Another of my favorite episodes of Back at the Barnyard:
Fumblebums! I loved the kinetic vibe to
this story (written by Jed Spingarn) and we had a lot of fun with all of the football action. I know very little about the sport so I was
lucky to have some super football fans on the team like Jason Dorf. In addition to directing this one I also
storyboarded the entire episode, and Jason had to explain to me all of the
positions and players on the field in order for me to figure out most of the
staging – thanks buddy!
Production Problmes!
So how do I create a stadium of people on an animated cable TV
show budget? You make the bleachers up
high! I asked our production designer
Phil Cruden to make the crowd seating begin at the top of a 15 foot wall – this
way I was able to shoot a lot of the action on the field without having to see
a crowd of characters in each BG.
Worked out pretty well!
The Birth of Coach Coachman!
For years I had been doing silly caricatures of my fellow
director TJ Sullivan and was always looking for a place to put him in to the
show – or SOME show somewhere! Well
Coach Coachman was my opportunity! You
see, there’s always a little bit of friendly ribbing going on (mom jokes, etc.)
and I wasn’t going to make TJ’s character just be some guy. No, he had to look a bit . . . well . . .
goofy. Our character designer on the
show was the great Bill Schwab, so in an attempt to mimic his brilliant visual
style, I created my TJ-inspired Coach. I
believe it was our Modeling Supervisor Gerardo Orioli who created the actual 3D
model of TJ . . . er, I mean Coach.
Graphics!
I always loved playing with visual style and incorporate fun
graphics into the shows. One thing I do
know about football is that there are many flashy graphics when you watch a
game on TV – so in doing a football episode, we HAD to have the Barnyard equivalent.
Unfortunately, these elements aren’t often
factored in to the production pipeline of a CG show. Being a stylistically different approach,
it’s hard to determine who will do what and where it will fall in the
schedule. But when you’re determined you
find a way . . . even if it means you do it yourself . . . on the weekend. My equally determined editor at the time
Nick Simotas, agreed to bite the bullet along with me and help me get this bit
in the show. We agreed that I would do
all of the graphics and Nick would animate them. Now, does the result look like something two
guys did in about two days? Yeah, kind
of . . . BUT we did it and it’s in the show!
That was all that mattered. Check
out the clip below. You’ll also hear
Nick lending his vocal talents as the announcer in the clip.
