So there’s this teaser trailer for a ‘Peanuts’ movie that has the comics/animation Internet abuzz. Because everyone grew up with it, and nostalgia is usually about replicating the exact same inputs to trigger memories of happy times.
Me? I don’t have an intense emotional attachment to ‘Peanuts’. I think I kinda want to see this when it comes out. Blue Sky has often been striving for a ‘painted children’s book come to life’ feel, in my eyes, and most of this feels like “Mary Blair painted over every single frame of a moving version of Schulz’ drawings”.
I mean, here’s their first, “Ice Age”. Sadly only a kind of smeary copy of it. But look at how absurdly graphic their shapes are. That sloth with the flat triangle head. The majestic planes of the sabretooth. And there were some shots in that movie that just looked like shimmering, stylized gouache paintings of their majestic Arctic vistas. It was simple cartoony shapes, with a very stylized hand rendering them.
What else have they been up to, anyway. “Ice Age” came out when I was still in animation school, and I pretty much quit seeing All The Animated Movies when I got into the industry. Three more Ice Ages, Robots, an adaptation of Horton Hears A Who, two Rios, and Epic. Wow, “Epic”. That is the least specific name for a film ever.
And also pretty straightforward rendering, at least in the trailers. Dunno.
I think I am definitely interested in seeing ‘Peanuts’. I like that kind of highly abstracted rendering aesthetic applied to 3D animation. If they pull back from this painterly look to a more modeled look as seen in ‘Epic’, I’ll be more meh about it.
(And thinking of this also reminded me there is that Mr Peabody movie out now, which… oh my god, I think I need to see this, this is going to be a two-hour long head massage for the parts of me that like Asterix and Bill & Ted and, well, of course, Mr. Peabody.)