Syrenka: The Legend of the Warsaw Mermaid is a hand-drawn animated passion project by creator and director Tina Nawrocki, an animation industry veteran with a focus on hand-drawn 2D animation. This upcoming seven-minute short is a retelling of the tale of the Mermaid of Warsaw, framed from a Canadian feminist perspective.
I got the chance to talk with Tina Nawrocki about her experience in the animation industry, her work on video games like Cuphead, and her current project, Syrenka, which you can support on Kickstarter. The interview below has been edited for length and clarity. For the full, uncut discussion, click the video below to watch on ScreenAge Wasteland’s new YouTube channel, ScreenAge Wasteland Exclusives.
Valerie Morreale: I’m here with Tina Nawrocki, who’s known for working on Cuphead as well as a lot of other animation projects. I’m super excited to talk to you about your new project, Syrenka: Legend of the Warsaw Mermaid.
Tina Nawrocki: Oh, I’m so excited. Yes, I am known for Cuphead and Cuphead DLC. That was an amazing project to work on. I still work in video games, actually, full-time, doing some hand-drawn animation on a bunch of projects, but I’m currently here to talk about my short, independent 2D animated film, Syrenka.
Absolutely. So, before we get into the stuff for Syrenka, I did want to ask what first drew you to animation and how you got into the animation industry?
Oh, it’s a long story. I was always good at drawing, and I think I latched onto it because I had an older, perfect sister who was good at everything, including drawing, but I was slightly better than her. So I decided this is going to be my thing because she’s perfect at everything, and I’m slightly better at this. And I took it very seriously.
I was very aggressive at drawing, so at like age eight, I was like, I’m going to study anatomy. I’m going to sketch things really seriously. And I was obsessed with horses as a kid, but we didn’t have the money to do horseback riding. It’s a very kind of, you know, expensive sport. But I started drawing courses obsessively, and then I would go around to stables and sell them to people to try and make a bit of money to then ride some horses. And so my obsession with drawing started with horses, and I drew a lot of them.
I started painting them in oil paints. I studied, and I got a scholarship to go to Kentucky to study horse anatomy because of it when I was like 14. And then I started drawing portraiture because rich people want to be painted with their horses. And so I started drawing humans, a very realistic kind of background in art.
When I got a bit older, I started working on films, painting backdrops and sets. And then I took a three-year program in Montreal, which is where I’m from, Montreal, Canada. That’s where I grew up. I took a three-year course called Illustration and Design. So it was very, like, broad. They touched on everything. We even did airbrush. We did painting. We did charcoal. We did computers. It was the first time I touched a computer, so I started learning Photoshop and things like that. And they had an animation course and this was, you know, a tiny little segment. So it was just, we had two little animation classes and some 3d.
I was also a theater kid growing up. I loved the stage. I loved acting, but decided to pursue my art. So animation was this aha moment where I was like, oh my God, this is both acting and drawing, and it’s actually attainable. So I was obsessed very quickly and kind of really pivoted because I thought I would be an illustrator. I thought I would just like continue drawing for a living, but it turns out animation was really fun. I was good at it. And it scratched both itches, I guess, of my passions. So, really long story, but that’s how it got there.
Were there any early animation inspirations, like TV or movies, that you really fell in love with as you got into animation?
My first memory of a feature film was The Little Mermaid, actually. My sister and I had long hair, and we would brush our hair with forks like we were just completely obsessed. Then Robin Hood was the second animated film that I ever watched. And, you know, the bunny Skippy in it, he turned seven years old and he does archery. I also do archery and had just turned seven years old. So I was like, “Oh my God, Skippy is me. I am Skippy.” And so I was really obsessed with Robin Hood. And then, you know, because of that, our parents would like be sure that we watched every new Disney film that came out.
A little bit later, I discovered Ghibli. And so like, oh, I was obsessed with that. From there, I guess it was good luck that when I was studying illustration and design, that’s when Avatar: The Last Airbender came out on TV, and I was, yeah, I was really, really into that. I started like really discovering more stuff because of people around me. So like Samurai Jack, you know, it was just this plethora of amazing genres and styles. And I started, you know, looking into like Eastern European early animation.
