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Figure 1. Early concept art of 'Boog' and 'Hunters' developed by Steve Moore and Dave Feiss (Character Design Reference, 2019)

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‘Open Season,’ (2006) serves as the first instalment of Sony Pictures Animations animated feature films, specifically that of being computer-generated and directed by Jill Culton and Roger Allens (IMDb, 2006, Directors). Notably however, the original idea was pitched by Steve Moore, an american cartoonist and screenwriter most recognised for his comic strips; “In the Bleachers” and was contributed by it’s producer, John Carls, where both of them submitted the project’s concept to Sony and it underwent development in June 2002 (Character Design Reference, 2019, para. 1). The film’s plot focuses on Boog (Martin Lawrence), a domesticated grizzly bear who entertains tourists for the park while under the care of park ranger Beth (Debra Messing), and is perfectly content with his life (IMDb, 2006, Summaries). However, things go sideways when he feels obligated to rescue the one-antler mule deer, Elliot (Ashton Kutcher) from one of the hunters, Shaw (Gary Sinise) and during this process, both Boog and Elliot are tranquilised and forced back into the wild (IMDb, 2006, Summaries). Now with ‘Open Season’ emerging, Boog and Elliot must rally together with the park’s wildlife to protect themselves from the coming threat upon them (IMDb, 2006, Summaries). Moore was primarily inspired to have the film’s location take place similarly in “towns of Sun Valley and McCall, Idaho and the Sawtooth National Forest. Additionally, he conceptualized scenes to make “references to the Lawn Lake, Colorado, Dam Flood, and Longs Peak” as points of interest depicted in the film to evoke scenery in nature (Character Design References, 2019, para 1.) To further derive the animation style from Steve Moore’s illustrations with additional sketches contributed by Dave Feiss (the creator of Cow and Chicken) (Taylor, 2022, para 2.), their production team developed a digital tool called ‘shapers’ (Character Design References, 2019, para 1.). This “allowed the animators to reshape character models into stronger poses, silhouettes and subtle distortions such as; squash, stretch and smears, typical of traditional hand drawn animation” (Character Design References, 2019, para. 1).

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Figure 2. Finalization of 'Surf's Up' - Surfing Documentary Scene (1/10) | Movieclips (Movieclips, 2017)

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‘Surf’s Up,’ (2007) directed by Ash Brannon and Chris Buck (Smith, 2015, Directors) is produced as “the first animated faux documentary film” (Taylor, 2022, para. 5), using specific techniques of “motion capturing a camera operators physical movement,” and casting the believability that it’s  “filmed on ground level” (Smith, 2015, Introduction). The story itself is featured as “a classic underdog story,” (Smith, 2015, Introduction) documenting the life of teenage Cody Maverick (Shia LeBeouf), a Penguin from Antarctica who desires to pursue a career in surfing much like his idol, “Big Z,” (Jeff Bridges) despite how many, including his family, look down on him for such dreams (IMDb, 2007, Summaries). Regardless, Cody goes to participate in the “Big Z Memorial Surf Off,” and meets his rival, Tank ‘The Shredder’ Evans (Deidrich Bader) and friends like Chicken Joe (Jon Heder), Lani Aliikai (Zooey Deschanel), and even meets Big Z to help teach him how to master surfing (IMDb, 2007, Summaries). Together, both Z and Cody learn what it means to surf, and ultimately, what it truly means to live. The film was intended to make a mockumentary stylisation of ‘Cinéma Vérité,’ (Robertson, 2007, para. 3), translated as ‘truthful cinema,’ which was a french film movement dating back to 1961 established by early cinema pioneers “Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch” for their “experimental film ‘Chronicles of a Summer’” (MasterClass, 2021, Examples of Cinéma Vérité) which would have filmmakers “record authentic dialogue naturalness of action,” through forms of “actual conversations and interviews” (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica and Tikkanen, 1999, para. 1). In order to capture the story’s cinematography of ‘Cinéma Vérité,’ through 3D animation, Layout Supervisor of the film, James Williams, suggested that for the movement of motion capturing “the camera operator’s body position, the rise and fall of their breathing and the subtle nuances of motion should all contribute to the look of a handheld camera” (Robertson, 2007, Action Camera). To accomplish this, Williams indicated that Imageworks’ layout artists animated the “process through Autodesk’s Maya,” and that they “stripped the geometry to the essentials and optimised it to a great degree” in order to link the Maya camera settings to a handheld Sony M3A camera by attaching it to their “monitor output so they could look through the eyepiece and see the shot” (Robertson, 2007, Action Camera). Rob Bredow, the visual effects supervisor for Imageworks on the film, supported this decision given how “the system got a handheld feel and was much faster than having to keyframe the camera moves by hand,” therefor; when the camera operator would turn, the scene in the viewfinder for Maya moved as a “real scene would” (Robertson, 2007, Action Camera). Because of this experimental process, they were able to convey the animation for ‘Surf’s Up’ as a mockumentary composition of ‘Cinéma Vérité.’

