Innovations in Animation - Part 3 - The Peanuts Movie

(copyright Blue Sky Studios, Twentieth Century Fox Animation, United Features Syndicate, and of course "Sparky" Charles M. Schulz)

Late to the party again, I finally borrowed the The Peanuts Movie screener DVD from work. After virtually growing up with all the original Bill Melendez animated TV specials from the 60's, I was hesitant to face a possible "South Park" kind of treatment of my childhood heroes. 

 But this film wasn't bad. As a family film, The Peanuts Movie is a nostalgic romp going through the key story points of the entire Charlie Brown saga: the childhood torments of grade school, his love of baseball and his longing for the distant, seemingly unattainable attention of the Little Red-Headed Girl. And of course, Snoopy relives his never ending aerial battles with the mysterious and relentless Red Baron. And then there is the actual design of the movie itself, and how the director Steve Martino and crew strove to stay faithful to style and charm of Charles Schulz' original comic strip.

 Looking back on my last entry, I'm beginning to notice how studios having been making big strides in creating 3D polygon models to resemble flat, cartoon shapes. As with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Blue Sky Studios worked overtime to take Charles M. Schulz' beloved Peanuts comic strip into the CG world, and then make it "flat" again. I used to think that the studios are using 3D animation in ways that it was "not meant to be used", in as far as the usual process of modeling, rigging and animating CG characters.

But The Peanuts Movie is a nice reminder of how CG can do virtually anything, and should not just be shoehorned into mimicking alternate concrete looking realities. Director Steve Martino described how their first attempts with traditional modeling and rigging just didn't cut it, and eventually switched to a stop motion style to maintain the illusion of Schulz' and Melendez' art and animation styles. On a smaller scale, shows like South Park and the Olive The Other Reindeer Holiday special may have solved similar issues in the past with these techniques.

To sum up, The Peanuts Movie is worth a look, and can be a warm, fuzzy torch to pass on to a new generation.

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  https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/charlie-brown-and-snoopy-the-peanuts-movie-animation-cheats/ 
   
  https://www.fxguide.com/fxfeatured/the-tech-of-the-art-of-the-peanuts-movie/ 

 https://mashable.com/archive/making-the-peanuts-movie

 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/movies/review-the-peanuts-movie-curses-the-red-baron-in-3-dimensions.html

c • C • ɔ

 

Is CGI Getting Worse?

Good commentary by Center Row.

Director James Gunn Reinstated For ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy 3’

 After the political hit job, and much clutching of pearls over past sins, and past payments for sins, Guardians Of The Galaxy Director James Gunn is reinstated by Disney. We may finally get proper introduction of Adam Warlock in the MCU.

 (artwork copyright Marvel/Disney)

https://deadline.com/2019/03/james-gunn-reinstated-guardians-of-the-galaxy-3-disney-suicide-squad-2-indefensible-social-media-messages-1202576444/?fbclid=IwAR1c4alcrxcBsdLozrWMmLmg-k9S7NYUt0LWQW3tStjBvcxj09pcp8d8G40

The History of Cartoon Network

Compiled by Saberspark.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Sneak Peek

Here it comes, Rocket rules!

Shane Acker's 9 movie

Just realized it is September 9th, seven years since the release of Shane Acker's "9"movie.

(copyright 2009 Focus Features)

While everyone else is celebrating 50 years of Star Trek, (which is fine), I thought I should bring this little gem back out into the spotlight. As a student at UCLA, Acker created this short film about war, oppression, loss of personal freedom, and science run amok as his student project. "9" caught the attention of Tim Burton who worked with Acker to produce "9" as a feature film.

While I am a little tired of the post apocalyptic story theme, the David and Goliath struggle of the little doll people struggling against a devil device bent on devouring their souls is still worth watching. Acker's commentary on current world affairs is still disturbingly trendy, even more now today!

And it has one of my favorite actors, Martin Landau providing the voice of "2".

 

Enjoy!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472033/

http://www.focusfeatures.com/9

 

 

NBC-Comcast-Universal takes over DreamWorks Animation

Jeffrey Katzenberg steps down after 22 years at DreamWorks Animation...

 

 

(copyright DreamWorks Animation)

http://www.animationxpress.com/index.php/latest-news/nbcuniversal-announces-new-senior-management-for-dreamworks-animation

http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/2016/08/adios-jeffrey.html

 

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/studios/thank-jk-dreamworks-artist-remembers-studio-katzenberg-created-142622.html

 

After hits like "Kung Fu Panda", "Madagascar" and "How to "Train your Dragon", we'll have to see how it goes with the new management. I was at DW back in the day, but I had to move on due to office politics. A student who had assisted me this summer has landed his first job there, I wish him all the best for the future, and the future of DreamWorks Animation.

Zootopia meets Pixar Presto mashup

Sorry, with all the death and destruction going on in the world, I could not resist bashing this together.

(copyright Pixar and Disney)

UPDATE:
Happy Easter!

The Gnomon Workshop presents an Evening with Grzegorz Jonkajtys

Polish animator Grzegorz Jonkajtys has an interesting technique in combining miniature hand built sets with CG characters. Glad I made it over to Gnomon to see the talk.

Grzegorz's film credits include Sin City, Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Mist, Rango, Pacific Rim, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Warcraft, and The Revenant. His titles were VFX Artist and Lead Animator.

(copyright Grzegorz Jonkajtys?)

After such grim short films such as ARK, where an animated Leonard Nimoy type character is trapped on a doomed plague ship, Grzegorz is bringing us a family oriented film based on a Polish character, Teddy Floppy-Ear. 

Teddy, and his friend Hare find out that a toy factory is not all fun and games. Grzegorz slips in some social commentary when the system tries to toss Teddy into an incinerator for having one minor defect, in this case, his floppy ear,

After years of CG work, Grzegorz said it was refreshing to build miniature sets by hand. He pointed out that his hand built sets have a more convincing depth and character than the usual CG backgrounds. This was his strategy in filming "ARK". Grzegorz had his crew do lighting checks with real miniature models so the lighting on the CG characters would match the hand made backgrounds in a more convincing way.

Using kit-bashing and Styrofoam containers, drinking straws and mint candy box tins, Grzegorz and his crew built the charming, and at the same time, frightening world of Teddy Floppy Ear.

http://jonkajtysfilm.com/following/all/jonkajtysfilm.com/Teddy-Bear

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/news/2016/03/an-evening-with-grzegorz-jonkajtys-combining-cg-animation-miniature-sets/