Annie Awards this Friday

The ASIFA-Hollywood Annie Awards are going to take place this Friday, so wish me luck. I'm up against some very talented individuals.

Now the award is by no means going to be as big and elaborate as this trophy (Lia) in Surfs' Up, but it is much more prestigious. (The character design was drawn by Annie Award Nominee, Sylvain Deboissy.) It's like the Oscars for animation.

The whole point of Surf's Up was that awards shouldn't overide the reason why you do something -- in their case, surfing. That is a good lesson to learn and know. When I worked on this movie, the Annie Awards were the farthest thing from my mind. Heck, I was too busy trying to stay on top of the schedule. However, now in hindsight, it's flattering to be recognized for my efforts by my peers within the industry.

However, this does give me a good reason to post some of my prop design!

The assignment was that we needed a trophy for the competition, so in order to minimize production costs for modeling and rendering, I tried to use as many existing items to construct the award. You'll note that the top of the trophy has a little Big Z figure carved out of wood. This is the same trinket being sold in the bazaar, and the same teaching tool that Big Z uses on the sand when coaching Cody. My good friend Armand Serrano created all the other versions of the trophy from this version by taking this one apart and putting it together in a different way each time. The trophy scene is perhaps one of the funniest moments in the film.