This past summer I worked on a title for Leapfrog’s new Leap Pad called Disney Animation Artist. It was a tough project, but worth the effort in the end – and it’s been one of the top sellers for the Leap Pad. I was creating drawing and animation lessons using Disney’s heritage characters; Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy and Goofy. I lead the animation on the project with Eric Goldberg supervising. I have to admit, I was pretty intimidated when I found out he was reviewing my work – I’ve been a real fan of his for years. He animated the Genie in Aladdin and did that amazing Rhapsody in Blue section in Fantasia 2000 among many other accomplishments. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in direct contact with him, but his comments on my work were very kind and informative.
While I was animating this project I listened allot to Clay Kaytis’ Animation Podcast. If you are interested in animation, it’s definitely worth checking out.
Here is a production sketch I did of Daisy:
You can see the commercial for the product on Youtube here. Unfortunately, it looks like they had a compleetle gleetch during Mickey’s dialogue. It looks much better on the Leap Pad.