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Surf's Up - Surfing Documentary Scene (1/10) | Movieclips

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Figure 3. Flint Lockwood scene in 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs' (IntoFilm, 2009) 

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‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,’ (2009) directed by the co-creators of MTV’s “Clone High,” (2002) Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Taylor, 2022, para. 6), presents a sci-fi/comedy animated feature of Sony Pictures Animation that was driven by the popular book written by Judy Barrett in 1978 (Taylor, 2022, para. 6). The film’s story still retained Barrett’s unique innovation of food-related weather patterns, but culminates the plot by building towards themes similar to that of a disaster film, notably during the second half of the story. Centering around the young genius, Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader), who desperately tries to gain the approval of his town, Swallow Falls, but most importantly his father, Tim Lockwood (James Caan), through the use of his inventions that fail against his favour. It wasn’t until he caught the attention of former intern turned reporter, Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) from his recent contraption rocketing into the sky; The “Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator,” (otherwise known as The “FLDSMDFR”) which manipulates the weather into raining different foods (IMDb, 2009, Summaries). With the story in mind, it was both in Lord and Miller’s interest to convey a 3D animated film that also integrated the “muppet-y and cartoon” (Taylor, 2022, para. 18) aesthetic Sony had originally hired them for. The key principles of animation that brought their intended vision of this movie to life successfully included the use of that ‘cartoonish’ exaggeration of both facial features and squash and stretch movements to present a ‘rubber-hose’ effect. The use of secondary action as well created the necessary characterisation of each individual that was affected both by their personality and circumstances, evident by Flint Lockwood finally uncovering the success of his ‘FLDSMDFR’ creating a cloud raining hamburgers (Intofilms, 2016, Figure 3). Evidently, his body is dissimilar to that of a more realistic human anatomy, correlating with that ‘rubber-hose’ effect as previously mentioned with a more ‘noodle-like’ body, an ear-to-ear smile that exaggerates Flint’s excitement of finally holding his success within the palm of his hands, as well as wearing a white lab coat with wavy-untamed hair to reflect the cartoonish behaviour and design of a scientist. While these details may appear minor compared to the overall grand design of the film itself, it’s these minor details that are key to composing the “muppet-y and cartoon” design Miller and Lord envisioned for a 3D animated movie to reflect previous 2D animation elements.

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Figure 4. The Smurfs- Image Based Set Reconstruction and Lighting (SpheronVR, 2011)

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‘The Smurfs,’ (2011) under the supervision of American film director, Raja Gosnell (IMDB, 2024, Director) who previously worked for live-action adaptations of beloved kids cartoons such as; Scooby Doo, Beverly Hills Chihuahua (Animationxpress, 2011, para. 12) brought to life a live action adaptation of the late Belgian comic book artists illustrations of the original ‘Smurfs’ back in 1958, Pierre Culliford, otherwise known under his pseudonym; “Peyo” (Rose, 2018, para. 2). The film’s plot focuses on 6 smurfs, one of which including the leader of their village, Papa Smurf (Johnathon Winters) having to lead his family in an exodus from their cartoonish antagonist, Gargamel (Hank Azaria) uncovering their village only to decimate it in the process of attempting to capture them due to the faults of Clumsy Smurf (Anton Telchin) leading him there (IMDb, 2011, Summaries). Eventually, this departure leads Clumsy to a mysterious gateway that attracts the concern of Papa Smurf, as well as Smurfette (Katy Perry), Brainy (Fred Armisen), Grouchy (George Lopez) and Gutsy (Alan Cumming) (IMDb, 2011, Cast), a “newly imagined addition per continuing traditions for the Smurfs” (Animationxpress, 2011, para. 8). This leads the small party into New York City, where they encounter Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris) and Grace Winslow (Jayma Mays), and with their help, must find a way home (IMDb, 2011, Summaries). Sony’s Imageworks team attempted to retain some of the pivotal aspects of Peyo’s designs for The Smurfs in the film, that being how they’re ‘3 apples high,’ blue with button tails and usually wear white mushroom-like hats and pants that also cover their feet, but brought in a 3-Dimensional blend to appear ‘realistic’ when presented in a live-action environment. Visual effects supervisor of ‘The Smurfs,’ Richard R. Hoover indicated in an interview that by acquiring a new camera at the time known as a ‘Spheron;’ “it allowed them to light Smurfs in an extremely realistic manner and light into plate, using the actual lighting characteristics of the live action scene” (Animationxpress, 2011, para. 15). He later commented that “the Spheron camera combined with Imageworks‘ colour and lighting tools, saved tremendous time and gave the artist more time to be creative and make shots look even better” (Animationxpress, 2011, para. 15). An example of their success using the Spheron camera for the film’s technical production was during the scene of Clumsy Smurf entering the Winslow’s bathroom (SpheronVR, 2011, Figure 4). They used the camera to make a “photogrammetric triangulation” in the bathroom set that was composed of “HDRI Stereo Image Pairs” of different vertices that were impacted by the “image based physical lights,” such as; “key, rim, mirror and ceiling bounce” lights (SpheronVR, 2011, 0:30). With these variety of lights pin-pointed on a matrix map, they used a “plate projection” from the bathroom sink in the “HDRI Stereo Image Pairs,” and had the “sink bounce from the projection,” (SpheronVR, 2011, 0:56) which impacted the directions of lights that would surface on Clumsy Smurf. Thus, by utilising the Spheron camera for production, it evidently brought to life Peyo’s well-renowned comic creations in a live-action, 3D animated film.

