Dora The Explorer, Nickelodeon’s popular children’s show, has a bit more to explore thanks to Calabash Animation – the award-winning animation studio led by Creative Director Wayne Brejcha and Executive Producer Sean Henry – who partnered with the network to create the new minute-long show open.
Working with character animation created by Nickelodeon’s Los Angeles-based production studio, Calabash Animation brought to eye-catching 3D life the wonders of Dora’s world, including all of the environments, lighting, shadows, textures and the cinematic camera moves that make the open so engaging. Calabash also composited the Nickelodeon-created characters into the 3D world they created. Visualized in vibrant 3D, the new Dora The Explorer show open takes viewers on a mini-adventure into Dora’s world where we encounter all of the her friends and favorite places along the way.
“Nickelodeon was looking to take the show open a step further cinematically and make it more engaging,” Henry says. “They gave us a framework of what they wanted, but allowed us the creative freedom to explore in a fun way.”
Set to the familiar Dora The Explorer theme song, the new show opens begins with a sweeping camera move into Dora’s lush world where we see some of the show’s characters like Bennie the Bull and Boots the Monkey bouncing on huge sunflowers as if they were trampolines. Suddenly Dora swings in a vine, landing on Boots’ flower, which then quickly rises into the sunny, blue sky. After catching a ride back down courtesy of a rainbow and bunch of balloons, we meet Dora’s cousin Diego and the Pirate Pigs. The open ends with Boots and Dora sticking their heads out from the Dora The Explorer logo amidst lush flowers and trees.
“We based our look on what is in the show already, but took it bit further,” Henry adds. “We asked ourselves ‘if we can go into this world and see it in 3D, what would it look like?’ That sense of richness and texture is what we were after.”
For Animation Director Jessica Plummer the challenge was meshing Dora and her world with the new 3D environments. “Getting the backgrounds to look just right with Dora and the other characters, while still creating very dynamic scenes, took quite a bit of back and forth and brainstorming. But in the end all those revisions and planning really paid off.”
Credits
Client: Nickelodeon
Project: Dora The Explorer show open
3D Animation: Calabash Animation, Chicago, IL (environments and effects)
Creative Director: Wayne Brejcha
Executive Producer: Sean Henry
About Calabash Animation
Led by Creative Director Wayne Brejcha and Executive Producer Sean Henry, Calabash Animation, Inc. (www.calabashanimation.com) is the Chicago, IL-based animation production studio, known for its award-winning cel, 3D and stop-motion animation for the advertising and entertainment industries. Calabash Animation is perhaps best known for their creative development of some of America’s most beloved brand icons. In addition to working on some of today’s top advertising the company has also produced several acclaimed short films. It’s 2002 short ”Stubble Trouble” was nominated for an Academy Award in 2002. Its most recent “Botnik” will hit the festival circuit in Fall 2008.