I took an amazing class called History of Animated Film at Concordia University. I took some night classes there and the teacher was so passionate. He had like these reels and reels of old cartoons. He even had a segment of like, you know, just a huge segment of Japanese animation altogether, which I find not a lot of Western animation history classes teach. He thought it was just as important to talk about the East as well as the West. So that was really wonderful. So I discovered a whole lot of other things like that. And I have, you know, piles of art books of different animated films and series. So I can’t say one thing gets me going. I think all animation freaks me out and makes me excited.
So your work includes film, TV, and video games. So I wanted to ask, what were some of the differences between the animation mediums, and how does the creative process evolve through those mediums?
So the bulk of my work, I’ve been working for 20 years now. So this is my 20th anniversary of working in the industry. Video games is really exciting. It’s the first thing I went into because Montreal, I don’t know if you know this, is kind of mecca for video game studios. I actually don’t play games. I’m a really horrible gamer. But I’ve worked in video games all my life, so I know a lot about them just because of having been part of the production side, but I don’t play them that often. So I started with video games and video games are very, you know, body mechanics-based, action-based.
I want to preface this for anybody who doesn’t know. I’m a 2D traditional animator, so I draw everything frame by frame. I don’t work in 3D. I tried it. Respect to everybody who does that, but I just couldn’t do it. It was too much for me. I like that feel of hand-drawn, and I’m very passionate about keeping that art form alive, even though, you know, we kind of veered away from it once Pixar movies became a thing.
So, you know, video games, action-based, lots and lots of action, lots of body mechanics, lots of cycles. And I actually love animating walk cycles. I know some people find it’s like drudgery and boring, but I feel like you could tell an entire story just with how a person walks.
When you do TV or film, you have camera angles, you have the layout done before you do the lip sync. You have actors, and how they portray the character with their voice affects how you animate the character. So that’s very interesting and a completely different challenge in and of itself. And then film is the same, but you have more time. I find with TV, you’re very pressed for time. You have to, you know, hurry, hurry, hurry. Video games as well. The deadlines are very quick. Speed is of the essence. With film, you do all that, but you have more time, more iterations, you know, a director who’s going to pick it all apart and try over and over again. Whereas game stuff, you have to kind of get it approved as quickly as possible just to move on because there’s a lot of work.
So I love all of it. I have most of my experience in video games. This is partially why I wanted to make a short film with lip sync with more realistic characters, because I’m known for very cartoony, very, you know, broad action. And I wanted to push myself and practice more of that realistic, emotional style. So it’s a journey. I don’t think my film is going to be perfect, but it’s definitely going to be a huge learning experience.
I did want to talk about your experience working on Cuphead a few years ago. It was a huge breakout success, won numerous awards, and got a television spinoff on Netflix. What was it like being a part of that creative team, and what lessons did you learn from that creative experience?
Most of the work I’ve done is for indie studios, which is a very different experience than working at a really big corporate studio. I’ve done a bit of that as well, but to me, indie has always had my heart. I think there’s something magical about a ragtag team of a few people who have a lot of heart and want to make something that they love and will do anything to get it done and to get that into the world. I feel, you know, from the bottom up, it really does affect the industry as we saw with Cuphead, which has like millions and millions of sales. Its success made the whole genre of 1930s retro cartooning popular.
We were a tiny team. We were basically remote before remote was a thing. This was pre-COVID. And everybody was shocked when we would say that we had never met each other until the day of the launch, and we worked together for years. And so the two Moldenhauer brothers, Chad and Jared, are from Canada as well. Chad lives in Oakville, Ontario, which is very close to Toronto, and Jared still lives in Saskatchewan, where they’re all from. And it was a family affair. They loved video games. They loved that retro 1930 style because her family had like VHS tapes of like Betty Boop and Popeye. And they kept watching that when they were kids.
