VIGNALI STUDIO

Last Post Before Christmas...

I'm not sure, but this may be my last post before Christmas.

I hope all of you have a wonderful holiday (and to those that have already celebrated Chanukah, I hope it was equally wonderful). To those of you that will be away from your computers, I wish you a wonderful and hope filled New Year.

To those celebrating Christmas this year, Merry Christmas...and may God bless!

This is an early development piece for Surf's Up, a concept that never made it into the film. This being the penguins in the Antarctic would surf on the falling iceberg’s wakes.

But, we can still see the ice surfboards and tattoo/feather patterning I developed that did make it to the film … however I was not the character designer once the project moved into production. That job was given to another Surf’s Up Annie Nominee Sylvain Deboissy. He did an incredible job with the designs, I’m really proud of him.

The drawing was done on Clearprint Vellum with Prismapencil.

Jungle Detail

Here's a close up of the jungle.

Surf's Up Artwork

Here's another drawing for Surf's Up.

During the early development stages of the project, I was given the assignment to design the tropical jungle. It had to look both beautiful and lush.

An attempt was made to create this image using our vis dev 3D crew, but we encountered a bunch of unexpected problems. In doing so, we were able to indentify a lot of problems that would come later on. Although the vis dev model for this image didn't come out as planned, it was invaluable to our crew.

You can see the penguin in three parts of this drawing as he works his way across the drawing from left to right.

The drawing was drawn with prisma pencil on vellum and is aproximately 3 feet long.

2007 ANNIE AWARD NOMINATION

Fellow bloggers, I have some really good news -- I have been nominated for an Annie Award under the Production Design in an Animated Feature Production category.

Special congratulations to the other nominees for a job well done! The nominees for this category are as follows:

Doug Chiang – "Beowulf" – Paramount Pictures

Harley Jessup – "Ratatouille" – Pixar Animation Studios

Marcelo Vignali – "Surf’s Up" – Sony Pictures Animation


All in all, Sony Pictures Animation has 10 nominations this year, and I have the distinct privilege of being one of those ten representing the company, our movie, our team and my work.

Wish us luck! And, if you are a member of the academy...I sure would appreciate your consideration.