A Case of Taste - The reason why people became anti-DreamWorks

If you're a hardcore animation fan, you certainly notice certain technical and artistic details, the most important being production design, art direction and character design, the basic keys to the visual development and artistic nuance in a movie.

DreamWorks Pictures, the main theme from this post, has suffered the most in this aspect since their first animated movies Antz and The Prince of Egypt. Although both films are beautifully animated and masterfully written, they were criticized for what they would view as hideousness or tastelessness syndrome. Generally, people criticize the "hideous" character design and the "horrendous" supporting characters (mostly animated in CGI).



Despite the distinct exception being The Road to El Dorado, DreamWorks Pictures tried too hard to find a style that would differentiate them from the Disney style while still retaining the high technical quality of animation. They heavily invested profits from their movies into developing new animation effects. No doubt, the water digitally animated by DreamWorks Pictures is always seen as the partial case, be it on The Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado or Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, while such water is a bit out of synch with hand-drawn animation. Even though the general design is not perfect, the animators' work gets praise gallore (cheers to James Baxter, Dave Brewster, Kathy Zielinsky, Rudolph Guenoden, Pres Romanillos, etc.).

Another investment, perhaps to find a formula, was taken on Hollywood celebrities to voice the characters. This is nothing new. Disney has always done for decades. Despite this, DreamWorks Pictures has relied on celebrities for the sake of marketing. Futhermore, by caricaturing the animated characters after the celebrities who voice them seems pretty gross and prevents the audience from connecting with them as they'll only see the animated characters not as fictional characters but as their celebrity voice actors. To add salt to the injury, whenever an animated movie is dubbed in other countries, it's not like they can change their faces, so the foreign market won't even get it.

Starting with Shrek, the heart and soul of the studio became comedies with loads of pop culture references and tasteless humor. Why is it so bad? That's because the pop culture reference abuse can undo the magic of an animated film, or worse, make it dated. I'm not saying that pop culture references are the devil. They're actually good, as long as they're subtle and rightfully executed. For example, in the end of the episode "Save the Date" from Nickelodeon's The Loud House, Clyde comforts Lincoln by saying that romance is just a tale as old as time, actually a reference to Disney's 1991 film Beauty and the Beast. Clyde's dialogue actually originated as the core lyrics from the titular song which won so many awards and was sung by Angela Lansbury in the movie and by Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson as a pop duet. Despite this, it is a good reference because it's subtle. When I first watched this episode, I didn't get the reference very well, but that didn't detract from Lincoln and Clyde's camaraderie. It only became even more pleasant when I actually discovered what it was referencing. Pop culture references in The Loud House are the most funny moments from the show because they didn't just work for those who didn't get them well as they relied on something that wasn't just a fad, so they didn't risk dating an episode.

Madagascar can be seen as a game-changer. While the movie has pop culture references and still relies on celebrities, this is the first time DreamWorks Pictures embraces a good and more distinct visual. Production design was done by Kendal Cronkhite. Shannon Jeffries did the art direction and Craig Kellman designed all the characters.

Featuring the talent of Jerry Seinfeld, Bee Movie did a good job of being the best comedy of the studio, although the visual would seem too generic for a CGI movie. But it worked! Alex McDowell did the production design and Christophe Lautrette did the art direction.

Now what if they mixed a good story, good script, good jokes and excelent design in a single movie? DreamWorks Pictures did it with Kung Fu Panda, a 2008 film with production design by Raymond Zilbach and art direction by Tang Kheng Heng. The movie is unlike anything DreamWorks did before, but it has a good story and is technically flawless. Despite the overuse of celebrities, it didn't hinder the character development. It even included hand-drawn animated portions in the film's opening and ending, as well as DVD material.

If DreamWorks learned that they can make a movie without overusing pop culture references and Hollywood celebrities, they can also rely on visual variety in their films and make sure their current talent can shine just like the old animators. This is how you do a tasteful animated movie.

Translated from www.animation-animagic.com/colunas.aspx?idConteudo=1119