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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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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)

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Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (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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The Smurfs- Image Based Set Reconstruction and 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).

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The Smurfs 2 is a movie released under Sony Pictures Animation, along with The Kerner Entertainment Company. The movie was directed by Raja Gosnell, produced by Jordan Kerner, and released on July 31, 2013. The sequel to the 2011 movie was supposed to be released in August of 2013, then rescheduled to release on July 31, 2013, which was two years after the first movie's premiere (The Smurfs 2 | Smurfs Wiki | Fandom, n.d.). The webpage then further states how authors J. David Stem, David N. Weiss, Jay Scherick, and David Ronn started working on the sequel for Sony at the beginning of 2011. The first draft of the script was then finished at the beginning of August 2011. Sony revealed that the movie's production began on April 26, 2012. Filming of the film was done in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Jonathan Winters, who portrayed Papa Smurf in the first movie and Grandpa Smurf in the 1980s TV series, made his final appearance in the picture. Winters passed away on April 11, 2013, although the film was already finished at that point. On the AWN website (Sarto, 2013) it states how the production team had obstacles to overcome such as sizing smurf characters into the real life world. Having to sync up how real life actors would interact with the CGI characters by lining up eye levels to make it seem natural. In another source (AnimationXpress Team, 2011) there is a quote from the director Raja Gosnell where he says “There were an awful lot of moving parts on this movie. Basic Directing 101 is about moving your characters around, how you stage a scene. On this movie, we had to stage scenes in which six characters weren‘t there. The actors would have to interact with nothing, and sometimes the camera would move, following nothing”. This basically talks about how they took on the challenge of mixing reality and 3D animation and how they made it work. At times they would even just film shots where there is no one present in the scene, to then later add the characters in through visual effects.

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Figure 2. Hotel Transylvania 2 (IMDB, 2015)

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On September 25, Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation released Hotel Transylvania 2, a sequel to the popular 2012 animated picture about a resort where monsters go to relax and escape from the human race (Loftus, 2015). The film was written by Todd Durham, Adam Sandler, and Robert Smilgel, and it was directed by Genndy Tartakovsky (Samuels, n.d.). Without ever watching any of the Hotel Transylvania films except the trailers, the film looks to have amazing visual effects, especially when it comes to the detailing done on the character's hair and environment. In the Forbes article (Bradley, 2016), Bradley goes into detail about how the movie had some amazing visual effects. In the article, it states how it is easy to become engrossed in the animated world and overlook some of the finer points. Indeed, one could argue that the degree of detail that goes into an animated film is reflected in how well you are able to suspend disbelief and let your imagination run wild while experiencing the narrative. In another source, someone who seemed to have worked on the film named Dhruv Govil talks a little about how Genndy liked to work (Govil, 2015). He goes on to say, “If you’re at all familiar with Genndy, you know he loves to do really over-the-top animation, where each frame is sculpted to be like how a 2D animator would work. This means we were often pushing the character rigs way past where the rig would go, and animators would sculpt their characters on a per-frame basis to get the graphic style necessary.”.

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Released on July 28, 2017, The Emoji Movie is an animated adventure comedy film by Sony Pictures Animation. It tells the story of the main character Gene, a multi-expression emoji who sets off on a quest to transform into an ordinary emoji. In the website (The Emoji Movie | Sony Pictures Animation Wiki | Fandom, n.d.) the director Tony Leondis' passion for Toy Story served as inspiration for the movie. In an attempt to rethink the idea, he started by asking, "What is the new toy out there that hasn't been explored?" Leondis realised this was the universe he wanted to explore when he received a text message containing an emoji at the same moment.

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The Star is a 2017 animated Christian comedy film directed by Timothy Reckart in the United States. Carlos Kotkin and Simon Moore wrote the screenplay, which was based on the Nativity of Jesus and an original idea by Tom Sheridan. Bo the Donkey played by Steven Yeun is also famously known to voice the superhero known as Invincible (Mark Grayson), in the amazon prime series ‘Invincible’. On a fandom website (The Star | Sony Pictures Entertainment Wiki | Fandom, n.d.), it states how it was announced in September 2014 that DeVon Franklin, in association with Sony Pictures Animation, would work on a faith-based movie harnessing the tale of the Nativity under the banner of Franklin Entertainment. Timothy Reckart, making his filmmaking debut, was set to helm the film, Variety revealed in April 2015. An official release date of December 8, 2017, was confirmed on August 5, 2015 for the movie, which was then called The Lamb. Executive producers Brian Henson and Lisa Henson of The Jim Henson Company were named for the movie, which was renamed The Star, on June 20, 2016.

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Figure 5. Spider-Man: Into The  Spider-Verse (IMDB, 2018)

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Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018)

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Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018)

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The style that Sony went for in Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, was a comic book style, which ended up surprising many people and became a big thing people talked about when the film was released. In the article (Chevat, 2018) it states that the overall style was quite unique and complex, that they had to try to find a balance between them. It states that they had painters who were also very good graphics designers which helped to create that balance they were looking for. On the website called Medium, there's a post (Suriya, 2023) which states that achieving the classic comic book illustration style required a lot of line work. Their method of transforming each hand-drawn facial line into 3D geometry and enabling it to be rigged to match the character's appearance and expression was fairly inventive. However, they went above and beyond when they developed a machine learning model that could identify these hand-drawn approaches and predict how they could emerge in future frames using all of the hand-drawn data. It also talks about the use of a technique called half-toning. Using different dot sizes and spacing, half-toning is a printing process that replicates colour gradients, such as the shades of grey from pure black to pure white. In this method, the visual representation of an image with various gradients might be created using just two colours. The use of 2D hand drawn frames are also mentioned where they expand on the idea of achieving the comic book look. Exaggerated effects were used to communicate meaning and passion, and big lettering such as “BOOM!!!” were used to produce most effects in comic books. Additionally, this was purposefully included into a few frames throughout the film, expanding off of the main 3D animation style. However, this also made it possible to abandon a single animation style for the duration of the film, a move that was later repeated in films such as Across the Spider-verse.