Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
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SUMMER 2021 37 D E PA R T M E N T LEAPS OF FAITH Ah, the infinite possibilities that open up when worlds meet, when someone from the three-dimensional world enters a new or unexplored realm, or when someone (or something) from another place pays us a visit. No, we don't mean travel to the far reaches of outer space or the depths of the ocean. We're talking about the kinds of places that are most dramatically realized when animation and live action come together. Filmmakers have been opening up brave new three- dimensional worlds for their animated characters to explore—as well as cartoon landscapes for us flesh and blood folks to visit—for the better part of a century, and long before computer-generated imagery made such dreams more easily realized. Early filmdom has a ton of examples. Donald Duck danced with Carmen Molina in 1944's The Three Caballeros, while Jimmy Durante dealt with a mouse (Mickey, of course) who crashed 1934's Hollywood Party. Gradually these hybridized meet-ups started getting longer and more complicated. Everyone remembers Mary Poppins, Bert the Chimney Sweep, and the Banks children spending a "Jolly Holiday" in a chalk painting brought gloriously to life with carousel horses and dancing penguins. A few years later, in 1971's Bedknobs and Broomsticks, an apprentice witch, her flimflam sorcery instructor, and a couple of orphans plunged into a storybook to pay a visit to a beautiful briny lagoon and referee a soccer game between the cartoon creatures of Naboombu. The titular creature of 1977's Pete's Dragon—when he is visible—is, yes, a cartoon. Disney upped its game big time in 1988 with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which saw 'toons and humans living side by side, not always harmoniously. In his effort to make a movie that brought animation into the real world, director Robert Zemeckis broke every rule of traditional animated filmmaking. Roger Rabbit, which proudly boasts of not containing a single computer shot, inspired legions of budding artists to try their hand at a career in animation. Post Roger Rabbit, with well-known animated characters making the leap from TV cartoon series onto the big screen, it has become commonplace to find a CG Smurf, a singing chipmunk, a moose and his flying squirrel pal, a pair of cat and mouse frenemies, or a hedgehog of video game lore roaming around the live-action world. Coming soon will be a hybrid version of Hello Kitty to be directed by Jennifer Coyle and Leo Matsuda. "You turn a corner with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, where everything is kind of working together, and with the advent of computer animation, you begin to wonder what is a live-action/ animation feature," says Fox Carney, Manager of Research at the Walt Disney Animation Research Library. "We work in traditional animation and things tend to be cyclical. If somebody has the right story idea that hits at the right time, I'm sure [it will lead to] something in the future for animated or digital characters to interact with live actors." SIZE MATTERS If you think back to Gene Kelly and Jerry the mouse dancing together in 1945's Anchors Aweigh, it doesn't take a trained eye to realize that Jerry is quite a bit larger than he typically appears in his usual ' toon world. The suspension of disbelief needed an even greater adjustment to bring relatively small characters into the same basketball game with NBA players and giant animated alien monsters. Because of this, sometimes the characters in Space Jam would be their traditional size, while in other instances, they were scaled down or up. "Is Foghorn Leghorn actually 7 feet tall? He really shouldn't be that big. That's a very scary rooster," says Smith. " With situations like that, we had to anchor it and restage certain scenes to make sure all the characters that needed to be onscreen could be [there] at the same time." Whether King James also contends with undersized ducks or giant roosters in the rebooted adventure, all eyes figure to be on the visuals of the new Jam, a movie which Brandt hopes will make 2D animation cool again. "There were a lot of people who were animating on this who said, 'I can't believe we're doing this again,'" Brandt says. He notes what a different experience it is from CG work, and how blending it in fit the story, adding, "I think it's exciting to be able to reenergize 2D animation a little bit with this, and I hope it leads to even more projects." Image courtesy of Disney Image courtesy of Disney SUMMER 2021 37