Just got back from the movie theater to see Pharrell Williams’ LEGO documentary biopic, “Piece by Piece”. Nancy (beloved wife) and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is a beautiful art film with an interesting story, and a great soundtrack. The credit I got is probably a “first” in animation!
Kudos to animation director Howard Baker on an amazing job! I was blessed to be tasked with the design and animation that represented Pharrell Williams’ synesthetic experiences. I created about 2 minutes of animation assets that were used and reused throughout the film.
When I was approached to do the project, I was a bit skittish because of the LEGO issue. I didn’t feel comfortable doing my style of animation in LEGO, but the film sounded interesting, so I got on board. The first three weeks were a complete failure. Howard would tell me, “You can’t have squash and stretch, you can’t distort the shapes”, and “put stuff on 3s”! It’s like every animation principle I learned was thrown out the window.
After 3 weeks, I decided to fully embrace the limitations and no longer fight them. No longer would I try to cheat my way out of a motion by stretching or squashing the pieces. Every frame would be LEGO legal.
I went through the big box of LEGO Howard had sent me prior to me starting on the film and made a lexicon of all the shapes. I then went online and found as many shapes of LEGO as possible to add to my library.
By looking at all the shapes available to me, I quickly realized the potential. The following week, when I showed my progress to Howard, we knew I was heading the right way.
In closing, I want to say that I was very pleased with how my work was composited in the final film. They made it all luminescent and it integrated perfectly with the other LEGO elements. If you’re interested in looking at my raw animation, I just posted a video sample on YouTube.
Here's a recent interview about a film I worked on a while back.
Gunn, Rex, Synesthesia, Tiger and Cartoonerific July 16th, 2024
Sorry for the lack of updates, it's been a busy year so far!
As I mentioned in my last post (February), I decided to put The Saga of Rex on hold to join Brad Bird for a 6-month period to work on his upcoming movie, Ray Gunn. I went over all the film’s main effects with the intent to bring new ideas, designs and animation, and I think it’s been a huge success. I feel really good about what I was able to accomplish within the period allocated. Working with Brad is just awesome and invigorating. My current contract ends on August 9th.
My plan is to go back on the film sometime in 2025, to help polish and integrate my FX work into the final scenes. We’ll see what happens…
Within the gap, I’ll continue working on The Saga of Rex, and keep an open mind towards projects coming my way.
On a separate note, here are a few items of interest:
First off, the trailer for Piece by Piece was released announcing an October 11th premiere. It's a LEGO biopic of music producer/rapper, Pharrell Williams. As it goes, Pharrell experiences synesthesia when listening to music. Thanks to my past work portraying synesthesia (Ratatouille, Sensology, etc), I was invited to create the effects animation for the sequences featuring Pharrell's musical hallucinations.
It was a very challenging project, as I had to figure out how to animate using only LEGO shapes! I believe it turned out well, and I love the film (at least the work-in-progress version I saw). You can see some of my work in the trailer from 0:28 to 0:40.
Below is a video I posted on youTube a while back, but never linked to it from this site. It features some of the FX concept work I did on The Tiger’s Apprentice (Paramount+).
And finally, here's a 2-part interview I recently did with Brian Mitchell, host of the podcast, Cartoonerific!
I decided to take a break (once again) from my feature film, “The Saga of Rex” to join Brad Bird and crew at Skydance on the movie “Ray Gunn”. I'm grateful for the opportunity and look forward to it! Stoked!
I believe this experience will also recharge, enrich, and energize me to face the 2.5 years of full-time work I have left on “The Saga of Rex”. When I get back to it, it will be a dash to the finish line.
I’ll keep posting more clips from the movie (Rex) in the coming months if you guys are interested. Pausing my work on The Saga of Rex feels a little bit like breaking the flow of an artistic umbilical cord I had formed with the project. In that respect, this clip felt appropriate! Haha!
The presentation at the VANAS Conference in Vancouver went great!
I began the lecture with a 45-minute Powerpoint presentation, where I discussed in details the origin and evolution of The Saga of Rex from storybook, to graphic novel to feature film.
I discussed my methods of putting together my animatic; how I constructed the score for the film; what software I use; how I stay motivated, etc.
After the Powerpoint, I screened the first 39 minutes of the (work-in-progress) movie.
The reactions were everything I could have hoped for. Several people told me they had tears in their eyes watching the film. I'm stoked! They even gave me an award! Haha.
I’ll be speaking at the VANAS Conference in Vancouver on October 20 and 21. On the 20th, I’ll be part of a panel discussing AI and its impact on our community. On Saturday 21, I’ll be lecturing for 2 hours and showing a lot of stuff I’m working on that no one has seen yet.
Here's the link to an interview I did with Animation Magazine about The Saga of Rex. The clip above is new work-in-progress footage I released to coincide with the article.
When I was approached to do the project, I was a bit skittish because of the LEGO issue. I didn’t feel comfortable doing my style of animation in LEGO, but the film sounded interesting, so I got on board. The first three weeks were a complete failure. Howard would tell me, “You can’t have squash and stretch, you can’t distort the shapes”, and “put stuff on 3s”! It’s like every animation principle I learned was thrown out the window.
The presentation at the VANAS Conference in Vancouver went great! 
