In late 2011, I had the privilege to work on the animated documentary Les Ailes de Johnny May. It was a co-production between the Montreal NFB french animation studio and the Quebec-based production company, Doc Thalie. The documentary tells the story of the first Inuit pilot in the Canadian north, chronicling all of his near-fatal crashes, rescue missions and personal anecdotes. As an animated documentary, the film alternates between interview footage of Johnny May, and the animated vignettes of the stories that he recounts. The documentary was directed by Marc Fafard, and the animated sequences were directed and storyboarded by Nicola Lemay.

The technique of the animated sequences were very unique. All of the characters, assets and environments were created in 3D, however the final look was rendered in a 2D painterly look. An additional challenge was creating the boiling, painterly animation in stereoscopic 3D. It was my first time doing the pre-viz for a 3D stereoscopic film, and it adds a whole new dimension of film language as to how the characters are placed in relation to the screen plane ie. in front of the screen splane, at the screen plane, or behind the screen plane.

Here's a link to the shots that I pre-vized and animated on the project: vimeo.com/36751903