With awards season underway, the contenders for Oscar and Annie Awards Best Animated Short Film honors are emerging. One of them is Coaster, the tale of a young man beginning adulthood. Director Amos Sussigan and co-writer Dan Lund take us on the short’s unpredictable journey.

Jackson Murphy: Have you been on a lot of theme park rollercoasters in your life?

Amos Sussigan: Well, if you’re talking about literal ones, yes. I’m not a huge fan of it. I find that real life can be much scarier and exciting than a literal roller coaster. And I think I tried to translate that into the short.

JM: And it’s so interesting that you take a house and you stick it onto an actual rollercoaster. How did this concept formation begin?

AS: I’m originally from Switzerland. I moved to the United States to study animation and try to become someone that could work in the animation industry. Right after school when I graduated, I finally managed to get my first job. It was at Paramount Pictures. And my bosses were going to be my idols, Jeff Turley and John Kahrs, who worked on “Feast” and “Paperman”, some of my favorite shorts. After getting a raise and working on the job for several months, I all of a sudden got laid off.

It had nothing to do with my work ethic, but it had to do with my visa situation. All of a sudden my visa wasn’t working anymore for Paramount because they changed policies. And it was all very weird. A couple weeks later, I got a call – I got a sponsor visa by Paramount Pictures, and I hopped back onto my dream job for a year. And the same day one year later, I got laid off again because the movie got cancelled.

I was having breakfast with my mentor and best friend Dan Lund, with whom I’ve worked on other shorts. And he has mentored me through school. And I was literally telling him, “My life is such a rollercoaster… literally.” And because I was being a little dramatic… it kind of sparked something in us talking about it. I was like, “What would it look like if it was a literal rollercoaster?” And that’s kind of how “Coaster” came to life.

JM: That’s an unbelievable story. I believe that everything happens for a reason. It’s unfortunate that you got laid off of that Paramount movie that never came to be, but now you got to create this really good short.

AS: Absolutely. At the end of the day… life in general, but the animation industry, is full of ups and downs. I felt that if I was going to do something that was more or less controlled by me – it could’ve been a short. Dan has always taught me that you don’t need permission to do a short. You just have to have an idea and the willingness to make it happen. So then we just started putting it together in my apartment with my 2012 iMac, and we just went from there.

JM: And was the production like a rollercoaster itself?

Dan Lund: Because it’s something that we were doing on our own, I love the idea that we can control the momentum. So as long as we had belief and drive in the story and the idea, that part of the rollercoaster was pretty smooth. But obviously, life gets in the way and we both did a lot of freelance to kind of self-fund the project. But we also both have day jobs that are pretty awesome and can take up more than their fair share of hours. I work over at Disney. As far as shorts and productions go, we know how to work together and navigate the coaster a little bit better.

AS: And in a more practical way, what we did is we tried to play to our weaknesses and strengths because we knew we were going to tackle this short on our own. We tried to set it up, production-wise, to be smooth. Everything that was props or the sets or background would be painted or hand-drawn, 2D animated by Dan – because that’s his job, that’s what he’s been doing for a lot of years. (laughs)

DL: I’m an old man! (laughs)

AS: Since the year I was born, he’s been working at Disney making beautiful VFX. And I’m usually, when I get hired – I get hired as an art director or a vis-ef painter. So all the backgrounds were going to be painted, and the characters were going to be 3D animated. That not only allowed us to have a production pipeline that was very smooth and could be handled, literally, on my computer on my home and trying to render everything out of that computer – because it was lighter, and it didn’t require a huge amount of power.

JM: I really like the wide shots – you see the house itself on the rollercoaster. Tell me about deciding on the scale between the house and the coaster.

AS: All the exterior shots… I kept thinking about beautiful shots from “Lawrence of Arabia” that were very vast, and you had a sense of scale. Most of the shots that we were trying to do… you rarely saw where the rollercoaster goes next. That’s kind of how life is. You never know if “next” is going to be an upward or downward trajectory. And we decided fairly early on that we didn’t want to include anything that was resembling Earth – just keeping it to clouds, very vast, making it feel like the house is on a track that’s way, way bigger than itself, which gives you perspective, too.

DL: Also, when people are going through their own stuff, it’s very easy to not think about anybody else. Your problems are the only problems and the biggest problems. And it’s easy to spiral down in your own head. So the idea of having this unlimited space where you’re not seeing other rollercoasters or anything other than something that symbolizes the emotions at that moment was an interesting take on being in your own head.

