woody

Cinnabar California Inc. 2840 Hollywood way, Burbank California 91505
Telephone (818) 842-8190 <> Fax (818) 842-0563
Site designed and maintained by Cinnabar California Inc. Copyright©2001

The pre-show hall beautifully captures the lively feel of an 'Art Moderne' style animation building office, while a computer-studded Digital Cartoonist's workspace of today is featured as the stage in the 300 guest theater. Interacting with a live actor who is playing 'Yoshii', an animator with a deadline, an animated Woody Woodpecker suddenly springs forth from the computers using some utterly amazing hush-hush new holographic technology developed by BRC.

Two 60ft. handpainted murals that line both lower walls of the preshow depict a smoothly flowing transition from an animators' rough 'blue line' sketch at one end to a fully realized animation background at the other. In front of this, and mimicking a cartoon acetate 'cel', were twelve clear panels with hand painted images of Woody interacting with the background.

Above the murals, a balcony of backlit animators' offices encircled the scene. Although Cinnabar designed and built these facades in California for what was then a nonexistent building in Japan, the installation fit was surprisingly smooth and tight.

A change of lighting requirements, determined on scene, required a complete re-engineering of the facades attachment method. Cinnabar quickly came up with an acceptable solution and the workflow hardly hiccupped.

Working closely with BRC Imagination Arts, Cinnabar built, shipped, and installed the "Woody Woodpeckers Animation Celebration" attraction at the new Universal Studios Japan in Osaka. We had a great time doing it too.

A truly awesome crew of highly skilled Japanese technicians from MAST made our work in Osaka a joy and a treasure...

Modern computer Animation Workstations, Super Computers and mechanical gags galore fill the stage in the main theater. Pneumatic 'pop-up' floor tiles are scattered about for use during the show as Woody escapes his digital medium and comes 'alive' bringing havoc and laughter to poor Yoshii's life.

Designed like a large model kit, the entire set was built and tested in our Burbank facilities, then disassembled, wrapped, packed and shipped to Osaka for re-assembly. Everything had to fit through a standard-sized double doorway, so forward thinking in all aspects of this complex task was demanded.

Director Darren Greenblatt and Producer Steve Ryan led the BRC team of Designer Kis Knekt, Mastermind Sameer Kawash and Technical Director Steve Calver in making this show come alive.

Cinnabar's Steve Turnbull and Jeremiah Small supervised the construction installation with the Japanese crew from MAST, led by Yukio Tanaka-san.

A better team of professional, hardworking experts in darn near everything would be hard to find.

Thanks all...Domo Arrigato Goziamashita...for a great time.

Installation proceeded at a much more rapid pace then expected, as our Japanese construction team jumped into the project with great enthusiasm and skill. After a week, we hardly needed the translator to help us communicate difficult building changes at all. By then, we had memorized each others sound effects and gestures.