The History of Blue Sky Studios (Part 3) | Animation Lookback

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:03]After making their first couple of movies, the second half of the 2000s decade was the time that Blue Sky Studios showed that they were a powerhouse in animation.

[00:00:14]It was a period where they released not one, but two Ice Age sequels with The Meltdown and Dawn of the Dinosaurs, thus turning their feature debut into a prominent film franchise.

[00:00:27]While they didn't impress critics as much as the original did, they were still highly successful at the box office by becoming the highest-grossing animated features of their respective year.

[00:00:39]In fact, Dawn of the Dinosaurs went on to become the studio's biggest picture in their library.

[00:00:45]And between those follow-ups, Blue Sky also created the first animated movie based on a Dr. Seuss book, Horton Hears a Who.

[00:00:55]As much as they did well on their initial releases, it was their long-term effects that truly highlight the impact they made in animation, such as Horton starting a new generation of Dr. Seuss adaptations that mainly consist of animated features, and the way that The Meltdown was made inspired former Fox Animation President Chris Meledandri to make those principles the foundation of the studio he later created, Illumination.

[00:01:25]That one I'll admit I'm still trying to process.

[00:01:28]But even if they've proven to make quite an impact by that point, especially with Ice Age, they still needed to create more original pictures to expand their roster of IPs. And luckily for Blue Sky, one of their key players had an idea that was ready to be developed. While directing Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Carlos Saldanha was given the studio's approval to also work on his passion project, one that took the team away from Ice Age's cold climate and brought them to his home in Brazil.

[00:02:02]In 2011, Blue Sky Studios soared back to theaters to release Rio.

[00:02:10]It's about a blue macaw named Blu who was domestically raised in Moose Lake, Minnesota by a bookstore owner named Linda.

[00:02:18]When she was informed by a Brazilian ornithologist called Tulio that Blu may be the last male of his kind, they traveled to Rio de Janeiro to his aviary to match Blu with the last known female blue macaw named Jewel, which went from bad with their introduction being anything but romantic to worse when they got kidnapped by smugglers that night.

[00:02:41]Thankfully, they were able to escape and avoid the wrath of the malicious cockatoo Nigel, but now they face the problem of literally being chained up together and have limited mobility due to Blu's inability to fly. But with the help of some friendly local birds, Blu and Jewel travel all around Rio during Carnaval so they can free themselves from their chain and maybe find that spark for each other along the way.

[00:03:07]As a native of Rio de Janeiro, Carlos Saldanha always felt like his hometown is the perfect location for an animated feature.

[00:03:17]With its unique set of colors, music, aesthetic, and culture, Saldanha saw a great opportunity to use that as both the backdrop for a one-of-a-kind movie and his escape from the years of working on the Ice Age films with its chilly environment. However, he didn't initiate his project until the mid-2000s when he learned about an interesting bird fact that set the foundation of his idea.

[00:03:44]During the winter, penguins from Antarctica can wash up to the beaches of Rio. Now, you might be wondering what the fridge do penguins have to do with this movie?

[00:03:55]Well, the original plot of the film was about a penguin who found himself on the beach of Ipanema and discovers life in Rio de Janeiro just in time to experience Carnaval.

[00:04:06]The only problem was that animated films starring penguins were surprisingly a thing at the time. There was Warner Brothers who teamed up with Animal Logic to release Happy Feet in 2006, and Sony Pictures Animation brought out Surf's Up in 2007.

[00:04:23]By that point, Saldanha made a quick switch to its lead from a penguin to a domestic blue macaw who can't fly. It started off well when he successfully pitched it to Chris Meledandri, but not long after, there was another problem.

[00:04:39]Meledandri left Fox to create Illumination, and the company got someone else to be the president of their animation division, meaning that Saldanha had to go through the pitch process all over again.

[00:04:53]Awkward. Thankfully, the new president, Vanessa Morrison, is a big fan of Brazil's music and culture and loved the idea so much that it put the movie back on track to being approved, resulting in Carlos to start working on Rio at the same time as he was finishing up his directing job on Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

[00:05:15]When the script was being written, the team also put in additional elements to authenticate this as an homage to the city. The theme of flying became more prominent to make it the symbol of Brazil's free spirit and emphasize the contrast of Blu and Linda's more introverted personalities, where it wouldn't be until the end of the film that they get out of their American comfort zone to unleash a stronger side of themselves that they never knew they had. Flying is it's freedom and and not having to rely on anyone.

