Ray Romano's voice helps to make Manfred the Woolly Mammoth lovable. Photo: Barbara Nitke.

Passion
Chris Wedge is a demanding director in that he is always pressing to have the best work on the screen, and no detail is too small to scrutinize. The culture at Blue Sky Studios is very much one of attention to detail. This attention comes out of the fact that everyone who worked on Ice Age carried with them a passion: a passion to do the absolute best job possible, as well as a passion for the film to succeed. The importance of success in the collective at Blue Sky led to extremely strong team building within and beyond individual departments.

Ice Age features spectacular set pieces like this ice and lava laden landscape.

Diego and his saber-teeth show us why it's called the Ice Age.

I believe that part of the strength of the crew, and the reason the team worked so well together, is Blue Sky's New York location. Artists relocated from the West coast, or chose New York over the West coast, because they were drawn to the project and the culture that has been created at Blue Sky. People were here because they wanted to be here.

When Ice Age was first read at Blue Sky, we were thinking, "This is the worst possible film we could try to produce as our first feature: it's a travel film, all of the characters are furry, four-legged animals...Oh! Except for the humans...Humans! And it takes place in the great outdoors." Computer generated films to date (at that time) did not include furry four-legged talking animals standing next to raging waterfalls. How could we possibly do this movie?

After some careful reflection, some creative thinking, clever design, ingenious technical achievements, and a lot of sweat, we turned these apparent negatives into positives and Ice Age now stands on the screen, a proud achievement for all of us here at Blue Sky.

John C. Donkin is an associate producer at Blue Sky Studios and was in charge of the production of Ice Age; Blue Sky Studios first CG-animated feature.