'The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore' is the animated short my boyfriend's studio has released, and is the same short that has been snatching up awards left and right at film festivals across the country. It's 3D animation, paired with real sets, built in miniature at 1/12th scale. The sets were filmed first, in January of 2010, and the rest of the year the animation and tech departments were hard at work making the real life environments mesh seamlessly with the animation.
I was a scenic artist, on set for the shoot, and while I took a number of photos, I realized I hadn't posted them here.
So, here we go.
First, the books. The majority of the action takes place in a library. Each individual book was hand-painted. I never did find out how many hundreds we actually painted.
The set, early on.
This is the kind of detail that went into painting each individual buildings, most of which are on screen for mere seconds. I spent hours simulating water damage all over this building. I was just one of several artists tasked with painting these buildings; I can't speak for anyone else on how long they took, but generally one day of work seemed standard.
A maquette of Morris stands in for his animated counterpart in the library for size reference.
And here is a 6'6 man in the library, for size reference.
The city of New Orleans is slowly coming together.
Filming.
Aftermath of the storm.
Me, wallowing on the filthy set after we finally wrapped.
Check out the trailer for the completed film. It's available on iTunes.
