Friday, April 29, 2011

Personal Behind-the-Scenes-y stuff

*Warning: Potential spoilers I guess!*

My first feature film shot!  This was right before the security guard gets "chloroformed" by Nigel, the bird villain.  I think this was a 2nd pass on blocking.  I showed to the director, Carlos, and he gave his initial feedback.  Something he mentioned for the feeling of it was "...Y'know, kind of like a Paul Blart Mall Cop".  Since I had never seen the movie, I took that quite literally and swiped this funny expression from the trailer on You Tube.  I just remember the shot doubling, almost tripling in length, which happens alot.


Since we had a bulldog in our movie, another Blue Sky-er was nice enough bring in her French Bulldog for the day.  We let him loose in one of the screening rooms and played with him for a while.  Here he is with one of the character leads for the Bulldog, Pete Paquette, and Dave Gallagher.  I wish I could remember that dog's name.  He was super outgoing/ active/ weezy.

My first Blu shot!  Also my first dialogue shot.   Though it's pretty simple, I actually couldn't believe they gave me this, (remember, I was pretty scared to even be here.)  Here it is along with my vid ref (which was, pretty bad).  Blu says "What?  Why?  This cage is awesome!" in response to Jewel trying to break out of their bird sanctuary.  I briefly got to work with Blu's lead, Nick Bruno, on this one before he had to jump onto another project.  Fun times.

My first Jewel shot!  When Blu first sees Jewel in the sanctuary and shes flying in slow motion.  Initially I thought I had something good going on here, but looking back at my initial pose on the left, it's pretty 
terrible.  She looks kind of dumpy.  Luckily for me , after feedback from my lead, this is how it turned out in the final film.

 SOOOO much better right?!  He basically wanted to me to try to get an overall stronger graphic, triangle shape, flowing from the wings down to the tail.  Totally made sense.  Since this was going to be the first time we see her, I wanted to make this image as iconic as possible, like it would've made a rad tattoo or something.  And lighting did an amazing job,  since Blu's offscreen comment was "She's like an angel."

The shot, even if they picked a different frame, was even made into a toy!  Cool!

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Some Rio Marketing stuff

As animation production on Rio was winding down, one of the marketing directors asked me if I could do some sketches for Rio Marketing stuff.  So for a day I spent some time to doing some simple sketches for ideas for bumpers/ads, etc.  These are the little ads that show up at the bottom or edges of the screen (that you might find a little annoying, your welcome;) )  I was just excited to spend the day drawing!  Anyway I ended up only having time to do about 5, Here's one of them:













Ha!  Pretty simple eh?  I'm really not even sure if this aired!

Monday, April 25, 2011

More stuff

Rio is doing really well at the box office!

And I'm not a Master Anything, but here's a little Q & A I did for my good friend, Xia's site

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Misc Rio Stuff

Here are some simple images I used to pitch an art style for the end credits before they settled on what is in the film now.

Monday, April 18, 2011

#1 Domestic

Thank you everyone who went out and saw it this weekend!!!

Monday, April 11, 2011

#1 International

Photo by Travis Price.

All of the hard work and late nights.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

I said Damn!

Solid drawings. Caricature. Entertainment. This shot has it all!
It's too bad the rest of the film is pretty forgettable.  

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

All the Buildings in New York


This is a fantastic idea!  And I wish I'd had thought of it.  Illustrator James Gulliver Hancock plans to draw every building in New York City.

Jesse Eisenberg

Jesse Eisenberg (the voice of Blu, main character in Rio) stopped by the studio today!

Carlos (our director), Galen (our supervising animator), Eisenberg, Elena, AJ, Mike, Me, Carolyn