Trolls at Comic Con

DreamWorks made their second appearance at Comic Con this year (the first being for Megamind awhile back).  They had a big celebrity panel for Trolls and showed about 20 mins of footage.  Of that, they've released this clip online of the "Sound of Silence" sequence.  This was freakin hilarious when the crew saw it in storyboard form.  It always fascinates me how things transition well (or not) from storyboard to final shot.

One of the best examples of this actually was told by this films director Mike Mitchell.  We had a few gags that just didn't translate well from storyboard to final render back on Shrek 4.  I remember one dailies Mike talked about a moment from Shrek 3 - there's a big sequence in a high school gym, and some student is shouting and gets shot with a bow and arrow, and then he calmly sits down.  Mike said it was one of the biggest laughs in the early screenings.  The storyboard drawings and timing were spot on.  But then it gets animated and lit and rendered - and now it's fairly more tangible and realistic (especially on the Shrek films).  And now the gag wasn't funny, it was just a bit grotesque and off.

So, with Trolls and all it's putting-it-all-out-there weirdness - I was very curious to see how it would survive the transition to 3D.  It looks like they're are hitting the mark perfectly, and I can't wait to see how the rest of it turns out.

Heather's Moana Short/Trailer

Here's a fun little sequence that Heather worked on during her brief stint on Moana.  It was originally shown at the D23 Convention a year ago.  I'm so excited to *finally* see what she was working on and so excited about!

Wrote a Tutorial for 3D World!

I'm very excited to share a glimpse of the 4 page "Tips & Trick" tutorial I wrote for 3D World Magazine in their Sept issue.  It was a nice chance to show a peek behind the curtain of creating the Bink short.  The hardest thing was trying to condense my tips down to the proper length!  I remember spending about a half hour once just talking about proper blinks to the crowds team at DreamWorks - and now I had to get that down into about 75 words!  I owe much of this to all my mentors from DW that showed me many of these same tips for the first time.

You can preview and buy a copy of the issue at 3D World