So they were obsessed with the style, and it was this huge, wonderful passion project. And one of the things that made me most excited about it is that I found 2D animation like 10 years too late. You know, there was the height of Disney and everybody hiring 2D animators, but by the time I was ready to get into the industry, it had just like completely petered out. And I was so sad. I thought I’d never work on paper, which I love. Like I love flipping pages. I thought nobody was ever going to hire me to do frame-by-frame animation. This is so sad. And you know, that’s what every professor, every person would tell you. It’s like, don’t do 2D. Go 3D, and stop doing that. Like you’ll never get a job.
And I was very stubborn because this is the medium that I love doing. And so I did some pencil tests. I worked for eight years and went back to school at Sheridan College in Toronto. I did pencil tests and I would put them up on a blog. That was like my first online presence because I didn’t have anything online. And this blog was found by the Moldenhauer brothers. And they’re like, “Oh, wow, you work on paper. We actually want to make a video game completely on paper.” And they saw that I also had worked on video games. So that was how I got the job. They just kind of reached out to me. I did a pencil test for them, and they approved it. And that’s how the journey began.
So we’re only four animators to start. There was only one background artist, Caitlin Russell. She painted everything by hand with watercolor.
That’s insane. I mean, because the game looks incredible. I can’t imagine how long it took to animate everything in that game.
Tina: I started in 2015, and the game launched in 2017. So I worked over two years on it, but in total, I think from like inception to release, it was seven years, but they started really slow, like doing it part-time in their basement and then like slowly hired people once they really thought they had something going there. So it was definitely like one of those amazing highs throughout all of it; we all kind of knew we were doing something awesome.
And I told myself, because I had worked for, you know, eight years in games, but a lot of them got canceled. Some of them, I wouldn’t even admit that I worked on because they were that bad. So I felt like I had nothing to be proud of. And then when Cuphead came along, I was like, you know what? It doesn’t matter if this fails or succeeds. I’m so proud of the work that I’m doing on it.
Everybody had put so much passion and so much beautiful, creative energy into it. And. We did not expect it to be what it was. It was just a cultural phenomenon and really took off. And it was a shock to us all how well it did. But we definitely felt we were doing something really cool while we were working on it. It was kind of like you felt the magic.
I’d love to hear about your creative process for your upcoming short film Syrenka: Legend of the Warsaw Mermaid. How did you come up with the idea, and what is the current status with production and release?
I was born in Poland. I still have a lot of family back in Poland. My father’s there. So I travel back and forth as much as I can to see family. So I speak it fluently. I read and write. And growing up, even though we grew up in Montreal, Canada, my parents were very adamant that we had to speak Polish at home. We read a lot of Polish literature, and I was trying to learn French because Montreal is in Quebec. So I was like reading an English book, a Polish book, a French book, and then I would rotate and like keep trying to learn all three languages at the same time.
I kind of briefly mentioned with Skippy and archery, I was a huge tomboy growing up. I loved weaponry, especially like, you know, like old school weapons. So I learned archery, I learned saber fighting, and I learned archery off of horseback. So it’s like Tatar-style. It’s a very short bow and you ride a horse and you shoot arrows. I loved all that kind of stuff. And so, to me, very naturally having gone to Warsaw to visit family, seeing this amazing emblem of the city of Warsaw, which is the warrior mermaid. And she’s pretty badass. She has a shield, she has a sword, and traditionally she has two legs, two like fins instead of just the one. And if you look at old European art, most mermaids don’t have the one tail. They have two legs, which makes sense when you look at some of the legends. So, you know, that image was very interesting to a young little warrior, Tina.
And I asked my aunts about, you know, what’s the story of the mermaid? And they told me the legend, which, looking back, is my family version of it, because it was kind of dark and kind of creepy and very interesting. And then I read the official legend online, and it’s a lot more vanilla. It’s not as badass as my family retelling. So I was like, oh, that’s really intriguing. That’s really cool. And when I got older, I was like, oh, you know, one day I want to make an independent film. And to me, doing the legend of the Warsaw Mermaid is something that I would love to do. And I was in my early 20s when I was like, okay, you know, one day I’m going to do this.
