Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1313527
30 KEYFRAME AN EXPANDING WORLD Written and directed by Kirk DeMicco and Chris Sanders, The Croods grossed $587 million worldwide and earned an Oscar nomination for best animated feature. The sequel, which hit theaters November 25 and Premium Video on Demand 17 days later, is sillier than the original and utilizes a lighter palette, in terms of both color and emotion. "In the first movie, the whole world was trying to kill them. It had a dark undertone," says Crawford. "Tonally, this film is brighter and more comedic." At the center of the story is the world's first teenaged couple—daughter Eep Crood and Guy, the "modern" man she met in the first movie—as they try to navigate a strange new discovery: feelings. "We wanted to explore how their relationship would blossom," says Head of Story Januel Mercado. "The challenges they would encounter as more complex things entered their life: other families, more emotions and dynamics. Eep is this firecracker experiencing a lot of these emotions for the first time. There's a lot of meat there." Throughout, the dueling natures of the two families surrounding the central couple are accented by posture and framing. "We were conscious to keep the Croods not upright, like animals, while the Bettermans live like we do," says Story Artist Heidi Jo Gilbert. "And the Bettermans' lives are separated, so visually we wanted to keep them isolated from each other. The Croods are always together visually." The world was also expanding for the artists, animators, and designers, who had new techniques and tools to play with that would not only push the story F E AT U R E Image courtesy of DreamWorks Animation.