Ice Age 4: Rubbery = Funny

I just saw Ice Age 4: Con­ti­nen­tal Drift. I also saw Mada­gas­car 3, and I am notic­ing sig­nif­i­cant advances in how soft and flex­i­ble char­ac­ters are becom­ing. They flop and wig­gle and swish and squash all over the place. Sid the Sloth was always the most flex­i­ble of the char­ac­ters, and in this film, his grand­mother, shaky with age, added in lots of saggy skin jig­gling. Dur­ing one of the Scrat cut­aways, he’s deep under­sea and gets squeezed by the pres­sure into the most remark­ably skinny and floppy con­di­tion ever. The rigs must have some inter­est­ing capa­bil­i­ties, but I’m sure some the effect comes from var­i­ous sim­u­la­tions added on top. It’s fan­tas­tic work.

The crew of pirates who harass the heroes were also quite loose in their move­ment. The bad­ger could turn him­self into a flag, the rab­bit was quick­sil­ver fast, the sea ele­phant was a blob of jelly, and they are led by this ape:

The ape, voiced by Peter Din­klage, had a very mobile face with big lips that could take on extreme shapes. His body could also twist quite beyond what a mus­cu­lar ape should be able to do. And it both­ered me. While I appre­ci­ated the effect in most of the other char­ac­ters, in him I didn’t like it. And I fig­ure it’s because he’s the vil­lain. The title of this post is “Rub­bery = funny.” There­fore, the rub­bery motion was work­ing at funny, while his lines were work­ing at evil. The ani­ma­tion was work­ing against him.

For instance, take Diego the saber­tooth. He’s not rub­bery, he’s strong and solid, and was orig­i­nally part of the pack of bad guys. In the trio of stars, he’s the straight man. He’s not sup­posed to be that funny. It’s good to have that con­trast in char­ac­ters and motion.

So the oppo­site would be gen­er­ally true as well: Rigid = scary. Some exam­ples of that.