JM: And this young man is going through a lot – and thankfully he has his mom reaching out to him with all the phone messages. How did you choose Andrew “Nina West” Levitt to voice the mom, who is the only character that we hear in this short?

DL: Well the mom is my favorite part of the short. When we were working on it, she didn’t exist. And I really felt like we needed a moral compass to make sure all of the visuals we were seeing… that the audience could put them in context and read them the way we wanted them to, but also have it be a little bit of a juxtaposition against what you’re actually seeing. Writing the mom, I was very inspired by Louie Anderson from “Baskets”. I went to college in Minneapolis, so I’ve been following Louie Anderson’s career since I was in college – before anybody knew who he was. He always in his own stand-up had this great mom quality to him. So that was sort of the voice in our head.

But when we went to actually cast the role, Amos had been watching “The View”. And Nina was on “The View”, and Meghan McCain asked “What are your hopes and dreams?” And Nina said that she wanted to do voiceover in animation. She’s a big Disney fan. Amos texted me, and I listened, and I thought [the voice] had great texture. And what was cool about it was we weren’t hiring a drag queen, we were hiring a voice and a performance that was nuanced and had texture – and could feel her character in the short, even though you never see her. Within a few days, we were recording her.

AS: When I first heard Andrew’s voice as “Nina West” on “The View”, I found her voice so versatile and charming – and how she was explaining what being a drag queen means to him. It had this very… motherly vibe to it. Very calming, reassuring but also powerful and exciting. I thought it would work perfectly for our short.

JM: Definitely a great choice. So Dan, we know you’re working hard over at Disney. And Amos, you’ve got a couple other big projects as well: the “Green Eggs and Ham” series at Netflix and “Space Jam 2”.

AS: After we decided to make “Coaster”, my life has become way more busy. I have been part of Warner Animation Group for the past two years, right after I finished working on “Green Eggs and Ham”. And I have been borrowed by “Space Jam 2”, which is one of the first movies I helped green-light for them with the Animation Group team. I have been part of “SJ2” for almost the past year. And in order to self-finance “Coaster”, I’ve been trying to do as much freelance as I can, including again dabbling back on “Green Eggs and Ham”, which comes out on November 8th. And I’ve been doing freelance for Disney’s “DuckTales”.

JM: “Green Eggs and Ham” looks really nice. And diehard fans of the first “Space Jam” cannot wait to see the story and also how the characters look for “Space Jam 2”.

AS: It’s a big movie, and it’s really exciting to be on. It’s the first time I’ve worked on a movie that is both live-action and animation and that requires a few different types of skills to work on it – but also the dynamics of the production. And it’s been really exciting. It’s been exciting to go on set and see when they’re filming. It’s been exciting to see something that you designed be built by architects, like, the next week and you find it on set… with real actors and LeBron James interacting with it. It’s definitely been a blessing, and I feel super honored that WB has allowed me to be a part of this movie.

JM: Good. So overall, how do you guys feel right now that you’re in the first chunk of the crazy rollercoaster that is awards season?

DL: You finish a movie, and you want people to see it. The Oscar season [is] a whole ‘nother beast. There’s a creative element to it. It’s almost like being involved in another project.

AS: It humbles me to have been able to create a short with my best friend and mentor and some of my colleagues that helped out here or there from my apartment and my computer. And now being considered and being able to take this other rollercoaster ride that is the Oscar race… the most important thing is seeing how people react to something that you did. And it’s great to have an audience and being able to show it around and get notes or comments or what people liked about it. One thing that I find fascinating that never happened with anything else that I’ve done before is how much the reaction to it is different.

A lot of people get attached to different parts of the movie. Some people maybe relate more to the ups and downs and the exciting parts. Some people relate to the free-fall or calm parts or the spiraling down. So it’s nice to see where people find themselves in their own lives. They get to relate to different parts of the movie.

DL: We were up at Blue Sky Studios a couple of weeks ago, and I was shocked at how many old colleagues were coming up to me and they loved the movie but they were acquitting it to something that their kids were going through. Someone’s son had just dropped out of their first year of college or people whose kids were going through these struggles. So I love that the film sort of speaks to animation fans but also people who are struggling on any life path.