Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Memorial Day Mix

After a long day of inhaling gas grill fumes, I decided to post an entry before passing out. A few things come to mind at the end of this Holiday weekend. ...continued...

First off. Congrats to DreamWorks for their successful opening weekend of Madagascar. Although I didn't think the story was all that great, and some of the frantic animation gave me a migraine, it was a fun time and an enjoyable movie. I believe the estimate was around $60 million for the 4 days. Pretty good! :)

I went to see Madagascar a second time on Saturday. One of the trailers was for "Open Season" from Sony Pictures Animation. I can't say that I loved the character design, nor can I say that the animation was very appealing (it was decent, but not impressive) to me. I'm still looking forward to this release, even if it is more than a year away.

Vanguard Animation has been issuing a few press releases the past few days. I guess they aren't dead afterall. With "Ribbit" coming down the line and "Space Chimps" still in the mix, they seem to have a lot to do. Will they farm out the production work to 3rd parties, or will they ramp up a studio again? Only time will tell.

There are a few pictures of Omation's "Barnyard" around the net. I've been told that these are older and not really representative of their latest work. My only comment is, I sure hope so. If you ask me (and since this blog is mostly my personal opinion anyway) the character design is boring and unappealing. For the life of me, I cannot understand why they would even publicly show these images if they are not the final designs/models. It only casts a negative light on the project.

http://www.impawards.com/2005/barnyard.html
http://www.oentertainment.com/KidORama/TheBarnyard
/thebarnyard.htm
http://www.byrecruit.com/

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