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.