I pull my little Honda Accord into a vacant parking spot just outside of ILM's G building. ILM is composed of a large number of buildings and G is the designated name for the one that a large group of the animators including myself occupy. It won't be long until we all move to the Presidio, but for now this facility is still home. As I step out of the car and make my way to the building I pull out my keycard. I rest it into the keycard bed that lies next to the building door. Within seconds the keycard is read and the security lock on the door releases to allow me access to a world beyond imagination... literally.

As I walk through the building to my desk I pass by the equivalent of Willy Wonka's factory, but replace all that candy with movie posters, life size standees of Stormtroopers and Indiana Jones, and toys as far as the eye can possibly see. Above my desk held high is a model airplane from the movie "Always" and torches line the walls leading to my work area. The hallway wall glows in the fake torchlight revealing that it is littered with some of the meanest caricatures ever produced. There isn't a single animator in our work area that doesn't appear on that wall because everybody is a target for ridicule and ridicule is quite the sniper! I cross "Casa Lego" on my way to my desk where the King sits behind his fortified wall composed of X-Wing fighters and AT-AT walkers. Charles Alleneck owns the largest collection of Star Wars Lego that I've ever seen and his entire work area is completely surrounded by the colorful blocks. "Morning Rick!" he calls out cheerfully from behind the impressive collection. I can only see his short spiky hair poking above the wall of Lego. "Hey Charles! Any new Lego ships today?"

"No, not today," he sadly responds before he booms with a surge of pride, "but I have three orders shipping in soon!"

Suddenly the room is engulfed in the haunting sounds of chains and "bahhhhhhhh bwahhhh bahhhhhhhhhhhh, bummmmmm bummmmm bummmmm." The music of "Lord of the Rings," to be more specific, the theme of the Uruk-Hai storms out from Delio Tramontozzi's work station. "Hey Tozzi!" I holler over the music. Delio quickly springs up from his seat and clasps my hand within his for a manly handshake and smiles. "Hey Buddy, how was the weekend?" Most people just say those words mechanically but Delio really means it. He's always legitimately interested in your weekend stories. Shawn Kelly and Jay Rennie stroll into the building and are included in the conversation. After the trade of our weekend adventures I finally sit in my seat. Much like Charles I've surrounded myself with toys. I have two types of toys in my collection; the first being toys that inspire me from movies I love to death, the second are toys that are based on characters that I've animated. The first group of toys are opened and displayed on my bookshelves. The second group of toys are still in their boxes hung on the wall behind my desk. I consider those ones trophies, and want to keep them looking new but I'm facing the dilemma of animating too many characters that are being turned into toys, and I'm slowly running out of room. I promised myself years ago to keep up the trophy toy collection and purchase toys based on the creatures I've animated, even if the film or character is terrible. The collection is expanding faster than I could have imagined. I guess some toys will be delegated into boxes to make room for the new ones. Star Wars three is under production and lord knows that when I join that show I'll be animating all sorts of critters that will find their way onto the toy shelves. Until then I'm on "Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events."

Colin Brady is the Animation Director for "Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events." It's his job to make sure the animation is exactly how the Director of the film wants it. I'm the Lead Animator for a few sequences and it's my job to aid the animators in whatever way I can. Leads try to encourage younger animators who may be struggling with a task, and we attempt to show them workarounds and shortcuts to keep a shot looking strong but to bring it to a final product quicker. The Leads are also assigned some of the harder shots the show has to offer. In the case of this show the crew is very small, so small in fact that Colin is also animating shots. It's not all too often that the Animation Director animates anything because they're always in meetings or dealing with their crew.

The creatures we need to animate on the show are three different snake models, a bat, an army of hungry leeches, and a full CG baby. As it stands, the CG baby is the scariest thing I've ever been apart of. I've never seen a photo realistic CG human that worked. Ever. Gollum was awesome, and in many shots he looked super amazingly real, but he didn't have human proportions or needed to interchange with a live actor throughout the film. This baby needs to look and move just like the real baby actresses (they were twins) used in the film, and so far it's been working. We just completed a series of shots where the little actress's mouth was replaced with a CG mouth and it's seamless. It really looks like she's talking to Jim Carrey. The animators did a great job with the lip sync, and the TDs (Technical Directors) bloody well nailed it with the lighting. Now I'm undertaking one of the most difficult sequences of shots I've ever tackled. A CG baby wrestling with a CG snake. Three shots, full body, close-up. Someone pass the Pepto, I think I'm going to be sick. I've been studying all the footage I can on the little girls to find little nuances in their mannerisms that I can bring into the animation of the baby. I don't want to reinvent the wheel here because the audience would notice how different she'd be if I suddenly decided to animate my mannerisms into the character instead of the mannerisms already established by the real little girls. I don't need to create a character here; I only need to continue the consistency of the characters personality. That requires a hell of a lot of research. Not only that but I've been researching snake movements as well since I've never animated one before. With all the footage archived by Discovery channel and the like, I have a ton of Ammo to help me solve difficult questions regarding snakes so my worries lie with the baby Sunny character.

