Kirshbaum also worked as a character animator on the original 2008 film, “Kung Fu Panda,” which earned an Academy Award nomination for best animated feature film and grossed more than $633 million worldwide.
“There are huge expectations,” Kirshbaum said about the sequel. “This is DreamWorks’ next franchise, so there is a lot riding on it,” he said.
“Kung Fu Panda 2” challenged the filmmakers to tell a new story with the same characters “without feeling like it’s mundane or rehashed or just redundant,” Kirshbaum said.
The sequel focuses on Po’s mysterious past, which he must uncover to unlock the strength he needs to defeat a formidable new villain, Lord Shen, who wants to conquer China and destroy kung fu.
Kirshbaum and his fellow animators benefited from advances in computer technology to make the characters more expressive. “The capacity for animators to really bring these characters to life with greater degrees of subtlety and nuance is my favorite part of what we do,” he said.
The characters are modeled in part on the film’s voice cast, which includes Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Jackie Chan and Gary Oldman.
The animators use footage of the actors performing their dialogue in the recording studio as inspiration, watching how they act with their hands and emote physically while reading a line.
“Sometimes we incorporate those behaviors into the animation we do for that scene,” Kirshbaum said. “That’s definitely helpful for the process.”
Unlike the original film, “Kung Fu Panda 2” is in 3-D. “We animate more stuff flying into the camera,” Kirshbaum said, laughing.
Kirshbaum completed work on “Kung Fu Panda 2” about six weeks ago and is pleased with the result. He watched the finished film last Friday at a cast and crew screening. “Everybody in the theater was blown away,” he said.
Kirshbaum is now working on “Puss in Boots,” a feature film spin-off from the “Shrek” franchise.
A graduate of Arizona State University and California Institute of the Arts, Kirshbaum has been a 3-D character animator at DreamWorks Animation since 2003. His credits also include “Shark Tale,” “Over the Hedge,” “Flushed Away” and “Monsters vs. Aliens.”
Kirshbaum said his mother and stepfather still live in Troy, and he usually visits at Christmas.
Kirshbaum also works as a character animation instructor at Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood, and teaches online workshops at iAnimate.net.
He released a three-part series of “Character Animation” instructional DVDs through Gnoman Workshop. The DVDs allow people to try their hand at animation without having to commit to a school, Kirshbaum said.
Feature animation is a competitive field, “but these movies are popular and the studios are always looking for the next great animator,” Kirshbaum said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2419 or dlarsen@Dayton DailyNews.com.
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