Blue Sky: Art of Computer Animation

Blue Sky Studios programmes photo-realistic, high-resolution, computer-generated character animation for movies and television. Featuring examples from the award-winning short "Bunny" and forthcoming "Ice Age", this volume is a frame-by-frame guide through the magic of computer animation.

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3-D computer animation is the most revolutionary development in feature films since the introduction of colour. In recent years, a string of movies-from Pixar/Disney's Toy Story to Dreamworks's Shrek-have advanced the art of computer animation, so that today it is possible to create photorealistic worlds from scratch. Blue Sky is an introduction to the techniques used to create 3-D computer animated feature films. Blue Sky Studios, a subsidiary of Twentieth Century Fox, was founded in 1987 to pioneer photorealistic, high-resolution computer-generated character animation for the entertainment industry. In 1998, the studio's short film Bunny, created by director Chris Wedge, won an Academy Award. Now, the studio is producing its first animated feature, Ice Age, for Twentieth Century Fox, scheduled to open on March 15, 2002. Ice Age is an animated fable starring Manfred, a wooly mammoth voiced by Ray Romano, and Sid, a giant sloth voiced by John Leguizamo. Ice Age follows Dreamworks's hugely successful Shreck and next fall's eagerly awaited Monsters from Pixar/Disney as the next state-of-the-art 3-D computer-animated feature.
Using mostly examples from Bunny and Ice Age, but also drawing on examples of the studio's work for other feature films and television commercials, Weishar takes the reader step by step through the making of a computer- animated feature film. This hip, informative book will bring techies and all fans of film animation in on the fun.