goes “off model”. So part of our job is making sure that a character like Moana looks like Moana.
And so we are working with the animators to make sure, for instance, if her mouth is too wide, to use those controls and back off of some of those controls.
But we also have something we call chalk talks, with the supervising animator. We meet with the whole team and we will give a talk on each of the individual characters to say, this is their acting performance choices. For example, this is how she would stand. This is how she would sit, as well as facial expressions. And then we also will create libraries of poses for animators to use as a starting point.

3DVF: You were talking about controllers. What was your relation with the rigging department?

The rigging department is basically creating a digital skeleton within the character. And we rely so heavily on the rigging department because if we don’t have the controls we need to get a performance, then that’s going to hinder us in the choices that we can make. So we will often spend five, six months with rigging one of our main characters. Usually, our supervising animator and whoever is rigging that character, will meet often, going over all of the controls.
They also handle skinning. Things like… If you think about how your finger bends. As your finger is bending the skin, it will build up at specific places. Think about that for your entire body, for your entire face. We spend a lot of time just in the face. So, for example, your mouth corner is coming up. How is that affecting the cheeks? And they’re building all of those controls in there for us, which is why it takes so long. But it is a deep collaboration between our two departments.

3DVF: Is there also some back and forth between the animation & rigging departments during production?

Typically not during production because hopefully we’ve spent all of our time up front.
There is a period right before we start production when animators come on to help us do pre-production tests. And sometimes as they’re creating performance tests, they might find little things here and there that we can fix on the rig. But hopefully, by the second or third month that we’re in production, hopefully that’s all been resolved.

3DVF: How big was the animation team on Moana 2?

We had a very large team. I think it was around 140 character animators working on the film. On the first one I think we had around 90.

3DVF: Why was the team so big compared to the first movie?

I think Moana 2 is more complex than the first film. We have many more characters on this film. For instance, on Moana, it was pretty much just Moana and Heihei (the rooster) on the canoe until Maui joins. For this one, we have new characters. Pua, the pig, is now on the canoe with Moana and then she has a whole crew. So three additional crew characters on the canoe with her.
It was more complicated. And as the story was evolving, we were needing to bring on more animators to help.

3DVF: And so we have a lot of new characters, a new crew, a little sister. Which one was the most interesting in terms of animation?

I think Samaya, her little sister, is probably one of my favorite new crew characters. It’s always hard to pick a favorite, but Samaya is just so cute. And I just I love her charm. I love her energy. I love the bond that her and Moana share, and it brings so much heart to the story. And as Moana is going off on her journey, it is so much more important for her to break this curse. That way, she gets to come home to Samaya and she’s making a better world for her sister.

3DVF: Did you get inspiration from Moana to animate Samaya? Or did you create her as a standalone character?

I believe she was created as a standalone character. But we had done a lot of research on little kids and movements for the first Moana.

Samaya is a little bit older than toddler Moana in the first one. So we didn’t take too much from there. But I would say she still has the same kind of energy and spirit as Moana toddler did in the first film. I would say you can tell that they’re sisters.

But as animators, we’re always looking for reference and researching. So a lot of us that are parents that had small children, we were looking at our kids as they were growing up, things like, how do they walk? How do they run? They’re constantly stumbling and they’re not very efficient movers. And it’s part of what makes them so charming as well.

3DVF: Moana 2 features singing and dancing. How do you approach these sequences? Do you push things further? Do you polish things a bit more?

Oh, sure. I would say we’re always caricaturing performances. So we’re always pushing on things like silhouettes of the character, timing and spacing. We had an amazing choreographer on the show, Tiana Liufau. We worked with Tiana on the first film as well. So if we knew some songs sequences were coming up, we could call Tiana, show her the sequence, either in storyboard form or through layout. And then she would come back with specific dance choices for us, sometimes certain gestures. And then we were able to put that into the film.

3DVF: You explained during the talk you gave at VIEW Conference that you didn’t animate any sequence on this show. Don’t you miss it?

Yes. Yes, I do! I love the craft of animation so much. I was fortunate on the first film, I was able to animate a couple shots of Moana and Gramma Tala. On this film I didn’t end up getting to animate any scenes with Moana. And I thought I was going to be able to, but I didn’t get that chance.
Because we had such a large team of animators, we spent a lot of our time with the directors in our animation dailies room. And then also in a meeting called Rounds, which is basically where the animators are coming to us with their scenes. And we’re just helping make sure that they’re addressing the notes, making sure the characters feel authentic to who they are.
So we spent so much time with that large team. So I didn’t get a chance to animate, and yes, I did miss it.

