I had the pleasure of working with Celestial on this feature-length, large-scale drone light show and film hybrid. As Lead Designer, Storyboard Artist, and Animation Lead—alongside the brilliant Statler and Waldorf team—I helped bring this ambitious project to life.
This was my first feature-length production, and it was truly an epic creative experience. Designed in an ultra-wide format to synchronize with a drone light display overhead, the project pushed the boundaries of both storytelling and visual design in a unique and exciting medium.
Character Design
Developing the final character designs for Drone-o-saurus involved plenty of creative exploration and iteration. The challenge was to make the dinosaurs visually engaging and playful, while keeping them minimal enough to be rendered using animated dots—both on screen and in the sky using drones.
I worked closely with the directors throughout this process to refine the concepts and arrive at designs that balanced simplicity with character. Once we landed on the overall look (as seen below), the next task was to bring an entire cast of dinosaurs to life—no small feat, but an incredibly fun and rewarding one!
Storyboarding
This was an epic scale storyboard process where we went through the whole hour long film, and then went back and had to storyboard the drone show above this. It fantastic to work with John Hopkins and Steve Winter on this piece of work. I then went on to the make an animatic of the whole show using these images.
