I knew the production schedule was going to be crazy but this was really crazy.

We had a month to write, storyboard, animate and code an eBook based on the upcoming (now released) Will Ferrell/Brad Pitt/Tina Fey Dreamworks Animation movie, Megamind. While I have managed productions all the way back from the floppy disk Shockwave movies of 1896 (okay 1996) to CD-ROMs, websites, kids animated videos, puppet shows and viral videos, an eBook was of a different story, so to speak. It was kind of a little bit of everything all at once.

The job was to sort through endless production images, read the script, get a shortened version of the story and storyboard out to Dreamworks, then create a dozen micro animations, camera movies, sound effects and voice files, add it all together and make a Megamind eBook Story in record time. And that wasn’t even the back end, which is still very code intensive at this point in iPhone/iPad application development.

For about a month there it was: eat, sleep and read craziness, while on two other simultaneous deadlines, topped off with many middle of the night wake up calls by my sweet powerhouse of a daughter Sofi (read: weaning).

While I look forward to having a bit more breathing room to tell these stories it was a great experience and it looks like there are going to be more to come. Hats off to Woody and iStoryTime for the opportunity, Aubrey for the animation and Julie for the production wizardry. To see on iTunes: http://bit.ly/caszMK

For some bits and pieces here is a trailer: