DreamWorks Memories

Since I’ve been cleaning house and rediscovering old photos, I’ll post a few more. These photos are from my time in the layout department at DreamWorks, circa 2000-2001 (back when DreamWorks still had a layout department), when I worked on Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. The first photo (above) is a layout crew meeting in late spring, 2001. So much incredible talent assembled together in one room! I count it a great honor to have worked with these folks. I learned so much from them and all of my work since has been better for having applied the lessons they taught me.

The next photos (below) are shots of the “DW Breakfast Club” – a group of layout folks who arrived to work bright and early. The DreamWorks cafeteria opened about 7am or so, and we were there each morning for coffee and muffins. I remember this time very fondly; I really enjoyed working with these people!

DreamWorks Spirit was in production for a number of years, although I only worked on it for the production crunch from 2000-2001. I remember this period as an incredibly exciting time for me personally - I was still a relative newcomer to the animation industry, but I was rapidly advancing my layout skills and my career seemed to be on the upswing. However, it was not the best time for DreamWorks: the company was burning through mountains of cash without big box office success. The traditionally animated 2D films were not doing so well, and folks were speculating that DreamWorks might not survive. Then a 3D film called Shrek became a box office smash. On the one hand,  DreamWorks not only survived, but thrived for the next decade. On the other hand, DreamWorks pivoted to 3D CGI animation, and this was more or less the end of hand drawn, pencil-to-paper feature film animation. The next film, Sinbad, was a sort of 2D/3D hybrid (2D animation mixed with CGI) and everything after that as pretty much all 3D CGI.  

Whenever my employment with DreamWorks comes up in discussions, people assume I must do 3D animation. This is not the case. I only worked on the hand drawn 2D films (by the time Spirit wrapped up, I was leaving DW for Rough Draft Studios, where I would draw with pencil on paper for the Futurama show). People forget that DreamWorks began as a 2D pencil-on-paper animation studio. Sadly, that golden era of big budget hand drawn feature animated film is long gone.

If you are interested in what I did in the layout department at DreamWorks, I wrote about my experience here on my website: Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.

Also, Chuck Green wrote an article with some examples of my DreamWorks layout work here: Idea Book 

Special thanks to the amazingly talented Ed Li for taking these photos and sharing them with me!

Miles Gone By (Memories of the Animation Industry)

 

Cleaning the house, I found this old photo of the WDFAF (Walt Disney Feature Animation, Florida) 1997 trainees - except this was a reunion photo taken in 1998, when we had been at Disney for nearly a year. Along with the trainees are some of the personnel from Disney Florida's Artist Development program. The photo is taken inside the new Feature Animation building, which opened in April of 1998 (so this photo had to be taken sometime after that – but I am sure it was before the opening of Disney’s Mulan feature in June of that year). We all looked so young back then; we were mostly 20-something year-olds, but some of us could probably still pass for teenagers. I’m the guy kneeling in front row left, holding the sketchbook (I was rarely seen without one).  

The thing I remember most about that day is the photographer suggested we all “do something funny", and John Cashman, lying on the floor in front of all of us, quipped, "This is as funny as I get!" (maybe you had to be there, but John was a natural comedian with perfect delivery, and this line still cracks me up to this day).

Imagined Light

Many years ago, I created an online class where I covered different types of lighting (e.g.: direct light, diffused light, atmospheric perspective, etc.) For a section on “imagined light”, I asked students to discuss the following question:

Imagine that you are a production designer for a film, or a concept designer for a video game. You are given some text and asked to visualize a scene. What would you do with this bit of description?

“A long tilted valley, a deep gulf of shadow, ran back far into the mountains. Upon the further side, some way within the valley’s arms, high on a rocky seat upon the black knees of the Ephel Duath, stood the walls and tower of Minas Morgul. All was dark about it, earth and sky, but it was lit with a light. Not the imprisoned moonlight welling through the marble walls of Minas Ithil long ago, Tower of the Moon, fair and radiant in the hollow of the hills. Paler indeed than the moon ailing in some slow eclipse was the light of it now, wavering and blowing like a noisome exhalation of decay, a corpse light, a light that illuminated nothing.”

How do you illustrate “a corpse light, a light that illuminated nothing”?

This description is from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers. Over the years, various artists have attempted to visualize this part of Middle Earth. The Peter Jackson film Return of the King offers this conception. 

Do you think this successfully captures the spirit of the book? How would you have designed Minas Morgul differently? 

The class discussions were usually enlightening and entertaining, and some students came up with very creative suggestions of their own. As an environment designer, I am very impressed with the work that went into the Peter Jackson films (even if I don’t always agree with Peter Jackson's story telling sensibilities). As I understand it, John Howe created initial drawings for Minas Morgul that were later realized by the sculptors at the WETA Workshop (principally Dave Tremont and Leonard Ellis, working under the art direction of Richard Taylor). I think the WETA artists were in a kind of "catch-22" situation: on the one hand, Tolkien's text calls for "a light that illuminated nothing". On the other hand, illustrators and filmmakers must create contrast somehow. You can't have a picture that is all dark; something must be illuminated one way or another. Overall, I think the solution developed by the WETA artists was pretty successful.