Just For Fun

A couple of projects from ancient history that come with fun stories.

One of my first jobs ever was doing the pre-visualization and simulation of the crashing sea plane for the Waterworld stunt show at Universal Studios. Somehow, the show and the sea plane are still running today!

Originally designed with a coordinated smoke and laser show, the Observatron ended up just being a kinetic sculpture at Disneyland due to budget cuts… and everyone held a grudge against it because it replaced the rockets. But it was a fun project turning a single hand drawn illustration into a fully articulated 3D model that they built the structure from. Glad to see it still lives on in partial motion at least on YouTube.

I’ve worked on many show openings, but the only time I’ve ever been interviewed for a magazine was to answer questions about this main title sequence… Star Trek fans don’t mess around. I did the design frames and was a lead animator for this opening. The astronauts were our three editors.

Do you remember the updated Dragnet from 2003 from the prolific Dick Wolf? I designed and animated this opening and secretly comped in my face in one of the historical photos.

If you’ve made it this far, then the least that I can do is share with you this ride-through video of Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls. I designed the track layout... I had no idea I would be doing that until I was announced as such in our meeting with the client.