[00:05:49]Don't you want that? Another theme they added was the power of love, which is used as the counter against the city's real-life problem of bird trafficking and the solution for Blu and Jewel to get their chains and stop the smugglers.

[00:06:04]They also included several characters who are not only able sidekicks, but also act as the guides to the city. Like Rafael and Luiz are the ambassadors of Rio's culture, while Nico and Pedro represent Brazilian music, with Nico keeping his style traditional and Pedro embracing the modern sound. It wasn't until the script went through its final draft when the human characters were added to give more depth to the story and the birds like Linda, Tulio, and Fernando.

[00:06:35]But then there was Rio itself, which has a leading role in the picture as much as Blu does. To fully understand how to bring the city into animation, on top of using plenty of books and maps about its geographical information, Saldanha and six other people from the Blue Sky team took a trip to Rio de Janeiro to not just study the landmarks and architecture, but it was also to get a first-hand feel of the culture, especially when, like Blu and Linda in the film, they were there when Carnaval was on. And they didn't just get to see the big parade, they also got to be a part of it. And it's funny [music] because I grew up in Rio, but I never actually been to the big parade that they have every year for Carnaval. And that day that we went, we all went, [music] and we all paraded, you know, and I wanted to feel the vibe so I could help them [music] create that feeling.

[00:07:30]Originally, Neil Patrick Harris was considered to be the voice of Blu. But since those plans didn't work out, they instead casted Jesse Eisenberg, who was happy to record his lines during the weekends while working on The Social Network. In fact, for Eisenberg, playing Blu was a fun moment of escapism from being Mark Zuckerberg, who was so severe and in some ways so joyless.

[00:07:57]By the way, those were Jesse's words, not mine. Uh huh.

[00:08:01]Okay, yeah. Yeah, yeah, sure. After getting all the knowledge that they could register about the city, along with some additional research in the Bronx Zoo to study the movements of macaws, the animation came with its own challenges that were unlike anything they faced with the Ice Age movies. The general designs of the feature have what they called the 85% rule, meaning that 85% of the overall look is meant to be realistic, while the other 15% is to have it stylized. It was one thing to apply that to the city and the people, but doing so with the birds took a long time to figure out. Sure, there were a few exceptions to the rule like Nico and Pedro, who have more cartoon physics on them than others, but it took the animation team a whole year to anthropomorphize the birds while still applying that rule to maintain their bird-like anatomy. The bird needed to stand up straight and have the legs kind of stretched out underneath them so that they can do a lot more hip and leg work.

[00:09:03]The animators, they really know how to then get it to translate [music] into birds. You still are in that world, and you're still suspending your disbelief that you're watching birds in a club setting dance like maniac. As for the colors, considering how Rio is already a colorful place, especially during Carnaval, the team made sure that the characters are able to stand out from the backgrounds and from each other while maintaining the film's vibrant color palette, along with keeping the main bird's plumage simple by sticking to mostly primary colors. They also boosted the saturation so that they don't get lost in the 3D version due to the dark lenses of the glasses.

[00:09:45]And then there was the music. Even if the feature is not really a musical, it's an element that is important to the feature about as much as the city itself.

[00:09:56]To capture the country's authentic sound for the film, along with having their staple composer John Powell, the studio brought on board one of Brazil's most prolific musicians, Sergio Mendes, to be the movie's executive music producer.

[00:10:12]Mendes, in return, assembled a group of music artists, mainly from the US and Brazil, to help craft the movie's soundtrack, including Carlinhos Brown, who became the film's featured Brazilian percussionist, Gracinha Leporace, Ester Dean, Taio Cruz, Bebel Gilberto, Siedah Garrett, and Mikael Mutti. Mendes was also responsible for inviting will.i.am into the picture to both voice Pedro and create the song Hot Wings.

[00:10:44]>> [music] >> On a side note, will.i.am was not the only actor who contributed a song to the picture.

[00:10:52]Jemaine Clement, the voice of Nigel, also used his Flight of the Concords talent to produce his musical number, Pretty Bird.

