Animation Show of Shows' next stop was to PDI DreamWorks in Redwood City. There are two DreamWorks locations in California. The one in Redwood City is in Northern California near San Francisco. PDI stands for Pacific Data Imaging company which was a tech company that got into animation and then merged with DreamWorks which was at the time a 2D traditional animation company that was getting into CG animation. The two combined into one company, combining their specialties and maintain the name PDI DreamWorks to honour that history.
It was a pretty standard Q&A. Questions about how we funded our projects and what inspired us. The one film that seemed to stump some of the technical artists at DreamWorks was David Barlowe-Krelina's film Bless You. A marvellous and hilarious 2D-3D animation hybrid film which seemed to amaze the 3D artists because he used very little 3D modelling and still managed to create so much depth. If you ever get a chance, see it in stereo, it will blow your mind, and your sinuses.
The studio was really open about giving us a tour of the inner workings of each floor of the studio, how they train prospective workers and keep production crews motivated, new technologies developing in house and what projects are currently in the production pipeline, all of which I cannot talk or write about :)
But it was all really cool of them to trust us enough to show us those inspiring things, and here are some photos of us during the visit!
Panda vs Requiem. Well, it's been a far cry from my ninjitsu days, my foot positioning is totally off.
A Madagascar pitching prop. When they pitched the story, the story artists built this prop to aid in their presentation.
Perfectly aligned In order of height, photo from left to right: Ula Aronova, Jonathan Ng, Thomas Bourdis, Ron Diamond, Edmunds Jansons, and David Barlow-Krelina.
