Aunt Luisa was Blur’s first foray into the animated short world in 2002 and garnered a spot on the Oscar short list.

EW: With a feature in development and a full slate of commercial assignments, will Blur have time to do any more short films?

TM: For the moment, yes. Even though we want do features — because there’s no canvas like a feature — there’s something beautiful about shorts. This year, the highest scoring idea for a short —across the board — was written by two of our concept guys, Sean McNally and Francisco Vellasco. It’s called Gentleman’s Duel. It’s a Victorian glove-slap-across-the-face that escalates into a giant fight to the death. It won the humor category but it’s also sci-fi, so we’re only doing that one. Doing two would be a strain. I wrote two new sci-fi ideas based in the Rockfish universe and one of them won, but if we do any more Rockfish stuff I would rather do it as development for the movie.

EW: So how does it feel to be on the road to achieving your goals for Blur?

TM: When these calls have come in, I’ve always been happy to have conversations. My wife would like me to jump up and down with excitement, but I’ll just wait until it’s real. When success is in my hand I’ll jump up and down. In the meantime, I’m cynically optimistic!

Ellen Wolff is a Southern California-based writer whose articles have appeared in publications such as Daily Variety, Millimeter, Animation Magazine, Video Systems and the website CreativePlanet.com. Her areas of special interest are computer animation and digital visual effects.