Down shot of the kite as it rises up into the air.
It’s these types of shots that most layout artists love to do as it stretches their drawing ability much farther than a layout like in scene 4, 13 or 15.
These easier layouts are called “gravy scenes” at least that’s what we used to call them while working on Ewoks and Droids. The tough ones were meat and potatoes scenes as they required more work to prepare. Scenes where you just write “color card” or “sky wash BG” were an easy way to make $35.00 ( that was the going rate back then).
We had a lot of crazy sayings on that production. One of the ones that stands out the most in my mind was from a guy called Chris Minz. A very funny guy. In the middle of the day he’d just spontaneously yell out, “EAT THE CARROT!!” This was his way of stating that we were all just a bunch of horses with a carrot being dangled in front of our noses to motivate us to keep going. For some reason he’d also yell out, “BEEF!”
I never translated that one out.
There were many other things that happened during that production period that made it all bearable. Now when I say this, you should understand that working on a production is a great thing to be doing with your time, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure that you’re probably thinking, “Sheesh, I’d give my left arm (only if you’re a right handed artist of course) to work in a studio.” That is actually quite true, and I think the same way, but there is also the grim reality that once you begin working in a studio you start to realize that there’s a lot of drawing involved of a fairly high quality level, (depending of course on the production and the studio you’re working for).
The bottom line for any studio is - Get the Job Done! Without a product, your studio is not going to go too far. This is true in any business. If you as an artist are not producing the type of artwork that the studio requires for that particular production, you’ll find yourself out of a job pretty fast.
As we slaved away on the Ewoks and Droids productions we began to feel a certain disdain for one of the principle characters, Wicket, the Ewok to be exact. He was always doing these cute, nice, sugary sweet things. So, in our devious, evil minds we plotted a variety of ways to torture poor Wicket. Thus was created the “Wicket Wall”. This actual wall within the studio became our open forum for exhibiting our internal vileness towards Wicket. We would do drawings of Wicket being disemboweled, dismembered, paper cut, skewered, sliced, diced in every conceivable way. It really was quite horrid. Every day there would be a series of new additions. They would be openly critiqued by all the layout artists and a daily award of merit bestowed upon the “worst” drawing.
We eventually took them all down, I seem to remember at the request of someone in upper management, and compiled the best 50 into a booklet. I have since lost my copy but remember some of the hilarious drawings that we had done. We did the same thing later for the Care Bears.
Another thing that became a weekly event was “The Practical Joke”. The one that stands out the most in my mind was the day one of our fellow workers had invited his mother and siblings to the studio to see where he worked. What we did was truly a miracle of teamwork and perfect timing.
He walked out of the room and announced that he was on his way downstairs to meet his mom and the others and would be bringing them up to show them around. He warned us not to make fools of ourselves and embarrass him. He shouldn’t have said that. Immediately after he left the room we all jumped into a literal huddle. It was amazing how we all acted as a unit thinking the exact same thing... let’s get him!
I suggested that we completely remove his desk, side table, all the artwork on his walls... everything that belonged to him and move it out to the deck on the roof. I instructed everybody to act as though we had never met him before, as though he was a visitor himself. This took no longer than about 3 minutes.
Everybody went back to their desks and waited, peering out from around the sides. The moment had come. he came walking into the room and gestured with his arm saying, “And this is my desk right over here...” He stopped dead in his tracks looking at the completely bare space that once was his area. His mother walked around him and stopped as well looking at the blank space that he was pointing to. She said, “Where do you sit??” The timing was great, I walked towards him and his family with a folder of artwork in my hand looking official. When I just got up to him his mother had just finished asking him where he sat and he had this vacant look on his face, I paused then stopped and addressed him and his group and said, “I’m sorry, can I help you? Are you with a tour? You really shouldn’t be up here unless you have a visitors pass.” The look on his face was absolutely priceless. His mother looked at him incredulously, I turned and walked away and just left him there to explain himself to his family, everyone was laughing their heads off, it was great.
We had stuff like this happening practically weekly. That and the people working in the department is what made it all worthwhile. One of these days I’m going to write all these stories down.
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