I wanted to tweak the story because I didn’t think her getting saved by a dude felt right. She’s a warrior. Like, why would that happen? So I’m giving it a bit of a feminist twist. And as I grew older, I thought that little feminist twist should be core to the story, that it should be a symbolic story, and that a symbol of a warrior mermaid becomes a symbol for resilience.
I was 20-something when I had the idea, and I sat on that idea for over 10 years. And then I decided that I want to do it, but that I don’t want to do it alone. And I think young people would have just like, I’m going to sit there and I’m going to make this film and it’s going to be just me. But as you get older, you realize that collaboration is so magical. And especially since I wanted it to be uplifting women’s voices, I wanted to have a variety of women participate. And that’s why this film is primarily made by women. I think we have one token man. (laughter)
And it’s been an absolute delight. So I worked with a character designer from Morocco. Her name is Yassmine Kairouch. She’s very young, but super talented. And I could have drawn the characters myself, but I wanted to have a different perspective. Maybe they’ll draw them slightly differently than I thought of. And she did make some details, which I absolutely love, of the final design of the mermaid.
I also worked with a script writer, and this is something that I encourage people to do. I don’t write well. I draw really well, but I don’t write well. And when I tell the story, I swear a lot. Like the dialogue would have been just a bunch of swear words. So I decided to work with a script writer and I got the script written and I had the character designed. I was like telling everybody how excited I am that I’m going to finally do this. I’m going to finally make my own film.
I talked to Felicity Morland, who is amazing. She’s from Australia. She lives in Toronto, Canada, and she was making a documentary called Hand-Drawn. Her documentary film was about the state of 2D animation in the world today. I was one of her interviewees about Cuphead and talked about how everybody loved that hand-drawn feel of the video game. I told Felicity about Syrenka and how excited I was. She said, “Do you have a producer for the film?” I’m like, “No.” So, she goes, “Would you like one?” So that’s how she became my producer. She’s the reason we have the quality and lofty goals that we have for the film. She spearheaded the crowdfunding to get some funds for pre-production to hire talented voice actors to get the animatic done, to get a bunch of people on board, and to get the storyboards done.
We did our first crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, which was a success. So that was amazing. It was a lot of work and that got us really going. Zarrin Darnell-Martin wrote an amazing script. It’s going to be seven minutes long. And the script is really, really lovely and really, really strong.
So then we started production, and we’re now halfway through animation at this point. So we are doing one final crowdfunding campaign to basically get the animation finished in one year. I want to hire a few animators to support me with the animation and with the cleanup. Then hopefully we will do a festival run, which is the goal. I love how Felicity’s like, “Yeah, we’re going to try for an Oscar.” (laughter) I’m like, “Okay, sure.”
Then, after the festival run, anybody who supports the film is going to get an early release. So if you get to watch it at home in the link, and then it will live happily ever after on the internet somewhere cozy, so that everybody can watch it once it’s done with its festival run.
Do you have a confirmed voice cast?
Mermaids are vocal creatures. Like merpeople in general, sirens, all of them, they sing, right? Their voice is their power. And in the legend of the Warsaw Mermaid, the mermaid sings, and it is her power as well. So one of the first things I did was I wanted to figure out what song she sings in my film.
I wanted something old that also makes sense for a legend, so my mom, bless her, her name is Bata, she was like, I will find this. She went all over the internet and found an old Polish ballad. I really wanted the mermaid to sing in Polish. The characters speak in English for worldwide distribution, but I really wanted her to sing in Polish. So she sings “Oj Ty Rzeko,” which is a Polish ballad called “O Ye River,” which is great because the Warsaw Mermaid is a river mermaid. Like the Vistula River is her home.
