Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is now the third highest grossing film of all time overseas!!! It’s at #17 on the worldwide all time list (that’s U.S. domestic plus overseas box office).
Box Office Mojo’s article (click here)
Absolutely incredible… It must have been the beautiful set dressing. That always packs ‘em into theaters. Yep – ground cover. Can totally make or break your movie. Just a tip for the aspiring filmmaker. That one’s free.
Society of Illustrators IA3 Presentation
In related news, Peter de Séve, Galen Chu, Tony Maki, Michael Defeo and myself are doing a talk at the Society of Illustrators in NYC tomorrow night – Thursday, September 24, 6:30 to 9:00 PM – about the development of Ice Age 3′s new star Buck. We’ll be talking about how his character came to be, what motivated his design, personality and performance as well breaking down the sequence which tells his backstory. Probably my favorite sequence in the film, and definitely one of the most fun challenges I’ve had the pleasure of working on in my artistic career.
We’ll be showing tons of artwork, animation clips, and examples of how a character moves through Blue Sky’s pipeline. This will be a great rare opportunity to peek behind the curtain of how Blue Sky works. Here’s the link: http://societyillustrators.org/upcoming/bluesky.cms
At the last Paris show at Galerie Arludik, because so much of my work on Out of Picture 1 was purely digital, I didn’t have very many original pieces of artwork in the show. I had to exhibit mainly giclee prints and just a few rough sketches. For Out of Picture 2 I made sure I had more physical artwork to show for my efforts. I thought I’d share some of the drawings that will be on display in Paris on thursday.
Last year I was invited to partake in an interview for a book called Secrets of Digital Animation. I discussed a few things such as the early creative process in pre-production, thoughts on character design, and the differences in my experiences as a designer and an art director. The book really runs the gamut of techniques, 2D as well as 3D digital animation, and the countless steps between starting and finishing a project from the perspectives of many different artists of diverse backgrounds. The book just hit store shelves a couple weeks ago. Check it out!
I am SOOOO excited to announce that next Thursday, September 3rd, Galerie Arludik is opening their exhibit for Out of Picture 2! Many of our artists will be there – myself, David Gordon, Jason Sadler, Vincent Nguyen, Peter Nguyen to name a few! – so if you happen to be in the area PLEASE stop by and say “Bon jour!” Arludik had a show for OOP 1 three years ago, and it was one of the most fun experiences in my artistic career. It felt more like a street party than an art opening, and everyone was so incredibly friendly and receptive.
A month ago, Steve Mersky – one of the writers from Scientific American – came to Blue Sky to interview our R&D department regarding how science influences our artistic and technical processes at Blue Sky. Ironically, he also spoke with me about how our creative thinking and research is impacted by science. The first two episodes feature some of Blue Sky’s smartest and most brilliant minds explaining the history of the studio, and the amazingly diverse backgrounds they all came from.
In the third episode, IA3′s co-director Mike Thurmeier and our Head of Lighting Andrew Beddini chime in on their experiences, before which you can listen to me try to sound like I have any idea what I’m talking about. So sad…
Click here to check it out.
Thanks, Hugo, for pulling this thing together and for inviting me to take part. It was fun even if I was ridiculously outgunned.
It’s my first post of 2009! How sad is that?
Well, in my defense, I’ve been keeping busy with Ice Age 3 up until a couple weeks ago, but now that that’s no longer a valid excuse, I thought I’d share something I did for a very special project a friend of mine is putting together…
It’s called The Picture Book Project: Monsters and it’s a coloring book illustrated by many fantastic artists who work primarily in the animation industry which will help send money to orphaned children across the world who need financial help. The topic, of course, is monsters and each artist did a black and white sketch for the kids to color as well as a colored version of the same image.
It was refreshing to be able to work on such a fun and simple project. Definitely needed something simple after wrapping up Ice Age 3. Here’s my contribution…
Mike's Monster pencil drawing
Mike's Monster in color
Here’s a little preview of the book. Click here to take a peek…
Keep an eye out for this one. A lot of great artists and friends have contributed to this project, and it’s certainly for great cause. It’s a really fun book. Hopefully they’ll have publishing dates/info soon.
This is an oldie, but a goodie. Enjoy!
Rabbi Claus
Man it’s been quiet around here.
Well, I’ve got a pretty good excuse – I swear. Other than being completely addicted to spending time with my one year old daughter and just being completely baffled at how quickly kids develop, I’ve been pretty all-consumed with getting through the rush phase of pre-production on Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. We’re still in the middle of it with about one solid month of pure insanity left for my design team, but I wanted to come up for air and say hi to anyone who still checks this blog occasionally.
This particular Ice Age has just hit a major milestone in that our first official trailer has just been released on Apple’s website, and – Yay!!! – it is a classic Scrat trailer. I won’t spoil anything, but you can see it here…
We still have months of work to go to get the film finished, but the movie’s coming along nicely and I’m really excited for it. I think audiences will have a lot of fun with this one. For me, the design process of a film is the most grueling (it’s kind of like drawing, algebra, sprinting, and chinese finger traps all mixed into one), and as that phase nears its end I hope to update the site more often and get back to my own personal artwork as well! Provided I have any energy left, that is.
Oh well, that’s enough run-on sentences for one night. Until next time!
- Mike
Sorry things have a little quiet around here lately. Got stranded in San Diego after Comic Con due to bad weather for an extra day, then moved to a new apartment with my family two days later. Meanwhile the pace on Ice Age 3 is picking up even more steam as we head into creative crunch time on the picture. To sum up, the last couple of weeks have been CRAZY.
Comic Con was a total blast. OOP 2 did really well, hung out with a bunch of my west coast pals as well as the bulk of the OOP 2 crew who came out to the Con. Very exciting. All in all, I couldn’t have asked for a better time. Just a better traveling experience.
Then a week ago, the wonderful Sketchtravel documentary crew came from Paris to New York to interview some of us east coast contributors. I can’t wait to see just how large of a dweeb I made of myself. Ah, something to look forward to…
The Totoro Forest Project Auction is coming up in a few weeks. I just bought my plane ticket to San Fransisco and couldn’t be more excited. I really hope this raises some serious money, but if ticket sales to the auction are any indicator (they sold out in two and a half days!), I think it’ll do pretty well. It’s insane how much momentum is gathering behind this project. If you haven’t discovered the site yet, please go check it out now at http://www.totoroforestproject.org. Dice just launched a new blog for it as well.
Do yourself a favor and please check it out. The group of contributing artists is nothing short of staggering. If you can’t afford to bid on any of the art but want to help the cause, there’s information regarding donations on the site.
Hope to back soon with some new artwork! In the meantime, my contribution to the Totoro Project is the giant owl on the hillside below.
I’m going to be at San Diego Comic Con this weekend along with a LOT of the crew from Out of Picture 1 and 2. Come visit us at booth 1228 (right next to our friends from Flight Comic) where we’ll have plenty of copies of OOP 1 and 2 to sign and sell. The weather’s supposed to be amazing all week long in San Diego (sunny and 75!) which will be a nice break from the humid mid-90′s weather we’ve been having here in NYC.
It’s going to be a blast, and I can’t wait…
