Animated Travels

Henry LaBounta

Kaila Colbin reports from AnimfxNZ.

As Chief Visual Officer for EA Black Box, Henry LaBounta works with art directors and studios to define their visual goals in preproduction and help them execute.

Game Art Direction has three main focus areas – the look of the game, the characters and animation, and the graphic design (menus, user interface, and fonts) – and most of the unsolved problems are with the characters and animation.

One of the interesting things about this conference, and something I discussed with Henry after his presentation, is that video games have come so far in the past 14 years that we can actually have a conference like this one, where the issues facing movie animators and the issues facing game developers can overlap. In fact, when Henry first got into gaming from his TV, movie visual effects and feature animation background, he was surprised at how many similarities there were.

Read the rest of this entry »

Carolyn Soper

Carolyn Soper is a Vice President of Disney Animation Studios, and has been working on the upcoming Disney feature Bolt. She walked AnimfxNZ attendees through the process of building a hamster named Rhino.

Bolt is the story of a dog (played by John Travolta) who’s the star of an action show. He believes anything he can do in the show, he can do in real life. He thinks he can knock down stuntmen and jump across 16 lanes of traffic. He thinks he’s got laser vision. Unfortunately, he doesn’t realize it’s all fake. Bolt is owned by Penny (Miley Cyrus), whom he loves deeply and would do anything to protect.

The fun starts when Bolt gets shipped to New York, still believing he’s got powers, and now believing Penny was kidnapped by the Man With Green Eye. So he does the only logical thing: he abducts a cat. Because all cats are evil and therefore agents of the Man With Green Eye, this one, Mittens (Susie Essman) will surely know where Penny is.

Partway along their quest, they find Rhino the hamster, Bolt’s ‘biggest fan.’ So now there’s this poor sane cat tied to a delusional dog and hounded by an equally delusional hamster.

Read the rest of this entry »