Chicken Little Cartoony Animation- Oh yeah!

This is fun stuff.

QT 6 version here.

I was watching CL again recently when I saw this “throw away” scene and just had to stop the DVD and go over it again. Check out these nice, clean, easy to read poses…

click each to enlarge

#1, 2 and 4 are nice, but not out of the ordinary. But pose #3 is great. This doesn’t happen much in CG- the floating anti gravity character. And look, he’s not standing straight up. Very cool. It’s an awesome old school cartoon thing to do, but has been rare so far in CG work. Even in this film it’s not a common thing to see.

Even so, the real genius of this scene isn’t the poses as much as the breakdowns and inbetweens. Check these transitions. Starting from the left and going to the right…

click each to enlarge

That’s it- 3 inbetween frames for the whole move. And it works because the animator is thinking in terms of moving shapes and color. Now check out this transition…

click each to enlarge

Niiiiiiice! See those 4th and 5th frames? That rig is so busted you can’t even tell what this character is. But that’s the beauty of it- you don’t need to. The shapes in motion play together perfectly. It’s all artistic, it’s all about shapes in movement. It’s just great old school, classic genius. It’s SO great to see this in CG. So whoever animated this scene, great job! You are now the author of one of my favorite CG animated scenes ever. That and $3.50 can get you a coffee at Starbucks. heh.

The real pity? One of the best animated scenes in the whole film is a throw away piece of work stuck inside a TV set that another character is watching. I can’t wait until we see this style boldly attempted across a whole film. This is what I think is needed for the future of CG hand keyed animation. You can’t get this kind of motion (and emotion) any other way but to animate it. And you can’t animate this by faking your way through it. You gotta be an honest-to-goodness-you-know-what-the-heck-you’re-doing animator. Sounds like a great challenge, no?