Back in 2002, a friend of mine offered me a fantastic opportunity to get involved with a bit of animation. He and some of his colleagues were working on a film and they wanted to to get the pitch in front of the eyes of management, so they recruited me to help with some rough inbetween work.
A had a great time inbetweening this scene. Although I only spent a handful of hours working on it, it was terrifically rewarding. These 75 drawings represent the realization of a dream. My friend had invited me to help animate a scene for a proposed featurette for the Walt Disney Studios in Florida. Unfortunately, the project was tabled and I was not asked to make any further contributions. As far as I know, the project never made it out of the early exploratory stages. I am pretty sure that it was my scene that killed the project.
The scene synopsis : A young Samurai finds that he must defend the honor of a woman in a duel to the death. He has challenged a great Samurai warrior, a man that is respected and revered by the other Samurai, including the young man. The young Samurai knows that he cannot win the battle. He is outmatched and outclassed. It is hopeless. Still, honor must be satisfied and so he will fight. In the moments before the battle, we see the young man resigning himself to his fate, undeterred. He takes a steady breath and looks down...where he sees a lotus floating in the stream at his feet.
A had a great time inbetweening this scene. Although I only spent a handful of hours working on it, it was terrifically rewarding. These 75 drawings represent the realization of a dream. My friend had invited me to help animate a scene for a proposed featurette for the Walt Disney Studios in Florida. Unfortunately, the project was tabled and I was not asked to make any further contributions. As far as I know, the project never made it out of the early exploratory stages. I am pretty sure that it was my scene that killed the project.
The scene synopsis : A young Samurai finds that he must defend the honor of a woman in a duel to the death. He has challenged a great Samurai warrior, a man that is respected and revered by the other Samurai, including the young man. The young Samurai knows that he cannot win the battle. He is outmatched and outclassed. It is hopeless. Still, honor must be satisfied and so he will fight. In the moments before the battle, we see the young man resigning himself to his fate, undeterred. He takes a steady breath and looks down...where he sees a lotus floating in the stream at his feet.
Even though this is a small bit of business from a film that never saw the light of day, I can with great pride that I worked on a Disney animated film. Sorta.
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