Article Response: "The Tech of the Art of the Peanuts Movie"

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    The creators from Blue Sky Studios who recently made The Peanuts Movie, were determined to stay true to the original stories and comic strips created by Charles M. Schultz. However, their main goal was to make the Peanuts world in 3D, while still staying faithful to the 2D world in the comics. This could pose some difficulty while animating, but they were able to create a wave of artistic and technical solutions that made the film a success. 

    To keep the story and characters accurate to the comics, they first needed to research 50 years of Peanuts strips. They paid close attention to the "camera" angles Schultz used, and proportions that worked for particular frames that the characters were in. They also wanted to retain the characters facial expressions in a hand-drawn style. This required a new facial rig, so they created a way for the eyes, eyebrows, and surrounding expression lines to slide around on the characters faces during animation.

    The film also called for replication of the "extreme poses" that's often seen in the comic strips. The studio had to combine its hybrid character rig with a tool called "Suction Cup" in order to give animators additional degrees of freedom while editing different poses. Although, in the comic strips, usually motion lines were used to show fast character movement. Blue Sky didn't want to introduce motion blur into the Peanuts world, so instead, animators introduced 2D motion "pen lines" that seemed to draw across the screen as one of the characters moved.

    Reading about the different methods they used in this movie was quite interesting! It only made me even more excited to watch it myself, so I can look out for the animation techniques used. The Peanuts has always been one of my favorite cartoon series, ever since I started reading the comics when I was little, so I can't wait to see what this movie has in store!