Perhaps the project I am the most proud of is one that got nixed on the eve of its completion. As part of Universal's upcoming DVD release of "Despicable Me 2", Deluxe was commissioned to create 2 new animated shorts starring the Minions--but using only existing art and animation from the feature film and the ad campaign. Producer Richard Green came up with two concepts--a parody called "Minions Got Talent" and a gag-filled mini-episodic called "Safecrackers". I was put in charge of creating the shorts. It took four months and a load of work. A few spare motion artists at Deluxe helped with the massive roto work that the job required, and the extremely talented staff artist Leah Overbey created a number of original illustrations needed to fill in any missing parts. I wrote the scripts and led the charge to get both shorts done within budget and time frame--and we did it. The results were submitted to Universal, and word came back from the original animation team in France that they were impressed how much we were able to do by repurposing the footage.
Alas: on the very day we added the end credits, the project was canceled. As it turned out, the team in France was creating their own shorts--three of them--from scratch, and those are what went out on the disks. Naturally, their work was as wonderful as what they did on the movie, and it's no surprise theirs were picked over mine. I was never exactly sure why we were tasked with creating these, but rumor had it that it was something of a pilot project to see what could be done with existing material and a budget lower than creating something from scratch.
Nevertheless, it was a wonderful project to work on, and a huge creative challenge that was a blast to tackle. The very short excerpt shown here--from "Minions Got Talent"--is sadly a bit grainy, as the only evidence I have of this project is a lower-resolution work version that was near completion at the time. Sometimes the best projects turn out to be ones that are never seen except by those who worked on them at the time.
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