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.