3DVF: And how do you chose which animator will do each scene/shot? Is it handled by the animation supervisors?

It depends on the show. For this show and the first Moana, usually the heads of animation and the supervisors all get together in a room. And we’ll talk about all the sequences that are coming up. And so, for example, we have some animators that are really great at coming up with funny, comedic, entertaining choices. So if we saw some of those scenes that were about to come up, we’d say, “Okay, we need this person for this scene over here.”
And then we have animators that are incredible, say, at subtle animation. So we would make sure we would cast them in those spots.

But it’s a collaboration with the Supes and Heads as we’re casting all the work to the animation team.

3DVF: Is it difficult to find the right balance between all the things you have to take into account? Animators have to be available, to be talented enough for a specific sequence, and at the same time you might want to help animators grow by giving them complex shots…

Yes, all of this is taken into account.
We’re always trying to think about people’s growth in their career over time. So, for example, we have some people that are just starting out, maybe graduated school from three years versus somebody that’s been animating 25 years. So we are always looking for growth opportunities.
Casting is always a challenge because of schedules. I would say that overall, we have such an incredible team of talented animators where you can give most people anything. There’s going to be scenes where certain people shine and it’s the type of scenes that they love the most. So we do try to think about that in casting, but to your point, sometimes with schedules, it doesn’t always align.

3DVF: Overall, what was the most challenging part of your job on Moana 2?

Probably our storm sequences, they are so challenging because you have a whole weather system. We have so many different tornadoes as part of our villain, and keeping the continuity across all of those scenes for all the tornadoes was… It sounds silly, but it was a huge challenge for us. So the storm sequences were definitely our biggest challenge.
We were trying to make sure that we are keeping continuity with the tornadoes because they were also such a big part of the story.

I imagine there could be times where you want to cheat something a little bit, make one of them move a little bit slower or a little bit faster. Maybe you cheat it slightly on screen if you are looking for a specific performance choice. But generally speaking, we were really trying to make sure that continuity would work across the whole sequence.

3DVF: We also wanted to discuss your past projects. You worked on so many great animated films and sequences, including on Wreck-It Ralph 2. You worked on the princesses sequence!

Yes!
After the first Moana, where I was head of animation, I missed animating so much that I went back into an animator spot on Wreck-It Ralph 2. Getting the chance to work with Vanellope again, Ralph again, was so fun, along with some of our new characters.

Working on the Disney Princesses sequence was so fun. I was working on some scenes with Cinderella, Ariel.
There was a simple point that Cinderella did, so I was looking for all the times Cinderella points. And then for Ariel, I was so inspired by Glen Keane and Mark Henn. I looked through some of the Ariel reference, to try to tie back to and honor their work from the original films. Some of the ways that she was kind of looking up.
In the scene that I was animating, Ariel was so intrigued by Vanellope’s outfit, because she’s wearing basically a baggy sweatshirt, and the Princesses are always in these ball gowns. So she’s lifting up Vanellope’s skirt and kind of inspecting her sleeve. Ariel doesn’t do that specifically in the old movie, but I was looking for some similar moments.

Overall, being a part of that sequence was so special to me.

3DVF: We also wanted to discuss Tangled, because you worked on a key sequence: Flinn’s death. This is a heartbreaking sequence, and it’s the kind of sequence that can make or break a film. It -has- to work for the audience.

I loved that I got to be a part of that moment. So for me, thinking about that moment, I try very hard as an animator to put myself into that position.

And my grandfather had passed away years before, and I remember seeing him in the hospital. So I was trying to put myself back into that headspace and then crafting that performance. So I was shooting some reference of myself, and I was able to get to that point, I was very emotional and I was able to see even some of the subtle things that happen in your neck and in your face. So that helped me build the performance you’re talking about. I love working on subtle, emotional acting moments.

3DVF: You were talking about shooting video references. And we learned in another interview you did that you use that a lot, which is not always the case with animators. Why do you think that’s helpful for you as an animator?