This morning, just like most, I meet with Colin a half an hour before animation dailies for our pre-daily meeting. Here we go over the shots that the animators have sent our way at the end of the previous day. We go through the shots one by one to discuss how well they are working or what to say to the animators to make sure their direction is clear. This is just a way to make sure we know exactly what needs to be said in dailies so that we don't keep the animators away from their desks for too long. In pre-dailies, Colin and I disagree over ideas needed for some shots sometimes, and we will discuss our opposing points in an attempt to sway the others' opinion. Sometimes Colin will agree with what I suggest, but in the end he is the Animation Director, so he has the executive decision on what direction a shot should go in before presenting it to the Director of the movie. I always remember that point.

When we're finished with pre-dailies, the animators show up to the screening room for dailies. Colin does all of the talking during dailies and I'll only say something if he forgets a point we've discussed in pre-dailies. I make sure not to cut him off in dailies in front of the other animators for a number of reasons. 1. It's just down-right rude. 2. I don't want to appear to be a "know it all" in front of other animators who may take offence to me challenging their shots. Not every animator is accepting of comments from Leads. Unfortunately, ego does cloud some people's ability to receive constructive criticism. 3. The animators need to feel like one person is Captain of the vessel, and it's his/her direction they're following, not mine. My task is to help the animators realize in their work what Colin wants, not what I want. I have two lines I like to use when animators ask for my advice. "I think this is looking perfect, let's run it by Colin and see what he thinks." And, "I think you could fix this and this, but I think Colin likes how it looks already so we should just leave it for now, and if we have time maybe we can run those ideas by him." They need to know that he has final word. After we review the shots with the animators, Colin decides to hand out new shots to some of them who received a final this morning. It was a good day for finals and we'll have a good number of shots to run by the Director later this week to get his final buy-off.

I return to my workstation and it's close to ten. I have a dual monitor set up, and on one monitor I have my XSI/Scene opened containing raw motion capture of a baby wiggling around on the floor and an incredible deadly viper model in rest pose. On the other monitor I have all my reference movies opened to make sure I don't stray away from who these two characters are. For the past couple of days I've been looking at the motion capture (mocap) and realizing that it might not work very well. Colin made the decision that we should start with the mocap and see how far that gets us. After an hour, I have the snake wrapped around the mocap baby and have blocked in keys to describe a few seconds of the performance. This isn't going to work. The baby on the mocap stage was way too passive for the type of action the shot demands. I'll need to heavily alter her performance to make it work. I start to sketch out some thumbnails in an attempt to bring the basic story points of the shots to the forefront of my mind. It needs to look like the snake is killing her at first but is in fact just playing a game. The snake and baby are tickling each other. I begin to find a few solutions to my problems within the thumbnails when my phone rings. I hope the conversation is quick so my momentum isn't derailed.

"This is Rick."

"Hey Rick, it's Colin, could you come to my desk for a second?"

"Yeah sure, be there in a minute."

I lay my pen and paper on the desk. The momentum train has just exploded into smithereens!

It's almost noon as I make my way into Colin's office. He's standing at his desk with Martin Murphy, the show's modeler.

"Hey guys!" I say as I pass through the threshold of Colin's door.

"Hey Rick." They say in unison then Colin continues, "Martin's just finished creating a large number of face shapes for Sunny, and I wanted to check ‘em out to make sure you have enough to start your shot with."

"Great, sure." I respond. Martin has taken some footage from the set that Colin filmed of the twins while he was on location. Between takes he just let his camcorder run in order to catch as many facial expressions as he could before flying back to ILM last week. Martin jumped at the chance to take our CG baby and duplicate all the faces that he thought we'd need for the shots our CG baby would be featured in. As I look at the renders of his sculpted expressions next to the real piece of footage used as reference, I'm amazed at how bang on the face is. It's creepy how real the baby head looks.

"Yeah," I say, "those are amazing, I won't need to use them yet since I'm still blocking in the motion, so if you think you want to create more shapes go for it."

