American Animation, there are always Disney and Warner's two sides, and there is a confrontation between DreamWorks and Pixar. The giants set the height of the dining table, and those who are not long enough can only play games around the children's table. Especially today's Pixar, like Shakespeare in computer animation, the new work has attracted worldwide attention, and any other outstanding works and peculiar creativity are also dimmed under its dazzling brilliance. For a long time, the blue sky studio has played the role of such a superstar concealing the unknown.
This situation has changed since 2009. This year, Blue Sky Studio’s "Ice Age: Dawn of Dinosaurs" achieved a global box office of US$888 million, surpassing Pixar’s "Flying House" and DreamWorks’ "Monsters vs. Aliens", and only cost Half of the production cost of the latter two is gone. For this reason, in early 2010, the "New York Times" published a report titled "Aiming at the Big Names in the Animation Industry", pointing out the belief that "No one can catch up with Pixar and DreamWorks, and Blue Sky Studios is simply not a threat." You should reflect on your thoughts.
In the latest work "Rio Adventure" by Blue Sky Studio, what makes people feel the most is the unique strong momentum of this rising company: fresh and large number of ideas may be secondary, the most important is the whole All the films showed an optimistic and crazy vigor, and the audience watched it very hilariously without knowing it. In the end, like the flightless parrot in the film, it never wanted to stop once it flew.
You may not be able to feel this just by looking at the story, even though the cliché shell already contains a bit of unconventional surprise in it. A blue macaw named Blue (Blue) was caught by poachers from the tropical rain forests of Brazil to the United States from an early age, and was finally taken in by a girl named Linda. The long-term isolation from birds has caused him to develop many "pets" peculiar problems, such as talking, not loving nature, blindly attached to the owner, only telling elegant jokes, etc., and what is seriously despised is that being A bird, he can't even fly!
Bru always thought he was the last of his kind with complacency, until one day, an ornithologist named Julio found and told him that there was also a blue macaw in Rio, Brazil, and She is still a "she" who wants to invite Brue to breed offspring. So, Bru, Linda and Julio and his party came to Rio, where they encountered a group of poachers, a group of monkeys, a few friends, and of course the "she". They participated in the local grand event. Carnival, launched a "big adventure".
If Pixar is uniquely humanistic and refined, DreamWorks tends to embrace commercialism, then Blue Sky Studio is a compromise between the two. It has always been committed to reconciling ingenious creativity and market-oriented popular emotions, and balance The thrill of children and the story of adult taste. This is also evident in "Rio Adventure".
"Rio" is first and foremost a cartoon for children. Its most direct stimulus lies in a large number of novel and peculiar animation images that break the convention. At this point, the blue sky has inherited the fine traditions of old-school American animation such as Disney and Warner. Whether it’s the rapped and stinky parrot Bru, the monkey with the stolen watch on his waist (boxing gold belt?), or the bulldog with its mouth open and drooling, just these images themselves. It's quite fascinating, enough to firmly attract audiences who are sensitive to novel things. Although the story is not novel, it keeps the child’s innocence and purity while taking into account the adult’s IQ. After watching the movie, you may sigh that it is only the love between two birds, and it is so exquisite, that the conflicts of the waves will come naturally. And the evil white bird Nigel, who took pleasure in killing birds and became an accomplice of smugglers, seemed to be the incarnation of hatred and cynicism. Such an image is not common in American cartoons. It echoes the big bear in "Toy Story 3" that became cruel and evil because of being abandoned by the owner, adding a bit of black to this emotionally pure cartoon. The texture of the game broke the brain-dead line of blindly instilling world peace, beauty, and justice into the audience.
As the third world countries have become more and more overseas markets for the export of Hollywood movies, American cartoons have also begun to consciously incorporate the cultural elements of these countries. The most famous example is probably "Kung Fu Panda" produced by DreamWorks in 2008. The inclusion of samba, football, Rio's urban landscape and other factors in "Rio Adventure" will be another successful example. Blue Sky Studio has an animation renderer, Renderer CGI Studio, which is comparable to Pixar's Renderman (a technology that makes the image more vivid by coloring the animation model to reflect the effects of color, texture, and light intensity). It and the director's flexible scheduling of different perspectives and scenes makes Rio de Janeiro, the capital of Brazil, in this film so lifelike, just like an animated city scenery film. The strong Latin style and full folk atmosphere not only increase the adventurous color of the movie, but also effectively set off the characters, avoiding the lively image from being submerged in the mediocre environment.
Blue Sky Studio, a small company that started from making special effects shots for some entertainment shows and movies, and has a team of more than 200 people, has always been low-key and unobtrusive. Now, it has begun to exert its strength gradually. With sophisticated production art, mature market strategies and successful integration of different cultural elements, it will surely occupy an increasingly important position in the American animated film market.
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