9to5

Just finished some animation for a musical production of 9 to 5. I didn't really know what I was getting into until about 2/3 of the way through. The section we animated was reflective of a fantasy scene from the movie where Lily Tomlin's character "Violet" is dressed like Snow White singing with Bluebirds. We animated 3 Bluebirds at 30 fps in a little under a month for the 37 seconds we were allotted. The interesting thing about this was that we had to build the animation so that the tech guys had control of when the bird's were syncing with Violet. It ended up being a lot like how gaming works in terms of getting in and out of cycles. Not really sure how it's all working out in L.A. and don't know how it looks with composited video from their end but I think what we were able to accomplish in a relatively short amount of time was pretty good. Jerry Chambless of Illum Productions in Fla. Produced and did some CG animation for a section following the Bluebirds. BJ Crawford, Catherine & Sarah Satrun assited in animation and Tom Riffel painted a large portion of it. The show opens in L.A. on the 20th of September and on Broadway in March. Jada asked me at some point if this was the Broadway one with Dolly Parton writing the score...I didn't know at the time and thought it was just an off broadway hole in the wall play...so it was a boost to find out it was a bit bigger than that..."Wicked" director Joe Mantello is directing and Peter Negrini is the Production Designer noted for using a lot of video elements in stage productions...