With the release of Free Birds I thought I’d do a little research on animated movies focused on birds. They have a patchy track record and I have some theories about that. But here’s a good list of the most memorable ones of recent years. Year – Title – Studio – Rotten Tomatoes – Worldwide Gross 2000 – Chicken Run – Aardman – 97% – $224,834,564 2005 – Valiant – Vanguard – 31% – $61,746,888 2006 – Happy Feet – Animal Logic – 75% – $384,335,608 2007 – Surf’s Up – Sony Animation – 78% – $149,044,513 2010 – Legend of the Guardians – Animal Logic – 50% – $140,073,390 2011 – Happy Feet 2 – Dr D. Studios – 46% – $150,406,466 2011 – Rio – Blue Sky – 72% – $484,635,760 2013 – Free Birds – Reel FX – 18% – $110,150,480 2014 – Rio 2 – Blue Sky – 47% – $449,566,926 Happy Feet (which I was lucky enough to work on) was a bit of a surprise hit at the time, and even went on to win an Oscar. It racked up a lot more money many than I think most people expected. I don’t remember […]
Way back in 2006 I spent six weeks helping out the animation crew working on Viva Pinata for the XBox 360. We were cast to different characters and I was animating the Robin. For some reason I never got around to putting any of this online, but it’s so cute I thought I’d put it out there. It’s the kind of stuff I would have put in my reel a while back but unfortunately there’s a bit of a bias against games animation (and unrendered shots) when you’re applying for non-games work, so I dropped all my games work from my main reel years ago. It’s a shame really… good animation is good animation, but unfortunately I’ve noticed you get more credit for sloppy animation rendered impressively. It’s not as bad as it was, I’ve definitely seen more acceptance of games work as valid animation in recent years, but it really depends who’s looking. Some people from Film and TV are still frequently quite biased against it and they close themselves off to talent without judging the animation on it’s own terms in many cases. I’ve noticed many games animators render their in-game animations now and find ways to blend them together […]
