#sparkfx

Spark Animation '13 Day 4

On the fourth day there was another Pixar event related to the story of Monsters University, a Q&A session with the writer and director of "My Mommy is in America and She Met Buffalo Bill", a session from Blue Sky Studios regarding the cast for 'Epic', a talk about Dreamworks' production and rendering evolution through the years, and the event of the evening, which was the one I was able to attend as a volunteer, was a Disney presentation on 'Frozen'.

In a similar fashion to the "Mickey Mouse - Get a Horse!" short, they brought us whole scenes, playblast, tests, designs and classical animation pre-production. Amazing. The charming animation with attitude and appeal, in a beautiful environment that evokes those backgrounds from the Disney classics, is there, and it's VERY reminiscent of 'Tangled', which I absolutely love. There's even a horse that Hyrum Osmond, "Olaf"'s Supervising Animator, was sure the audience would spot as a Maximus clone. And he was right.

I wasn't very sure about wanting to see the movie from the released trailers, but what I saw was warm, charming and funny; even when Olaf, the snowman, had a musical introduction, the audience was smiling at the ingenious and whimsical animation on the number. I only wish they didn't focus on him that much, even though, as said by Hyrum, he's vital to the story.

To finish the Festival with a celebration, the staff showed the volunteers a private screening of 'Despicable Me', along with the same French shorts from the previous day and a really bizarre Japanese short, with free soda and snacks.