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SPI's - The Smurfs - Image Based Set Reconstruction and Physical Lighting

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Figure 5. Tartakovsky's earlier storyboarding/sketch layout for a 3D computer graphic render in 'Hotel Transylvania' (Carter, 2019)

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‘Hotel Transylvania,’ (2012) presents a romantic-comedy in an otherwise unexpected environment with a resort operated by the infamous Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) who, due to a tragedy that led to his wife’s death, would devise this ‘Hotel’ as means of escape for Monsters across the globe, including; Frankenstein (Kevin James), The Wolfman (Steve Buscemi), The Mummy (Ceelo Green) and even the Invisible Man (David Spade) (IMDb, 2012, Summaries). Dracula’s daughter, Mavis (Selena Gomez) wishes to celebrate her 118th birthday by going out into the human world, despite her father’s previous and ongoing history of concerns. What makes matters worse is the arrival of Johnny (Andy Samburg), a young human tourist who Dracula notices entering the doors of his establishment and immediately goes to disguise him as a monster to avoid contention amongst the clientele, only to then catch the attention of Mavis with a ‘zing’ (IMDb, 2012, Summaries), further initiating the romantic aspect of the film. Sony Pictures Animation, despite having “changed from 5 directors beforehand,” (Taylor, 2022, para. 40) would eventually hire the Russian-American writer and animator, Gennedy Tartakovsky, to be the director given his prior experience in animation, and it would be his art direction that would give “his first 3D animated project its own unique style of exaggerated, physical animation and some truly lovable characters'' (Taylor, 2022, para. 39). Tartakovsky was born in Moscow, USSR, January 17th 1970, and at around age 7, his family would move to permanently reside in Chicago IL (IMDB, 2023, Trivia). Later in his life he would attend “Chicago’s Columbia College to study film” after graduating from High School, only then to pursue studying animation at “California Institute of Arts,” where “one of two of his student films known as ‘Dexter’s Laboratory’ would be selected” for the Institutes Producer Show (Lucas, 2012, Director). This would further spark his animation career, going on to direct more projects for Cartoon Network, such as; “Samurai Jack, The Powerpuff Girls and Sym-Bionic Titan” (Lucas, 2012, Director). Tartakovsky was largely influenced by the “exaggerated character poses from old WB cartoons and animation pioneers such as Tex Avery and Chuck Jones,” for animated projects he worked on, and thus incorporated these foundational 2D elements of “flat, graphic angular styling with strong character posing and sharp exaggerated movement patterns” into a 3D computer graphic environment (Jones, 2016, Production Context). An example of this can be uncovered during the early developmental stages of ‘Hotel Transylvania,” showcasing a concept storyboard outline of Drac that overlays an early 3D computer animated image of himself yelling with over-exaggerated facial expressions and a sharp backbone structure that is humanly impossible (Jones, 2016, Figure. 5), thus, reinforcing the “angular styling with strong character posing” as previously mentioned (Jones, 2016, Production Context).