Knee Bones Connected to the....
One of the hardest things to animate is dancing. So how about tap dancing without any legs:
Not quite sure what they were thinking there - Cute? Sure, but without any nice silhouettes it's tough to watch. A penguin just isn't built for movement like that. Penguins continue to be the flavour of the moment - but if they were going do a movie about dancing animals don't you think an animal with LEGS may work better? Like a monkey, or if you need a bird how about an ostrich. Or if you're really gonna go for it how about a Zebra or better yet an Octopus - now that I'd pay to see.
Lets see how tap dancing looks with legs. Mr Astaire is even dressed as a penguin to hammer home the point:
Before I retire I'll animate an octopus doing this routine....
Not quite sure what they were thinking there - Cute? Sure, but without any nice silhouettes it's tough to watch. A penguin just isn't built for movement like that. Penguins continue to be the flavour of the moment - but if they were going do a movie about dancing animals don't you think an animal with LEGS may work better? Like a monkey, or if you need a bird how about an ostrich. Or if you're really gonna go for it how about a Zebra or better yet an Octopus - now that I'd pay to see.
Lets see how tap dancing looks with legs. Mr Astaire is even dressed as a penguin to hammer home the point:
Before I retire I'll animate an octopus doing this routine....
posted by cartooncolin | 4:02 PM
19 Comments:
hollywood. cute wins out, regardless.
Dude, this is so onto it!! Well done!! Happy Feet looks like a bunch of arse anyways!!!
But the premise of the movie is that a penguin wants to be a tapdancer, and nobody believes in him. So him having stubby, non-dancing legs is intentional, like Babe not being a sheep dog or Dumbo not being a bird. And I'm pretty sure it's not animated anyway, it's actually motion capture of the famous tapdancer Savion Glover.
I'm not saying the movie looks good - I wouldn't even think of watching it if it wasn't by George Miller, director of Mad Max and Babe: Pig in the City - but I think the argument is unfair. That said, I would love to watch your tapdancing octopus.
A. Phibes, wouldn't that be "tapdancing octopi"
How can you get tap sounds out of dancing on snow? Ice, maybe. But snow?
Mark -- my thought exactly!
And as far as how effective each one was, no contest at all. Only one of them put the thrill of a chill in my spine, and it wasn't the one with the penguin.
They may be 1/3 the way up his torso, but that penguin has knees nonetheless. Personally I found his dancing as believable as any other business I've ever seen an anthropomorphic cartoon animal perform onscreen. (Isn't this whole thing about 'suspension of disbelief'?) My real problem is with his intensely cutesy-wutesy look. The film's rated PG so it may have a bit more of an edge than this clip indicates.
And yes, Fred would blow the penguin out of the water (so to speak) any day of the week.
Mark, it's the antarctic. LOTS of ice, not too much snow generally. Especially on icebergs. As for Joe, he's pretty damn close to how actual baby penguins look aside from the eyes. Baby penguins ARE cutesy wutesy.
Hey Colin. Maybe a better comparison would be with Ethel Merman or a Busby Berkeley clip and the underwater ballet/blue angels bit from happy feet. Those guys really can move, underwater!
Savion Glover is involved?? Then the penguin is just going to do glorified stomping while hunched over and looking the ground / his feet the whole time!
Can penguins dance? Two words: Mary Poppins.
-- Mike Kuypers
Forget penguins, Fred Astaire puts me in a trance..
Exactly, the penguins in Mary Poppins can move. Not Fred Astaire, of course, but at least watchable.
Those rolls of fat really do ruin the whole effect -- you can't even see the feet moving half the time. If they wanted a "anatomically correct" penguin, use a king penguin or something!
'Happy Feet' looks like a combination of a christmas coca-cola ad and the Alliance Atlantis opening title: it's just that good. More helicopter shots! I'm not dizzy enough!
Of all the "impossible" tap dancers, the best in my recollection (and I've seen a lot - I am a big fan of tap dancing, Astaire, Kelly et all) is Kermit the Frog. His rendition of Happy Feet (from ep. 33 with Madeline Kahn) knocked me over - and showed that to do tap dancing, if shot from the waist up, what you need is timing, and being off balance at precisely the right moments - and the illusion works!
Yes please do (animate an octopus doing this routine)...
it's happy Feet.. not Happy LEGs......anywho
to anonymous
>>A. Phibes, wouldn't that be "tapdancing octopi"<<
I thought the point was that a single octopus would be performing all of the parts. you know with multiple pairs of legs and all.
to A. Phibes
>>But the premise of the movie is that a penguin wants to be a tapdancer, and nobody believes in him. So him having stubby, non-dancing legs is intentional,<<
I think the point that Mr. Giles was trying to make is that the penguin doesn't even look good tapdancing. Yes, it is ironic, but watching the actual animation is painful. The small rang eof motion the stubby legs have makes it impossible to see half of the step. I heard many clicks and clacks but the feet seemed almost stationary. I think this is a hug shortcoming of CG and mo-cap. They can't exaggerate anything! It's all proportional and "on model" This scene may have worked if the animators were allowed to exaggerate movements to make them visible (let alone readable). Seems to me that they mo-capped the pro-dancers long, dancer legs and shrank those movements down to imperceivable penguin proportions. Ugly plug-n-play animation. PHOOEY!
The Mary Poppins sequence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2ZO2jnPKXU
Silhouettes!
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