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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
Gone Nutty
Blue Sky Studios, 20th Century Fox,
Carlos Saldanha
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Carlos Saldanha's Gone Nutty, also known as Scrat's Missing Adventure, is a sharp follow-up to Blue Sky Studios' 2002 Oscar-nominated CG feature Ice Age. In this four-minute short, the beleaguered critter from the movie once again struggles to gain control of an oversized nut. Believe it or not, the short also clues in the viewers on the scientific basis of the formation of the continents as we know them today.
Scrat's frantic movements and the project's well-timed animation are reminiscent of classic Chuck Jones's Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote shorts. It's interesting to compare Blue Sky's latest achievement to the studio's 1998 Oscar-winning short Bunny (directed by Ice Age'sChris Wedge) and see the evolutionary power of the digital shop's proprietary renderer CGI Studio.
With the production of Bunny, the use of CGI Studio proved that Blue Sky could produce highly realistic fur effects and photorealistic non-organic textures. In Gone Nutty, advances in CGI Studio are showcased in a glorious ice-bound world, an extremely blue sky and the hyper-attractive movements of Scrat’s furry tail. This lovely fluffball squashes, stretches, whips, whirls and wobbles in every fantastic fashion imaginable, and yet, due to Blue Sky’s mastery of programming lines, the viewer is never aware that this on-screen representation is only a mass of 1s and 0s.
(By Ramin Zahed, Editor, Animation Magazine)
Scrat's frantic movements and the project's well-timed animation are reminiscent of classic Chuck Jones's Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote shorts. It's interesting to compare Blue Sky's latest achievement to the studio's 1998 Oscar-winning short Bunny (directed by Ice Age'sChris Wedge) and see the evolutionary power of the digital shop's proprietary renderer CGI Studio.
With the production of Bunny, the use of CGI Studio proved that Blue Sky could produce highly realistic fur effects and photorealistic non-organic textures. In Gone Nutty, advances in CGI Studio are showcased in a glorious ice-bound world, an extremely blue sky and the hyper-attractive movements of Scrat’s furry tail. This lovely fluffball squashes, stretches, whips, whirls and wobbles in every fantastic fashion imaginable, and yet, due to Blue Sky’s mastery of programming lines, the viewer is never aware that this on-screen representation is only a mass of 1s and 0s.
(By Ramin Zahed, Editor, Animation Magazine)
Carlos Saldanha (USA) has been part of Blue Sky Studios' creative team since 1993. He has won several awards, including the People’s Choice Award at Images du Futur in Montreal and Best Artistic Film at the International Computer Film Festival in Geneva. Saldanha was Blue Sky’s Supervising Animator for the talking and dancing roaches in the feature film Joe’s Apartment (1996). He was also the Director of Animation for the computer generated characters in A Simple Wish (1997) and Fight Club (1999). In addition to feature projects, Saldanha has directed and animated a number of television commercials. Saldanha earned an M.F.A. degree in animation from the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he discovered his passion for animation.