We got an amazing soloist called Sylwia Golonka in Poland to sing it for me. And again, my mom found her and she like brutally called her on the phone. She didn’t even email. (laughter) She just found her number somewhere and just called her and was like, “My daughter makes film. You must sing for this film.” And I was like, “Oh my God, how embarrassing.” But thankfully, Sylvia is amazing. And she thought it was adorable and said yes. And she did a beautiful rendition of a song. There are two versions of the song in my film. The first time the mermaid sings, it’s beautiful and calm and soothing. And she’s happy. The song is meant to protect the village of Warsaw. And then her second song, she’s angry and pissed, and like the same song is like completely different. So she sings it twice, which is really cool.
Casting was a bit of a nightmare, actually, because I managed to find the voices I wanted, but two of them were union and two non-union. So it was an absolute nightmare with the union to try and make that work, but we did it.
It took me forever to find the voice of the mermaid because a lot of voice actresses auditioned and I found their voices sounded too normal. I wanted something weird and slightly otherworldly. Of course, we’re going to also put some effects on the voice to make it sound even weirder, but I wanted somebody who had an interesting voice. My script writer, Zarrin, mentioned Chala Hunter, so I listened to her voice, and like, wow, she is the voice of a mermaid.
James Jordan plays our main antagonist, Cosmere. He does stand-up comedy and he played a prick so well for this film. So that was amazing. Finding an older man to play the old fisherman was really tough because we got a lot of people auditioning who were young pretending, and I was like, it doesn’t sound real. So I actually reached out to Rob Corbett, who taught theater for animation and I was one of his students. He had a lovely voice and he’s an older man, so I reached out and he was like, “Absolutely. I’ll record this for you.”
The main character is a bar matron named Kinga. What’s interesting is that in ancient Poland, women had a lot of rights, including the ability to own property. So she owns a pub. Kinga is the main one who interacts with the mermaid. She has a young daughter called Mila who doesn’t have like any spoken words, but she has like some sounds.
Kinga was again a nightmare because I really wanted her voice to have power. I wanted to feel the kind of grit that she’s been through because she’s been through some shit, you know, like she’s been around. So after tons of failed attempts, I actually just texted Zarrin, who is an actress as well as a script writer. And I was like, Zarrin, can you just like record one of the lines from the script of Kinga and send it back to me via text? So, she recorded, and immediately I’m like, “She’s Kinga.” So not only did she write the script, but she’s also voicing the main character.
So is Syrenka: Legend of the Warsaw Mermaid on Kickstarter right now?
It is on Kickstarter, and we are running the campaign until the end of May. I don’t know if you’re aware of the artsy kind of thing that everybody draws mermaids in May. So we thought it’d be really nice if we started in April and then went all the way to May.
There are a lot of really awesome things in the Kickstarter. If you’re interested in 2D animation, all the shots that I do are animated on paper as well, which means a lot of drawings. And if you are a collector of animated drawings, like I am, there are a bunch for sale, so you can just buy the mermaid if you want. You can buy the whole cast of characters, so you can get one drawing of each character. And unlike other Kickstarters, where you just buy a drawing and we just send you whatever, we actually have a catalog, and you get to pick the drawing that you get.
All drawings will be signed, and we will be sending them out. And of course, there’s some beautiful prints included. And if you just want to support to see the film, it’s like $25 to see the film early. Otherwise, obviously, even $5 helps. But yeah, if you’re a collector, absolutely check it out. Even if you don’t have the money right now, sharing it also really helps, as does telling everybody about it to support mermaids and hand-drawn animation.
What’s the current progress on your Kickstarter?
Tina: I’m pretty proud we are over a quarter of the way. It’s a great start, but we still have a long way to go. So everybody needs to really, really push and get behind it. I think what’s really lovely, especially in a word world full of AI, our project is proudly 100% human made. No machines are used for anything. Its hand-drawn backgrounds are done by some amazing artists. Adrianna Glowacka and Hazel Dang are painting all these gorgeous backgrounds. The music will be recorded with real musicians in Poland. You know, it’s so much love, so much artistic talent has gone into this. And so, you know, please, please support human-made art.
Well, thank you so much for telling us all about Syrenka. I’m super excited to see it. And to the screenagers who stuck with us, thanks for listening in, and we will see you all in the Wasteland.