I think what I love about the craft of animation is everybody has different workflows. And so for me, I love shooting reference. I try to get outside of my head and outside of who I am as a person and just try to really be who that character is. I do want to make sure that I’m not copying my performance, though, because in the case of Moana for example, I’m not a 19 year old girl or 16 year old girl, and she’s going to move very differently from me or a character like Vanellope who was a child.
I’m usually taking things like facial expressions, sometimes hand gestures, physicality, what’s happening in my body. But I’m always pushing and caricaturing those performances.
But I know so many animators that have all of the information up in their head, and they’re able to just start from the beginning and craft that performance. And sometimes they’ll get up and act something out and just feel, like where are their hips when lifting a foot, for example, or maybe doing a gesture. And then other people will do thumbnails. But for me, it helps me get into the mind of the character.

3DVF: Would you have any advice for young animators who don’t really know which approach is the best for them?

Sure. I would say try all three. For me, I think it was helpful to start shooting reference of myself. Also, there are times when I don’t like what I’m getting from my performance and I know not to go that direction. So it can work both ways.

3DVF: We also wanted to go back to your very first project at Disney: Dinosaur!

Yes! I was doing a job called scene setup.
It was our first digital film at the studio. And we were having a lot of issues with getting scenes down the pipeline. And so I was placed within the animation department kind of as a technical helper. I’m not a super technical person, but I can learn the tools quickly. So as things were breaking, it was basically my job to fix them.

One of the other parts of my job was related to the the combination of CG characters with live action sets on Dinosaur, and we had to cast shadows correctly on the ground. Sometimes the feet would be going through the ground plane or floating in space. So then I would take the CG digital sets and I’d start pulling points to make sure that the ground contact was matching with their feet.
But that was just a tiny part. Mainly it was my job was to make sure the shots were going downstream properly.

3DVF: How did you transition from that job to animator?

My dream was always to be a character animator. So what I would do on my off hours, sometimes I’d come in later, come in on weekends, and I would take the dinosaurs rigs we had at the time. And I would just develop tests with them. And I tried to start small in terms of, okay, I’m going to focus on weight, for example, how large is a dinosaur? How small is a dinosaur? And make it feel like the weight is correct for that type of dinosaur.

And so I’d give myself assignments. I would reach out to animators that I’d met in the department, asking them for feedback on my work, just so I could grow.
I did go to art school and I studied animation. It’s just when I graduated, I didn’t feel like my demoreel was strong enough at that time to get a position as a character animator at Disney. But I thought if I could just get my foot in the door, then I could learn from all the talented artists that are in the building.

3DVF: A big trend in the industry right now is stylized animation: Fortiche with Arcane is probably the best example of this trend. Is that something that you would want to work on in the future?

Sure. It’s always fun when as a character animator you can kind of play around and push things. A lot of it will depend also on the character design.
Strange World, I would say, was pushed more than we had probably done in the past, if you compare it to Frozen for example. With Moana, I feel like we were able to push some things, similar to the first film where we’re caricaturing more than some of our other films. But in terms of pushing on that even more, I think that’s always something fun for us to get to try different things. For me it would depend on the director’s vision for what they’re wanting to see on the big screen. And do the character designs hold up to what those choices are.

3DVF: During your talk, you discuessed new tools on Moana 2. What would you hope for in the future in terms of tools and technologies? Maybe something that’s still annoying to this day that you want to change?

Yeah, rig speed! Our job every day is just posing the character. And there are times when if we have five characters in a scene, for example, our scene starts to slow down. So you have something in your head and it almost feels like sometimes you can’t get that out fast enough because the rigs are too slow or because there’s so many characters in the scene or it’s a heavy environment. So I would say anything that helps us pose our character faster is always a very welcome tool as well, as we have tools so we’re able to view our animation at 24 frames per second as playback. But again, if you’re adding multiple characters into the scene, that slows it down quite a bit.

3DVF: Are you also interested in AI? Not necessarily generative AI, just AI-based tools.
Wonder Dynamics, which was acquired by Autodesk, provides tooks that are supposed to do turn videos into animations that can be refined. There are also other Tools like Cascadeur which can help create more believable animations, it can help with body mechanics an weight.

I’m not as familiar with those tools. I think for me, what I love so much is crafting that original, that first kind of blocking pass. I love just how detailed and how art directed every single one of my poses are. I think that’s what I love about the craft of animation. I don’t know that I would necessarily be interested in using those tools because I love the handcrafted nature of what we do. But I haven’t seen them, so it’s hard for me to answer.

3DVF: Thanks a lot for your time Amy, and again, thanks to the VIEW Conference for making this interview possible!