Thursday, February 1, 2018

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs Animation Test #1



An early development piece done around 2004 or 2005. This was before Phil Lord and Chris Miller were on board as directors, so that's why Steve ( at this time his name was Bonkers ) looks so different.

This was the second or third large piece we tackled as a group. Even though both the directors and design ultimately changed, we still view this as a success. It's important to keep in mind that development is an evolution. We put together lots of sketches, some 3d models and a fully animated test. Then we stand back to see what's working and what needs to be improved. Sometimes that means starting over.

From a cost standpoint, it's better to retool an idea as early as possible with a small crew than to go into production with a very large crew and then decide to scrap everything. Failing early saves time and effort in the long run.

There were six artists working for about 12 weeks in total ( model to final render ) for the entire piece.  Takao Noguchi modeled Bonkers and the Taco Truck, Shawn McInerney animated, Sungwook Su did the fx, Ernie Rinard did the spaghetti tornado and James Batersby modeled, textured and lit. I supervised, animated, modeled, textured and lit. I forget if Shawn rigged Bonkers or if I did.

**Side note* The dancing Drac at the end was done by Chad Stewart and myself. Along with development, we do fun little animated pieces for marketing. Chad animated and I did the rest.

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