We received passes for the press/preview viewing of Pixar Studios/Walt Disney Pictures Moana at Phoenix Fan Fest. When we arrived at the theater we found that the passes did not guarantee seats and the theater was full. Having driven 2 hours from Tucson to the Marketplace 16 Harkins Theater in Tempe, we had a discussion with the marketing representative for Paintbrush Promotions. We had to call Disney corporate for the representative to finally agree to seat the four of us. We got in to the theater after the opening credits had begun. Her excuse was that a publication didn’t arrive leaving their seats were empty.
After being seated we found the movie was up to the real Disney standard and met all our expectations. The artwork was well done and even with use of digital animation they went back to having parts of the animation hand done. Maui’s tattoos, expanding his back story was done by this method. Moana contained 3 types of film styles, traditional animation which was used in Maui’s tattoos, computer animation, and actual footage of the pacific sky and sea.
In watching the credits at the end I found the animator, Eric Goldberg, who did the artwork for Maui’s tattoos was a high school classmate and fellow Boy Scout from my childhood in New Jersey. Eric also was the character designer and supervising animator for Genie in Aladdin, and supervising animator for Phil in Hercules. Eric also directed the production of “Rhapsody in Blue” and “The Carnival of Animals” (Finally) as well as animating and voice work in Fantasia 2000. Eric continued to do movie work and was the animation director for the fantasy sequence in The Princess and the Frog, where he won an Annie Award for Best Character Animation in a Feature Production. besides his work for Disney, Eric also worked on a number of films for Warner Brothers.
– Written by David Weintraub
