Saldanha had to deal with a location move during production on Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

BD: So what has been the impact of the recent move to Connecticut?

CS: Part of the growing pains of a company is space and finding the perfect spot to work. It's our home away from home and we spend most of our time at the office. We always struggled with that. The place in White Plains was a very easy place to get to but in terms of logistics, it was not the best environment. The crew was split on three floors. We were too scattered. And the new place in Connecticut is one, gigantic floor in this very beautiful complex. We have a decent screening room and we were able to get more equipment, more meeting rooms. Our computer room is a bigger, dedicated area for the kind of movies that we're making. And we had a plan from scratch when we were rebuilding the facility, to add more computer space. For example, if we start two movies at the same time, if we need amp with the computer power, we need to have everything ready for it.

BD: Speaking of new movies, tell me about the new project that you're directing: Rio.

CS: I had this idea a few years back when I was working on Ice Age 2 about making a movie with Brazil as a theme -- it's the place I'm from. It's so rich with culture, with color and music. All great elements for animation. I developed this idea about a journey with a bird -- a Brazilian Macau -- that lives his whole in captivity in the United States (a good life in a cage and under the great care of an owner). But when they get the opportunity to go to Brazil, and he experiences the city and interacts with the other birds, he finds his heart and soul. So it's a great little story. But it's early stages and I can't talk too much about it. Obviously, there will be a lot of birds and although it's a whole new world for animation, it's a city and landscape I know very well.

BD: What are some of the R&D challenges?

CS: We have to adapt our fur technology to be feather technology. Because the story is going to take place during Carnival, there are a lot of crowd simulations and costumes and we have to amp up and create all the propagations necessary for this project. And, for us, the biggest challenge is animating the human characters, which we've never really done before as the main characters.

BD: And sufficiently stylized?

CS: Oh, definitely. It's a cartoon. But even so you have to find believable movement and acting and all the technical things that go with it like skin and cloth and facial control.

Black Orpheus is a big influence on Saldanha's next film Rio.

BD: What are you looking for in terms of the overall look and what kind of inspiration are you drawing on?

CS: I'm looking at hundreds of books of Rio and Brazil and trying to explore the light and the color that sets that world apart from what we've seen before. So we're trying to pick a palette that's very distinctive. I'm also looking a lot of old Technicolor movie musicals with Carmen Miranda. I'm trying to see if this can be in CinemaScope to capture the scale. I'm looking into inspiration from Black Orpheus and trying to bring it into modern times. The reason I'm going back to the old movies is because there hasn't been anything done in animation to capture the flavor of Rio that I want. I want to make this colorful journey of this bird and music, of course, will also play a very large role. I can never think of Brazil without music. And birds can sing. But this won't be like a Disney musical. But music will be a part of the story.

BD: What about another Ice Age?

CS: I think as a studio we probably will, but this is my last one. I'm already moving on to Rio. We are already in production and will deliver for April 2011.

Bill Desowitz is senior editor of AWN and VFXWorld.