Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Part 1 - Don Bluth - Storyboards - The Land Before Time - Tyrannosaurus Attack

Here are the first panels of Sequence 004 for Don Bluth's 'The Land Before Time' - The Tyrannosaurus Attack. 


Here are some of Don Bluth's work - beautifully drawn and staged, not just being a guide for Layout but for character poses as well. 

Don Bluth and artists Larry Leker and Dan Kuenster worked together as the storyboard artist crew during the features 'Land Before Time' and 'an American Tail'. All 3 of them did beautiful work.

This is the First Revision as during production, Steven Spielberg had requested that the sequence be played down a bit. As it was, the moment was coming off too intense and the thought that it might be a bit much for the younger viewers who will be watching.  

When we were shown the first screening of this rough sequence during one Tuesday ' Weeklies' showing, it was great. The editors had added a sound of a beating heart as the sequence became more and more intense. I think most people could understand why the decision to calm it down made sense. 

In the class I teach in Vancouver at Vancouver Film School I break down the panels in sequence explaining how the artist is telling the story with his choices of composition using screen direction, angles of the horizon, camera pans and zooms. Also taking note of how many panels are needed to fully explain any character action or performance.

I love breaking work down and seeing the decisions the artist made to visually tell the story in a clear and entertaining way. 

I will post the second part of this sequence in a bit.


As a side note, you can see on various panels where an animators name was written on the panel. This was the note explaining who Don was casting the individual scene to as it went into animation production. 






























Friday, April 3, 2015

Memory Lane 13 - Some of the people I have worked with - Part 1


Here are some of my photos of different artists i have worked with over the years. Every now and then I would bring my camera to work and take some shots of them at their desk.  
- copyright MARK PUDLEINER 2015

Photo I took of supervising animator James Baxter during the production of 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame'. I miss stopping in every now and then to visit James and his wife Kendra as i left for Vancouver to teach. Super nice people.




During the production of Meet the Robinsons I walked into each animators room and took a photo of them at their desk. Here is Dale Baer. He's now one of the few 'old timers' that trained under and worked with some of Disney's nine old men. So calm and easy going all the time. 




This one was during the production of Meet the Robinsons. Here is supervising Canadian animator Duncan Marjoribanks. Love his dry sense of humor. Great animator.




Alex's room was next to mine during the production of 'Meet the Robinsons'. Supervising animator Alexander Kupershmidt. Amazing talent. 




Here is Tony Fucile. He was my supervisor on the character ' Esmeralda ' during the production of 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame'. He ended up leaving Disney to go help Brad Bird with the feature 'The Iron Giant' and 'The Incredibles '




One of my closer friends - from staying later into the night in college to work longer on our projects to working with him on one of his characters at Disney feature { I animated on his crew on Meg } - I feel like i grew up with him in the industry over the years.
Here is a photo i took of supervising animator Ken Duncan while he was animating the female lead character 'Meg' on the production of 'Hercules'.