Disney’s Planes will be in US theaters in about a month, August 9, 2013 to be exact! While I was in L.A for the premiere of Monsters University, which you can read all about it here, I had the opportunity of visiting DisneyToon Studios in Burbank. A few weeks ago I told you, I will be I will sharing with you what my experiences while I was at the DisneyToon Studios, today I want to share with you what I learned during our session with head of story at Disneytoon Studios, Art Hernandez.
Art Hernandez has been working with Walt Disney Animation Studios since 1996, after graduating from Animation Guild’s American Animation Institute, where he received figure drawing and assistant animation from several Disney veterans. Art has worked in Disney film such as Pomp and Circumstance, Firebird Suite and Steadfast Tin Soldier,Fantasia/2000, Hercules, Tarzan, Treasure Planet, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Home on the Range among others. As soon as you meet Art, you instantly know that he is a great guy who LOVES his job! 🙂
Let me tell you what a story artist does… A story artist is in charge of translating or interpreting written words such as, screenplays and scripts, into a series of illustrations that bring the characters and its details to “life”. How does a story artist accomplish this? The standard have not change through the years, story artist still draw all the character in an animated movie, one thing that has change is the medium they use to accomplish this. Art uses digital software, graphic table and a digital pencil to create story boards, one funny thing that he mention to us was that, when he first started using the graphic table and the digital pencil he will sweep the board just as when you are using a pencil and eraser to sweep the erasers shavings off a page. It can take upwards of 50,000 story boards to complete an animated film, story artist will present the story boards to the director and interpret & voice the characters to go along with the scenes. Art does a mean El Chupacabra, as a matter of fact, Art’s favorite character in the film Planes is El Chupacabra. I will tell you more about this character in the coming weeks. For Disney’s Planes, Art studied a vast array of aerial footage from classic films to documentaries. He became a virtual aviation expert and learned to incorporate the actual mechanics of planes into the personalities and actions for the film’s colorful plane characters. Make sure to stay tune for more on what I learned while I was in L.A! 🙂
Trailer 2 – Planes on Disney Video
Synopsis: From above the world of “Cars” comes “Disney’s Planes,” an action-packed 3D animated comedy adventure featuring Dusty (voice of Dane Cook), a plane with dreams of competing as a high-flying air racer. But Dusty’s not exactly built for racing—and he happens to be afraid of heights. So he turns to a seasoned naval aviator who helps Dusty qualify to take on the defending champ of the race circuit. Dusty’s courage is put to the ultimate test as he aims to reach heights he never dreamed possible, giving a spellbound world the inspiration to soar. “Disney’s Planes” takes off in theaters on Aug. 9, 2013.
For more information, check out Disney.com/Planes, like us on Facebook: facebook.com/DisneyPlanes and follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/DisneyPictures.
Disclosure: I was provided with an all expense paid trip to L.A to facilitate the review of Monsters University, no additional compensation was received. I was provided with the information in this post by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
I definitely got that vibe too, that Art loves his job (as does everyone else I met there)! Who wouldn’t, right? Such a cool job and it was so neat to learn about it!