Gnomon School of Visual Effects

Project Director

Tefft Smith II

Bio

Project Description

In February 2009, Gnomon's director Alex Alvarez was approached by Andy Heyward to create an animated short for Warren Buffet's annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder’s meeting. Andy is the former chairman and CEO of DIC Entertainment, which created thousands of hours of television cartoons including classics such as Inspector Gadget. For years DIC had produced animated shorts for Warren, but as Andy had recently sold his company, he was looking for someone that could take over for 2009. Being a friend of Gnomon's for over a decade, we were thrilled that Andy had the confidence in our students to approach us with the task.

Andy and his wife Amy developed a few scripts for the short, which had traditionally been light hearted and comical openers to the weekend event. Eventually, however, due to the economic climate, Warren decided that it would be best to tone down the humor and bring a message of hope and perseverance to the audience.

Character designer and Gnomon Workshop instructor Gil Rimmer provided caricatures, Gnomon resident artist Ryan Kingslien supervised modeling, and Tefft Smith, Gnomon's Academic Director, supervised look-dev, rigging, animation, lighting and rendering. All work was executed by a group of upper term Gnomon students, and delivered on schedule with a four week turnaround.

Andy and Warren were both very happy with the result and the hard work our students put into it. On Saturday May 2nd, 2009, at the Qwest Center in Omaha, 50,000 attendees viewed this animation which kicked off the event.

Credits

Producers - Alex Alvarez, Tefft Smith II

Animation Supervisors - Chris Kirshbaum, Tefft Smith II

Modeling Supervisor - Ryan Kingslien

Modelers - Jessica Johnson, Van Ouk, Kirti Pillai, Jake Raymor, Luis Cayo

Texture Artists/Look Development - Tefft Smith II, Luis Cayo, Nicole Torres

Rigger - Jake Raymor

Animators - Tom Heyerman, Brooke Shay, Jessica Johnson