Occasionally I come across articles or stories about artists and I think to myself, “boy, I’d sure hate to be that artist!”
Here’s an example, taken from a movie review of the Jim Carey film “Mr. Popper’s Penguins.”
Excerpts from Film.com, a review by Eric D. Snyder, from June 2011:
Review: Mr. Popper’s Penguins Is Putrid
— Begin the Excerpt —
Perhaps you are wondering how much of the movie you will have to sit through before Jim Carrey finally gets hit in the crotch. The answer is 10 minutes. Perhaps you are also wondering how long you will have to wait before Jim Carrey gets pooped on by a penguin.
The answer to that is 15 minutes. Mr. Popper’s Penguins gets right to the point.
And you’ll be glad to know that one of those penguins turns around, aims his vile cloaca directly at Mr. Popper, and purposely poops fish-scented feces upon him.
The director, Mark Waters (Mean Girls, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past), makes sure to get the camera right up there on that penguin’s butt. It’s CGI, of course — actual penguins are used occasionally in the movie, but all their facial expressions and choreographed wackiness and excretory orifices are computer-generated — which means it was someone’s job to tell a computer how to draw the thing that a penguin poops out of.
“Make sure it kind of vibrates when the excrement comes out,” is something I imagine director Mark Waters telling his team of animators.
— End the Excerpt —
Indeed. I would not have wanted to be the artist on that movie tasked with having to draw or animate a penguin’s rear end or penguin droppings.
Maybe this film should have been named “Mr. Poopers Pooping Penguins.” I did see the film this past week on F/X channel.
I detested having to re-draw and “gussy up” power point presentational graphics from clients I was given at my prior graphic design job, but I would imagine having to beautify hundreds of boring power point slides is a few steps up from having to animate penguin behinds or penguin excrement.
Musings of a Graphic Designer 