Towards the end of Epic, I pitched a credit concept to my director Chris Wedge. The idea was to create the illusion of being Leafman size, passing over all of Bomba's research, scientific experiments, gadgets, calendars, photos, notes, books, etc. Chris bought off on the idea and my art director, Mike Knapp, gave me free reign to run with it on my own.   

I wanted to make these credits really personal to the great production team behind the film. Before composing anything, I went around the studio to supervisors, leads, directors, managers, and artists to get an idea what made each department unique. I was looking for inside jokes, production lingo, OOP things, extra curricular activities etc. I got to know a lot of artists I otherwise might have not met. I took notes on everybody. I learned that animation's production manager had a funny finger-hair curling tendency during meetings. The assembly department joked that they could add 10-15% size to any asset before it broke but Wedge always wanted 20% more. Carl Ludwig, one of Blue Sky's founders, met with me to explain the history of the studio and even gave me one of the first rendered images ever made. It was caustic glass and I added it into one of the credit pages (not featured here). I learned about people's kids and families. I got birthdays, names and little doodles from their own desks. I made lists of interesting facts about each department. 

After getting fuel for the fire I got to work sketching out ideas for each department. I envisioned a photo-real look but we didn't have the production budget to render things out. So instead, I would paint it myself and place composite assets together in photoshop.  I got onto the server and pulled assets from the test materials galleries. I brought in anything relevant to the page themes, modeled scissors, map graphics (done by the amazing David Dibble), BJ Crawford's bird studies, previous film items . Sometimes a test render came in looking too clean so I'd brush over it with paint and repaint shadows and highlights to match the lighting scheme. If I could save some time, I'd scan textures in. The cork board and corrugated cardboard are good examples of that. Co-workers wondered what I was trying to do with a 6 foot cork board and a 2 foot scanner! Some things I had to create myself like the dried clay surface and cherry wood desktop. I tried to sneak in drawings from everybody on the show into piles of paper simulated by stacking layers and artificial shadows. There are over 70 different artists featured in just these pages alone. That speaks to the immense talent I get to work with each day! I had fun creating graphic design logos and paper headers to bring some legitimacy to specific ideas. When I needed a fake business name or brand, I drew from my list of notes. I personalized every single credit page with all the tidbits. When Epic premiered at the Ziegfield theater I was delighted to watch the reactions as co-workers and families enjoyed a glancing insight into the fun we had making the movie. I won't keep blabbering on. Have a look for yourself and see what you can find. There is meaning behind every single bit of text and doodle. If you have hawk eyes, you'll spot my wife Anikah's name somewhere on each page.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!