The Peanuts Movie animators had to devise some sneaky cheats to make the film and its characters work…
Animation pick-pockets is how Nick Bruno, Supervising Animator onThe Peanuts Movie, describes himself and his colleagues.
Its all a bunch of smoke and mirrors, agrees fellow Animation Supe, Scott Carroll.
Early experiments werent promising.
That doesnt look like Charlie Brown, that looks like a clown.
As a profile, its barely recognisable.
From pose to pose and panel to panel, character proportions change.
And then the eyes are completely different.
Schulz took a similar approach to foot-size and the number of fingers on a characters hand.
Sometimes there are five fingers, sometimes theres four, sometimes theres three… says Bruno.
The inconsistencies dont read wrong in the comic strip, but on screen, its a different matter.
Fidelity to Schulzs work needed to be reconciled with the requirements of a CG character model.
In its place, the team looked to stop-motion animation techniques.
All different eyes, all different head, hair, everything, says Bruno.
Its like a Mr Potato Head, youre moving different parts around.
Bruno and Carroll illustrate once again using a model of Snoopys head.
Snoopy is even more scary.
His head is like a Picasso.
Hes got two eyes on one side of his head.
Another problem, another clever cheat.
That done, the next cheat came in moving the films Mr Potato Heads from pose to pose.
says Bruno, the trick is, as animators, part of our job is being magicians.
The kind of magic Bruno is talking about involves distraction.
Have the character blink, so you look at that and dont notice the head quickly turning.
You probably dont even notice when we blink, we change to a different eye-shape.
Its amazing through motion how you’re free to trick the eye.
Were popping very quickly from pose to pose.
They did a lot of smoke and mirrors magic there too.
We were very specific about where the audience is looking.
Things like, in true Schulz style, the number of fingers on a characters hand changing mid-shot.
Finger numbers arent the only things that vary, character design-wise, in the movie.
Just like in the comics, the characters arms change length as well.
And thats where the artistry of the animators come in very often.
Theres a lot of poses you cant hold on, says Carroll.
But if you didnt do that for a big reaching moment then it wouldnt look right either.
They did it by using an old-fashioned camera fix: the long lens.
If you were to build a practical set, it would be a huge cheat, he adds.
Were, at all costs, trying to avoid depth.
Even the relative freedom of those scenes, however, had limitations for the animators.
Never in the movie do you see the bottom of the dog house, Harald Kraut tells me.
Another mainstay of CG animation was deliberately disregarded in the interest of staying faithful to the original comic strips.
The no motion-blur rule, however, didnt extend throughout the movie.
Youll see it in Snoopys flying scenes.
We almost wanted it to feel like Snoopys dog house was green-screened on a live-action plate.
In a way, youre juxtaposing that realism versus the stylised Snoopy house.
We thought that solidified too that this was Snoopys fantasy world.
Thats selling these artists too short.
Animation magicians is a more apt description.
Charlie Brown And Snoopy: The Peanuts Movie comes to UK cinemas on the 21st of December.
