Paul Lasaine

The Prince of Egypt at the newly-formed DreamWorks Animation, marked my first foray into the world of feature animation. I was brought in originally to help develop the look of the film, but wound up as one of the background (BG) painting supervisors. Together with my co-supervisor Ron Lukas, we developed a BG style that was unique to American animation of the day. 
 Amazingly, we were able to convinced DreamWorks NOT to go with the standard, highly-polished BG paint style that was so popular at other studios. Instead, we were given the green light to embrace a loose, fresh painting style that didn't shy away from visible brush strokes - a "painterly" style that had more in common with Impressionism than it did with typical animation backgrounds. The result was to challenge what was possible with the look of modern animation productions, and it opened the door for other studios to pursue more painterly styles as well.