9.21.2006

The Ugliest Ogre Post

Ever see Shrek or the creatively titled sequel: Shrek 2? I did, and can’t say I was impressed. However the franchise is worth millions and makes loads of money in merchandising as well as DVD sales (did pretty well I the box office too if I’m not mistaken). Anyway, Amazing Pictures is opening a new store in Universal Studios that takes guest’s pictures and maps them onto the big bumbling ogre’s body. My assignment for this week has been to create templates for these images and run copies tests using the in-house software here to make sure they work. Interesting job if anything, but tricky. Doesn’t seem like something that’d be too hard, but getting the template to work with all faces isn’t easy. Being that its just Bruce and I down here in the art department at the moment, testing the layouts always involves him working the camera and me sitting stupidly, so there are a lot of embarrassing pictures of me mapped onto Princess Fiona and the Fairy Godmother’s bodies… The guys from the warehouse often cut through the art department to get to the offices and stop and laugh and the new guy with green skin wearing a dress. Guess I can’t blame them. The sad thing is though, my eyebrows are too pronounced, so I am very hard to map onto Shrek. No matter how high I raise them they still mess up the blend and you end up with a surprised looking ogre with 2 sets of eyebrows. How sad is it when you are too hideous to get stuck over a green monster’s face? Sigh.

For the record I am sick of all these 3D animated movies that are coming out. Besides a select few (Toy Story and The Incredibles) they have all been garbage. This summer alone we’ve seen 4 or 5 of these shitty animated flicks, and I’m fed up. They even have little animated movie battles between production houses (Antz vs. Bugs Life, Sharks Tale vs. Finding Nemo etc). Enough! Stop! No one wants to see Monster House or Any Bully, or Open Range or Over The Hedge. I don’t care which crappy celebrities you get to do the voices; Wanda Sikes can’t help your movies not suck.

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