Henry Selick, Fat Cats, and Dragons

I can't believe October is already gone.

Anyways, updates! I have exciting news, about a week ago I met Henry Selick. Yes, THE Henry Selick. The guy that directed Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and Coraline. And I got to sit down and talk with him, even for only a few minutes.

Basically I attended the event at Arclight where Henry Selick talked about creating the movie Coraline. He answered technical questions, and explained the process of creating the visuals and such. He even answered the question of why Coraline's hair is blue!

So yeah. After the talk there was an after party where you could sit down with him for about 4 minutes and ask him questions or even just chat. I asked him about the process of creating a movie out of a book, how to know what elements to include in the plot, etc. He basically said figure out what makes you enjoy the book the most, and include those elements.











But yes, that was an amazing night.


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Next up, my film. I've landed on a good design for the fat cat. I'm still playing around with the plot, once I've ironed something out I'll make sure to post storyboards or something. For now here's his final design.



CalArts has kept me quite busy with assignments, so I haven't spent much time on my film. I'm hoping that'll change soon, I really need to storyboard this out. I think that once it's been storyboarded, a lot of issues will be cleared up or at least laid out and dealt with.

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Lastly,

Lately the trailer for "How to Train Your Dragon" was released. I watched it and am not really sure what to think.



I actually think I like it more than dislike it. It's a bit of a tricky reaction- I really love the dragon part of the trailer(I've also got a soft spot for dragons in general), and I love Hiccup. But there were things in this trailer that turned me off.

For example, the shot of the girl walking towards us in slow motion towards the beginning of the trailer. A completely overdone joke that's getting thrown at the audience once again. Dreamworks has that *sarcasm* fantastic *sarcasm* way of including jokes every 10-15 seconds. I also don't like her design very much, I'm not really sure why.

There are certain elements of the dragon's design that I enjoy, such as his color. His head design is basically a dragon version of Stitch though(go ahead and pause the frame where the dragon opens his mouth to eat the fish, and then google Stitch, you'll see it). I love Chris Sanders' style, but I don't know if I agree with the dragon's head being so, well, Stitch-like.

I enjoy Hiccup's design. He looks and acts like a normal human being, and I really liked the voice acting.

I dunno what to think. I guess I'll see in March.

Well that's all for now!