KFP opening animation
How about a little equal time for Kung Fu Panda opening sequence hand-drawn goodness?! If you haven’t seen this yet, I recommend you see it on the big screen first. And if you’re extremely spoiler-averse, don’t hit the “Read More” button at all.
A friend sent me this link to the two and a half minute James Baxter-animated opener to KFP, and as a follow-up to the last post, here’s some more wonderful big-screen old-school goodness:
I’ve turned it into a movie file so you could step through it. It’s full of extra frames, which don’t seem to be in the usual 3:2 pattern, and which sometimes mess up the flow of the animation, but it’s still a joy to watch and to step through. Have I mentioned here before that James Baxter rocks! Enjoy!
Oh, and for those of you who just love the animation highlighted in the last two posts, word is that DreamWorks has a bunch of very talented animators hard at work on a hand-drawn KFP short (that’s REALLY long from what I hear) that will come out on the Kung Fu Panda DVD.
June 16th, 2008 at 2:44 am
Thank you so much for making this a quicktime file! You’re super awesome!
June 16th, 2008 at 8:05 am
“word is that DreamWorks has a bunch of very talented animators hard at work on a hand-drawn KFP short (that’s REALLY long from what I hear)”
A “featurette” length (20 - 25 minutes) like the ones they used to do at Disney in the old days , like “Ben & Me” or “Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree” would be cool . (even an 11 or 12 minute short like Pixar’s “Your Friend the Rat” would be great. )
I’m glad to hear it. They just sold a DVD to me !
I like the layering they did in this sequence (AfterEffects ?) , with the lighting effects and extra texturing layered in on top of the character animation. It gives a very rich, illustrative look to the sequence. I was really glad to see this on the big screen .
June 16th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Thanks, Amanda!
David, I hear it’s in the 20-minute range. Is that fantastic, or what? And I agree about the AfterEffects work — I’d love to learn that software.
June 16th, 2008 at 11:29 am
good gravy that was bad-ass.
i’m really digging the major studios playing around with 2-D again. especially when the animator get to cut loose and try different styles as in this piece.
beautiful work.
June 16th, 2008 at 11:35 am
“David, I hear it’s in the 20-minute range. ”
SQUEEEEE!!!!!
YAY!!!!!
June 16th, 2008 at 11:50 am
The absence of contours makes it look like the characters were traced in Flash. It is certainly fresh. We are not used to seeing characters that look like that move like that. Can you find out how it was done?
June 16th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I believe they used animo for compositing but it may have some after effects in there…
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:46 am
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September 1st, 2008 at 10:27 pm
This is delicious work.
Who said 2D was dead.
You can be sure I’ll be frame-by-framing through this to see how the magic happens.
Brilliant.
March 15th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Magnificent stuff. Thanks for keeping this clip online.
My students will appreciate a frame by frame analysis.
Well, the good ones will anyway!