I was up early checking Apple Trailers to see if our trailer was up yet - and as I was riding my motorcycle to work it happened!  
trailers.apple.com/trailers/
When we started this movie five years ago, I thought it would be a blast, because everything was wide open.  In a world without cars, jobs, secret formulas, villains, etc. we would be able to do anything we wanted.  It didn't take long for reality to sink in - this was going to be a lot tougher than we thought.  Staring into this limitless world that we would build according to our rules, we were suddenly coming to grip with just how wide open this world really was.  Like when you've finished all your chores and you finally find time to do a drawing - you run to your table, open your drawing pad (or your computer, if you're more modern than me) and stare into a blank page.  And if you're like me, it's not very long before you are wishing you had just a few boundaries.  Should I draw a monster?  A witch?  A bunny?  A bunny riding a monster fleeing a witch?  Ugh.  At that point I begin scribbling, looking for something.  It can take hours or days before I find it.

So we began the search for the Croods story.  No matter what, we wanted to end with a balance of scale, humor and depth.  And I feel we accomplished that.  This trailer focuses mainly on scale.  Later trailers will dig into the humor.  Enjoy!

A lot of things to tell you about this morning.  First, I've gotten the word that our first Croods trailer will be up and active on Apple Trailers trailers.apple.com/trailers/ tomorrow morning, October 3rd.  I've heard that it's gonna be up at 8:00 AM, but I'm not sure if thats California time or East Coast time.  My guess is that's California time.  This is the teaser trailer, and since it was cut we've very nearly finished animating the film.  More trailers will follow, but not for a little while.  Be sure and check it out - our talented crew has really outdone themselves this time.  Some of my favorite movies were caveman themed - Quest For Fire, Caveman, etc.  But I never dreamed I'd get to make one myself.  The cool thing about this is that we've gotten a chance to present cavemen in a fresh way.  Croods was freed from the physical limitations of live actors, but we had the light, camera movement and dimensionality you can only get in CG animation.  With such complete control, we began the design process with the characters themselves.  We designed our cavemen to have longer arms, shorter legs, flatter heads, bigger teeth, etc.  Having worked with them for years, they look perfectly normal to me now.  

Also, my Facebook fan page is up!
www.facebook.com/chrissandersa…
so be sure and drop by there as well.  It's another place I'll be making updates and posts, as well as sharing photos and stuff that's different than the stuff on DA.

Currently I'm working on some more sketches, and I really want to make at least one finished piece of art before Halloween, and another one before Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Themed drawings, that is.

I've been so busy, I think I forgot to write to everyone and let you know that my web store is open and functioning well.  We've received and sent the first wave of Ogo mugs, and everything went smoothly.  We've limited it to the Ogo mugs just so we could get our feet wet with all the new things - weighing, shipping, packaging, etc.  It's been fun.

Store is located at - www.chrissandersart.com/

But the mugs are just the beginning, I'll be loading more merchandise in the months to come, eventually selling everything from here.  Prints, sketchbooks, water bottles, and odds and ends you can't get anywhere else.  Original artwork will probably have to go through Ebay, as that's something I have trouble pricing.  There are several people out there that know how difficult it is to get an original drawing from me.  It's not so much the price, it's my time.  I never seem to have enough.  There are also quite a few things in the works that take longer to realize, but we've started the process on those and hope to have them finished well before San Diego next summer.

As we get better at this we'll begin to ship internationally.  Sorry for not doing that yet, but we will sooner than later.

In other news, our first Croods posters went up at a theater in The Grove, which is a shopping center here in Southern California.  Our first teaser trailer isn't far behind.  We're coming down to the wire on this film - everyone here at Dream Works, from the artists to the managers, have done an amazing job keeping everything on track.  Our layout team has mostly moved on, our development artists have been swept up onto other projects, and in the next few months it's going to get more lonely on the 5th floor where I work.

My brilliant web designer has been working like crazy to ensure my website/blog/store is open again tomorrow.  She's done a great job, and I'm thrilled with the refresh.  We should be back up sometime tomorrow, even if it's just before the stroke of midnight, California time.  I'd like to write something funny here, but it's late and I'll try being more interesting tomorrow.

Well, so far so good on the prep to open the store on my site.  If you go there, it's still down as there are still things being put in place.  But the plan is for it to open on the seventh - this Friday.  Sorry for being gone, I went on vacation at the same time the main drive failed in my computer.  Conveniently, it broke before I went on vacation, not after.  So the shop time passed as I was swimming and such.  Not bad - good timing for once.

First up for the store is a second batch of the mugs that were sold in San Diego this summer.  It's as much a test of our system as anything else.  Everything from the orders to the shipping is new to me, so this seems like a good way to step into this new realm.  If everything works out, there'll be prints and other things going up through the year.  

As usual, I've given myself quite a lot to do before the year is out, with plans to return to Kiskaloo in late December and then stick with it through Comic Con next year.  And nothing about that has changed - so it's back to the drawing board tonight - woo hoo!  I'll let you know when I get some new stuff drawn.