News for Jul. 10, 2006

Old Disney magic in new animated logo

7/10/06, 8:59 pm EST - Xoanon

Moviegoers who saw Walt Disney Pictures' "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" over the weekend also discovered an unexpected bit of treasure. Buried beneath the usual movie trailers, just as "Dead Man's Chest" started, Disney unveiled a new, computer-animated logo that the Burbank-based studio spent a year designing...The execs tapped Disney producer Baker Bloodworth and director Mike Gabriel, both Oscar nominated in 2004 for the animated short film "Lorenzo." Gabriel devised three different treatments, created animatic storyboards, showed Aviv and Cook the frames and re-worked the designs until everyone was on board. Academy Award-winning studio Weta Digital in New Zealand was chosen to animate the story and add visual effects. "We chose to go to the world's best (visual effects) studio, where they specialize in live action/real-life simulation," Aviv said. [More]