Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1493292
D E PA R T M E N T 43 KEYFRAME Winter 2020 To depict our new Covid work world and the challenges of completing a film remotely, a lot of elements came into play. We pitched the Zoom concept to DreamWorks, and they helped us wrangle the artists to send images of themselves on Zoom. We also let them know what we needed for each of the character images. We didn't want them to look too polished, like a still out of a movie, but rather as if they were interacting with the artists in the real world. We also wanted to capture the candid, awkward nature of Zoom. As for the sloth, this helped create a sense of dimension between Director Joel Crawford and the flat computer screen. Summer 2021 With a feature about hybrid movies that included Space Jam, we knew we wanted to work with Bruce W. Smith, and we were intrigued by the idea of Smith interacting with an illustrated version of himself. Smith recommended the artist Overton Lloyd to create his portrait. That was the easy part. Once the cover was sketched out, we had to set up the photoshoot. Our photographer, Tim Sullens, had to capture two separate pictures that would work together—one to be used as a photograph, and one to be turned into an illustration by Lloyd. We got lucky with the terrific shot of Bruce laughing, and we used color to bring the two images together. Fall 2021 As huge fans of the work of Jorge R. Gutiérrez, this cover was especially enjoyable. We pitched a number of ideas to the studio, but due to various issues, most weren't possible. While we were disappointed, we were fortunate to have great source material from Netflix. The artwork in Maya and the Three was inspiring, and when we saw this piece, we decided to not only make it the cover, but also use it for the feature article's color story. To make the cover work, we needed a masthead in the same style, so we made our own typeface based off the Maya title treatment. This is the only time we've broken away from our traditional masthead. Winter 2021 With a feature article about choreography in animation, we knew we wanted to depict motion in some way. Fortunately, our art team had worked with a process known as a fence technique, which takes a two- dimensional image and makes it seem to move by dragging a paper that resembles a picket fence across it. Technically, it's challenging to make an image that has movement but also still looks like it makes sense when it's not moving since portions of the image need to be distorted. We were fortunate to collaborate closely with Disney for assets that worked for both the cover and the article to create an interactive experience for our readers. Spring 2022 This feature article explored the creative adaptation of books into animated films and TV shows. For the cover we decided to focus on The Bad Guys to illustrate this concept. From the start, we wanted to take the books and transform them into a physical 3D scene where we could insert the characters—literally. We copied pages out of the books, tore those pages apart, created a scene, and photographed it. Because there was so much movement and action in the story, we explored what would happen if the image wrapped from front to back. We worked with DreamWorks early on for just the right images to make it seem like the characters were jumping through the pages and right out of the front cover. SPRING 2023 43 SPRING 2023 43