• Last year I worked on Pixar’s Brave for the Leapfrog Explorer.  It was a big project and my main task for this was painting backgrounds.  One challenge for work like this is the way the ground plane is tilted up at such a strong angle.  The reason this is done is that many objects need to be placed in the scene for the player to find.  Another challenge for these backgrounds is that only a small part of them is seen at any one time which creates challenges for composition – also the perspective would naturally shift in a scene that a character walks across them, but as these are flat backgrounds you have to create a strange type perspective that doesn’t really make sence.

In June I went to the Pixar campus in Emeryville, California.  It is such an amazing place.  As Brave was just being released they had the place decorated to celebrate.  They had enormous tapestries in the lobby and even the security was dressed in Scottish regalia.  The receptionist was also dressed up and when asked by another visitor if that was how she usually dressed she came back with, “Yeah, this is just how I like to dress when I’m pumping gas on the way to work.”

I was excited to see they had even made a full size the stone circle from the movie.  Here’s a picture of me awkwardly posing next to it: