Jim Capobianco | 2 min | USA | 2010

A tribute to Galileo on the 400th anniversary of the telescope. Using the actual NASA audio, Apollo 15 Cmdr. Dave Scott proves Galileo’s theory of falling bodies at the only place he can – the moon.

SCREENING SCHEDULE
Science for Nanos
2:00pm  Sunday, October 16, 2011
New York Hall of Science

PRODUCTION CREDITS
Director | Jim Capobianco
Writer | Jim Capobianco
Art Direction | Nate Wragg

DIRECTOR BIO
James Capobianco was born in 1969 in Saddle Brook, New Jersey. At the other end of I80 from where he lives now in the San Francisco Bay Area, Jim grew up watching as much animation as he could and his passion grew in High School after being introduced to the techniques of animation in his graphic arts class. Jim wanted to do a hand drawn animation assignment for the class and his teacher, Mr. Bill Schmaltz, didn’t know
anything about drawn animation but was very supportive of this endeavor giving Jim a book about animation. It turned into a big task and eventually ballooned into Jim’s very own animation class spanning his last two years of high school.

Jim went off to CalArts in 1987 to become an animator. It was the largest class of students at that time. His classmates there included Pete Docter and Ash Brannon. Joe Ranft, who was teaching there, really opened the door for Jim to look at other aspects of animation, including a stronger focus on story.

Jim graduated from CalArts in 1991 with a BFA in character animation and applied at Disney where he was hired into their story department shortly after graduation. He worked on various films at Disney including The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Fantasia 2000.

In 1997 Jim left Disney to join Pixar. He worked as a story artist on A Bug’s Life and contributed story material to Toy Story 2. He continued to help shape the story of such films as Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo.

In 2001, Jim helped craft the screenplay for Ratatouille and was a constant presence on the production from its earliest days to Brad Bird joining the production after Jan Pinkava’s departure. His hard work was rewarded as Jim received 2008 Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

Jim had an idea while working on Ratatouille to do a humorous, edutainment documentary on the history of rats. He began writing down ideas and when it came time to put together the DVD/Blu-ray features, Jim presented his idea as a “Ward Kimball type” 2D presentation. With the help of Teddy Newton (character design) and Nate Wragg (production design), Your Friend the Rat received a 2008 Annie Award for Best Animated Short.

Jim’s next assignment was the remarkable end credits for Andrew Stanton’s WALL-E. In addition to being fun/creative, they also needed to wrap up the story and show what happens to the characters. It was widely regarded as an artistic and storytelling triumph. Jim has continued to foster his love of 2D animation with his labor of love Leonardo. This 10 minute hand drawn short has been shown at many film festivals over the past year, most recently the prestigious Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. You can learn much more about Leonardo at the official site and more about Jim at his new site Arial Contrivance Workshop.