In the run up to the release of this film before Christmas, I saw some of the promo material and was excited to see how the end product would look. I’m a big fan of any animation that uses ink textures whether it be traditional stop motion methods or digital techniques as seen in this film. I was interested in how they would translate the icon scenes from the book to an animated film.
My family and I sat down on Boxing Day to watch this film, stuffed with chocolate and baileys. it was a pleasantly sweet film that I could see becoming a Christmas classic. Overall I enjoyed the film, visually its stunning! I could not fault the animation at all, they animated each animal with a level of detail and precision that is extremely impressive. The cast was excellent as well, it was a really star studded cast of some of the best of British acting. I particularly enjoyed Idris Elba as the Fox.
However, I felt as though the film was just going through the motions and was spoon feeding audiences meaningful quote after meaningful quote. By the end you’re basically desensitised to all the emotion aspects of the film. I know they wanted to create a faithful adaption to the boo which has been super popular in the UK. It just felt to me that there was no emotional payoff by the end of the film because of this. Overall in spite of this, I still enjoyed the film and would watch it again even to just enjoy looking at the animation again.
Edit: In our clean up lecture we were able to meet Saffron, who worked as a clean up artist on the film for 7 months. They explain their process and explained the difficulties that came with the inking stage of the clean up. They have 7 different brushes to create the ears of the fox, the attention to detail is amazing. It was great to hear from someone who worked on the film and it kind of made the industry feel not so far away and unattainable once we’ve graduated.