First Monticello with South Pavilion	Tearing down the first Monticello
Construction of Monticello's Dome	Side view of second Monticello

While I’ve been settling into my new gig animating at Turbine – and loving it – the people at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation have been preparing to open the new visitor’s center at Monticello.  Part of the center has been open since November, and on April 15, they open the rest of it.  I’ve only seen plans and pictures, but it looks pretty amazing.  We hope to visit again soon to check it out.

I put together two of the pieces, under the direction of aMPU and am pretty proud to have seen them mentioned in today’s Boston Globe article.

“An Essay in Architecture” is an epic piece of 5 minutes of animation, interspersed with Jefferson drawings and drawings of French architecture.  It demonstrates how Jefferson planned Monticello I, and built most of it before moving to Paris as ambassador.  Upon returning, he had all new plans, tore down a large part of what he built and constructed what is there today.

The stills above are featured on the Monticello website.  Clicking on each will bring up a higher-resolution version of each.

The other piece, “A Passion for Ordered Knowledge”, humorously portrays Jefferson’s obsessive need to count and measure EVERYTHING.  See below for a clip.

Fun stuff.