Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1505195
FALL 2023 21 FALL 2023 21 GET A MOVE ON Tasked with figuring out how to move the Monkey King, Bennicke says they learned that monkeys are quadrupeds, so they don't walk on their knuckles like chimpanzees, but instead walk with their palms down. Monkeys also walk upright with a slight bend to the back, with the elbows a little bit out, and with a bend in the knee. In the beginning of the movie, just after he's born, the Monkey King is sur- rounded by real monkeys who all move like monkeys, and he uses his arms to run. But as he becomes more godlike and powerful, he stands up straight and starts moving more like a human. That said, they focused on the Monkey King's posture "so that he's never standing up completely straight, because that would always tend to look [too] human," Bennicke says. And occasionally he'll still go down on all fours to run faster. The Monkey King's movement is a combination of "real" monkey movement, from when he is seen as a baby monkey, combined with Peking Opera-influenced and martial art-inspired posing when he is an adult. Bennicke says that despite having expert help with fight choreogra- phy, one of their biggest challenges was animating the action scenes. With martial arts, he explains, it's all about the tensing and relaxing of muscles and movements. "One of the hardest things to do in ani- mation is to get … a sense of power into something," he says. He adds that the Monkey King is a lot more athletic than any actual martial artist, because apart from being a monkey, he has supernatu- ral qualities. "We can jump him more, we can spin him more, he has a tail that he can use when he's fighting." For movement in Frog and Toad, Hoegee says his team really wanted to tap into the nostalgia of the books and make it look as if the illustrations had come to life. To honor Lobel's art, they mimicked scenes and poses whenever possible. But this meant they had to figure out how the animals moved and how they were articulated based on still illustrations. Another issue was wardrobe for the supporting animal cast. "As far as clothes go, if it looks weird, no clothes," Hoegee says. This was the case when they tried to dress a snake character, so Snake didn't get clothes. "And clothing for Robin would interfere with how wings work and how she flies," he says. They compromised by giving Robin a little hat. Mouse didn't get clothes either because he sometimes runs on all fours and the clothes would interfere with his movement. Sarah Johnson explains that there were also instances when they had to use cartoon logic to get around certain situations. For instance, Snail delivers mail. The character is limited because she doesn't have arms or hands, so they let her use her mouth to move things. Ralls had a similar experience with the undersea creatures on Baby Shark's Big Movie. The characters don't have hands so how do they pick things up? And they don't have thumbs so they can't give each other a thumbs up. Because of this, she encouraged the writers to think about how feasible it is for a character to do certain actions to pre-empt issues down the pipeline. top right: The complexities of animating movement were taken into consideration when clothing, or not clothing, characters in Frog and Toad. bottom: Arnold Lobel's original illustrations (left) provided a template for developing the characters in Frog and Toad. "As far as clothes go, if it looks weird, no clothes." — Rob Hoegee Image from the Frog and Toad books courtesy HarperCollins. Copyright Arnold Lobel.