Monday, December 17, 2007

Work hard and party hard...

Here we see Roy Naisbitt in the Forum in front of his work area. On the right and left you see 2 of the route sheets. More about them in my next post...

I feel that most animation artists will be aware of Dick's achievements and a lot about him has been put into print already. Roy's contributions to the studio's work are also fascinating and inspiring. When I saw Dick and Roy working together I felt they were co-creators. Most of the non-character work in the film has been designed by him: The Golden City (you might remember the wall sized drawing in the Thames documentary that starts with the camera craning into Dick's office in the old Soho studio), most of the BG layouts and camera mechanics.
Sometimes he created intricate card board setups for the BG elements with mechanics similar to a jumping jack. In CG there is a way to link movements of different elements (in Maya you can use set driven keys). It's similar to that. The idea is that you have one control that moves a whole bunch of elements, sometimes at different speeds. He has also animated amazing technical F/X, turning things so convincingly as if done by a computer. There are some scenes that use the strobing effect of a pan to cause BG elements to animate. We'll discuss all that when we get to these scenes.

There is also all the work he contributed to the commercials, The Christmas Carol, the Pink Panther titles and Roger Rabbit, in particular the Maroon Cartoon at the beginning.

He is a passionate swimmer and he made a strong attempt to cross the English channel just a few years ago.
He kept his work life and personal life in balance. Work hard and party hard, that's his motto. A great man.

2 comments:

Michael Sporn said...

Thank you for your notes about Roy Naisbitt. We so infrequently hear his name in the US, yet I know how influential he was to Dick's studio. In the time I spent with him, I often asked Dick about Roy and would relish the few stories I heard.

Michael Sporn said...
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