Back in the mid-90s, when James Lopez was working at Disney on traditional animated films like "The Lion King","Hercules" and "The Princess and the Frog". Between films there was downtime, and he was able to use this time wisely to come up with a few ideas which has lead to his current project, "Hullabaloo".
First
of all, James is a very sincere guy who is not just passionate about traditional
animation, but also in learning from others and sharing what he knows. I
invited him to show some of his work to our animation students and he went
through the whole process from the early beginning to where the most recent
phases of the the project. My only regret was that more students didn't show up
to hear James's lecture, because they really missed something special.
Born
out of a sense of wonder and enchantment, one Halloween season, James helped a
friend create
a Jules Vern looking drilling machine which was a very large Halloween
decoration. A group of Cos Players known as the "League of Steam"
liked the prop so much ,they used it as a backdrop for a photo shoot. With the
right combination of interestingly dressed people, the enormous Jules Verne inspired
earth drilling machine and the spirit of Halloween floating in the air, James
and his wife experienced that "sense of Enchantment", as James's wife
would describe it later.
During
downtime at Disney, James began to come up with a female character in Steampunk
inspired costume and shooting a laser type gun. He was able to do a lot of
character designs and even animate a few key scenes. At the time, Disney had
invited their employees to pitch ideas to them in hopes to develop these ideas
into future features or shorts.
Both
times James submitted his proposed project, Disney kindly said no. Although
they didn't understand it or see a value in it, other people did. Eventually,
Lopez added some of his work to his website where over a period of a few
months, he had collected 500 Likes.
About this time, Evelyn
Kreite saw his work and got in contact with him. She asked him to watch his
Likes as she went off to work her magic.
James watched in awe as his Likes began to grow to 2000 or more in just a few
hours. Who was this person? he thought and soon he was working with her to put together
his IndieGoGo campaign.
Disney
soon had a round of layoffs after "Princess and the Frog" and James
was now faced with the idea of bringing back 2D animation with Hullabaloo. His
IndieGoGo campaign is a major success and these days, he is beginning animation
with the help of fellow Disney artists who want to make Lopez's Hullabaloo
dream come true.
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