The Fantastic Flying Animated Adventure of William Joyce

Find out how Moonbot Studios made their first project fly as a short and E-book.
Posted In | Magazines: AnimationWorld | Site Categories: CG, Short Films
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Humpty Dumpty was one of the most challenging characters in the film.

It just so happened that in the aftermath of Katrina, Louisiana also wanted to shore up its animation production. So Joyce hooked up with pal Oldenberg (co-founder of Reel FX) and they created Moonbot with limited financing.

"We developed a simple pipeline but with a little more sense of spontaneity than the industry normally allows," Oldenberg suggests. The most challenging part was Humpty Dumpty. "There are two performances going on with Humpty Dumpty," Oldenberg continues. "The person who is riding the horse and the horse, meaning Humpty is the rider and the book is the horse and finding that balance was an interesting challenge because it was mixing mediums. We had to fit the 2D animation of Humpty to fit the 3D animation of the book. And on top of that, we were paying homage to the flip book tradition of animation."

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Character designs.

Still, Joyce was aching to do a book and it seemed like a natural to make an interactive one, so with some extra effort at Moonbot, they launched the iPad version of Flying Books last May and it's been a resounding success.

"The whole story is told through an iPad experience in different way but they complement each other," Joyce explains. "You get the written word and have the ability to have it narrated, but beyond that, you actually get to interact with the illustrations and parts of the story. So I guess the pleasing thing is we put in all the yummies that we love and it somehow feel like it belongs."

Bill Desowitz is former senior editor of AWN and editor of VFXWorld. He has a new blog, Immersed in Movies (www.billdesowitz.com), and is currently writing a book about the evolution of James Bond from Connery to Craig, scheduled for publication next year, which is the 50th anniversary of the franchise.







Comments


TheFriendlyCommunist | Sun, 04/28/2013 - 10:43 | Permalink

so magnificent!

marchosias garrett (not verified) | Wed, 10/12/2011 - 00:48 | Permalink

I never thought I would find such an eveayrdy topic so enthralling!

Maverick (not verified) | Fri, 10/07/2011 - 19:43 | Permalink

This is magical and so uplifting, love it.

jennifer emin (not verified) | Sat, 09/24/2011 - 14:23 | Permalink

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