Colin turns to me, "You should dial in at least one of the shapes so that the baby doesn't have a dead face, it could distract people away from the body's performance."

"Not a problem, I'll dial in a scared then a happy face at the appropriate frames, it won't be much but it'll give them an idea of when her personality will change in the shot." I say.

We share a quick conversation then I carry myself back to my workstation.

It's now twelve thirty and Shawn bellows, "Finally, where have you been?"

"Colin's office, why?"

"Hellooo," his tone thick with sarcasm, "Deadwood lunch!"

"Oh yeah, sorry guys, I totally forgot!" Monday for a few of us has become "Deadwood Monday" where we drive to Shawn's place with sacks of fast food death, and enjoy the latest episode of an HBO show called "Deadwood." I think it's one of the greatest shows ever created. It isn't for the weak-hearted though as it's a pretty rough show and it has so much profane language in it that you end up becoming numb to it. It's a great way to start the week, though, and it totally takes you away from the world of work and animation, which is very healthy. I feel that if all you do is think about your work, in this case animation, no matter how much you love it, you'll burn yourself out and begin to detest our chosen career. I've seen a few high-spirited animators become less inspired because they try too hard and don't give themselves breaks. That's exactly what "Deadwood" is; it's a show that allows us to escape from the reality of our studio.

Weighed down with McDonalds and a great viewing of "Deadwood" we find ourselves back at work at around two o'clock. Indeed a long lunch but we always make up the time. I notice that my message light is flashing on the phone and I anticipate a call from one of the animators looking for some sort of answer. Instead it's a message left by Colin who informs me that he needed to leave on account of a family emergency. That leaves me in charge of his tasks and mine. I have a feeling that I won't really have a strong chance to dive back into my shots today. I hang up the phone and begin to reintroduce myself to the thumbnails I began earlier today. I stare at them, and then before I know it, ideas are spilling out all over the page. Some good ideas appear in a volley of bad ones. Though I'm grossly immersed in my work there's a constant pulse in the back of my mind saying, "Someone is going to call any minute and you're going to lose this momentum again." It's because of that constant nagging thought that I force myself to work so quickly to try to find some ideas that I think will work. I really want to leave the studio today with a complete set of storyboards so that I won't be bombarded with ideas when I go home tonight. I want to put this first pass of thumbnails to rest without interruption. I watch a few pieces of footage of the twins to help find some cute ideas that I can try to incorporate into my animation and it works like a charm. I find a few great poses that I want to try to use, and I quickly draw them out and alter them to better suit the shot. I glance down at the clock. It reads five thirty-seven. Not a single phone call from any of the animators. Not one question, not one complaint, and since most of them are starting new shots they don't need any feedback yet. I decide that I should contact them to make sure everything is running smoothly. One by one I give them a call and ask how it's going and the answer is usually the same. "Well, I just started blocking it in, but if you want to see it I'll come on over."

My response is always the same as well, "No, no. Don't show it until you're ready for feedback, it's just so quiet that I wanted to make sure you were all still alive."

It's almost six after I speak to the last animator and I'm kind of glad it's a quiet day. Last week was crazy because we had to deliver a bunch of shots, and the direction altered slightly on some of them, and though "slight" means "just a little," in animation it's a lot. One little change to a shot usually translates into a larger series of changes that are necessary to get that one change to work. With a deadline quickly nipping at your heels those "slight changes" can turn one's hair a "slight" gray! I spend the rest of the day continuing with my thumbnails until seven o'clock rolls around and it's time to go home. The day was pretty good for a Monday. The animators received many finals from Colin, most have new shots, I enjoyed a "Deadwood" lunch with the boys, I discovered the motion capture baby performance isn't going to work, and I backed it up with a group of thumbnails that I think will work out well. I realize that an idea on paper can be terrible once implemented on screen, but at least I have something to start with. Since these shots are going to be so difficult, I know there's going to be a long road of changes, but I'm not going to think about that tonight. I have it all out of my system and I'll leave "animation Rick" at the studio where he belongs and go home to walk into the arms of my four year old as "Papa Bear," or as my ten year old calls me "Big Papa."

Months later ...

Months passed, "Lemony Snicket" hit the theatres and to his surprise, Rick was nominated for an award. The Visual Effects Society (VES) nominated him for "Best animated character in a live-action movie," for his efforts on the Sunny and Deadly Viper tickle shots. Buckbeak from "Harry Potter and the Prisoner from Azkaban" won the award. Rick totally agrees with the VES' decision to hand the award to the animators who created that amazing piece of work, for in his mind that was the greatest piece of work he's seen in a long time.