Secrets from the Barnyard

There was much more music to the Paramount/Nickelodeon’s 2005 feature film, “The Barnyard”. It was decided to remove some songs because the film ran long. Originally Hanna the white hen acted as a Greek chorus and sang about the hero Otis and his situation. Here is an unfinished song sequence without textures or lighting. Notice the red-eye on some of the chicks, (fixed in final render), and the large freaky chick named Boil who falls off the log. There was a song with all the chicks singing “Peaches and Cream” to Otis and an opening sequence before the title that had some great animation of Miles the donkey drumming on crates and cans that began the first song and introduced Hanna. Hanna also had another song in the third act that was cut.

I did all the animation in this sequence except the pigs that were animated by Bart Goldman. Animation Director Dave Andrews, who really is a drummer, took over Miles from me and did a beautiful job which is not shown here.

Biggie Cheese

I found this on YouTube. Someone posted the Biggie Cheese sequence I worked on with Jamie Dawkins for the movie “Barnyard”. We did Biggie and the band characters in the background. Jamie did the first portion until the fade to black and my shots are after the fade up. I also did the shaggy dog bass player close-up in Jamie’s section. It was great fun.

No MooCap!

Keith Lango has a post called Dangerous Opinions. it's about not being able to express an opinion because it might damage your career. I can understand if you break your confidentiality clause and leak something before release time or discrediting a film as it's being made. But what I found intriguing about this is the fear of speaking out against Motion Capture or Mo-cap. No animator wants to clean up mo-cap but the use is becoming more and more prevalent. It’s too bad that productions can’t use it judiciously. Say what you will about “The Barnyard” and those damn udders on males but here is a case in point where mo-cap was used well. Mo-cap was used ONLY on the background characters in a crowd. The rest of the cast were done by animators of which I was one.

Read Keith’s’ Post here: http://www.keithlango.com/wordpress/?p=649

Omation House Jam

Not the best fidelity, but here’s the house jam mentioned in the last posting. All animators, the line up is Cory on bass, Ivo scratching, Fatty on guitar, Steve on drums, David on water cooler jugs, and myself on sax.

Fantasia-Minor

I found this on another Omation buddies site. Eric ‘Fatty Lees’ posted one of my dry board drawings that had started quite innocently as Fantasia-Minor and ended up Fantasia X-treme. The reeling drunks may have been mine but I swear the drug paraphernalia was added later.

Fatty’s site is still shaping up but you can see more dry board lunacy and even a movie clip of our house jam with Fatty on guitar and me on Saxophone, here: http://www.fattylees.com/

Kris Costa is Brilliant

One of the many great pleasures of Omation was working with Kris Costa, one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met. Not only can he animate, the guy is a true artist. Words fail to do justice but fortunately images speak louder. Take a look at this virtual sculpture of Marty Feldman that he modeled and textured.

See more Kris Costa work here: http://zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=045504


Click on images to enlarge.