[00:11:02]So young and vital.

[00:11:04]A South American idol. But the music isn't just about what you hear, it's also about what you feel and how it can make you move, which was why the animators had to learn about Brazil's signature dance. On top of studying instructional videos, they also took some lessons and the studio brought in choreographers to learn how to animate the samba for both the humans and the birds, which the latter had to be more dynamic with their poses to compensate for their different anatomy and to sell the idea that they are dancing the samba in their own way. So this animator, Mika, he's a Finnish guy. Like so he's [music] like he he's very quiet, like very in his own place. And then he showed me the dance.

[00:11:48]This bird was dancing like the best professional samba dancer in the world.

[00:11:53]He was amazing, was perfect.

[00:11:58]Basically just uh us trying to find a way how how the characters would move and, you know, act. As the movie was getting closer to its release, Fox teamed up with Rovio Mobile to create Angry Birds Rio, a crossover spin-off game that featured levels inspired by the movie where the Angry Birds themselves saved Blue, Jewel, and the other captured birds from Nigel and the marmosets.

[00:12:25]When Rio soared to theaters on April 15th, 2011, that Brazilian spirit really resonated with the public. While they weren't high praises, critics mostly leaned positive towards the feature where they said that the vibrant colors, the fun music, and the voice acting made up for the generic story.

[00:12:45]As for the box office, it got a similar result where it wasn't the studio's strongest performing movie, but audiences still flew to theaters to make this a success with over 143.6 million dollars domestically and almost 483.9 million dollars worldwide. As for how it did in Brazil, the Cariocas celebrated that they got a movie that accurately portrayed their city and was the second highest-grossing film in Brazil of that year with 36.8 million dollars behind The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1.

[00:13:24]The film also got a moment in the spotlight during award season where it won an Annie Award for best character animation that went to Jeff Gabor and was nominated for an Oscar for best original song with Real in Rio.

[00:13:38]Even if it was one of the two movies that was nominated in the category that year, it still lost to Man or Muppet from the 2011 Muppets movie.

[00:13:48]Between 2013 and 2015, there was a 12-minute 4D experience of Rio by SimEx-Iwerks that premiered at the San Diego Zoo and then made its rounds in different amusement parks like at Moody Gardens and Warner Brothers Movie World.

[00:14:05]While Rio gave Blue Sky another success in their library and a new property to expand their creative capabilities, the best way to describe the movie is what Rafael told Blue. Flying is not what you think up here, it's what you feel in here. And this doesn't just apply to the movie's theme of flight, but it also applies to how the movie was made. On top of being a break from directing the Ice Age sequels for a good amount of the 2000s, Rio is also Saldanha's tribute to the city that he was raised in, a place where he knew how to take its unique beauty, sound, and soul and accurately translate that into an animated adventure where flying represents what it means to be a Brazilian. In fact, in Saldanha's own words, "For me, flying is the freedom to do what you love and to be who you are, having no limits. That's what flying represents to me. That's what I went for.

[00:15:06]Thanks to the team at Blue Sky, fantasy can be for real in Rio and it's something else. During the experience, you just feel it happening and you won't find it anywhere else."

[00:15:20]>> [music] >> At the same time as they were producing Rio and getting close to wrapping up Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the studio was going through some significant changes.

[00:15:31]On January of 2009, Blue Sky Studios moved from their offices in White Plains, New York to a new facility in Greenwich, Connecticut where they had extra room for each team to make their work more efficient than before.

[00:15:46]But for real, the move was mainly because of that sweet 30% tax cut from the state. The need for a building that could house them all on one floor led them from Westchester to Connecticut.

[00:15:57]That and very, very extraordinarily aggressive tax credit program that is is one of the best in the nation. And as they were settling in their new place and their features were still going strong, it didn't take them long after their tropical vacation to catch up with their iconic pack and set sail to Ice Age's fourth feature, Continental Drift.

[00:16:20]As Scrat continues to chase for his acorn, the consequences to his mishaps have now become earth-shattering.

[00:16:28]And I mean that literally because this time, it caused the land on the planet to break up and drastically shift. As a result, a large earthquake separated the trio, with the addition of Sid's crazy grandma, from Manny's family and caused them to be stranded in the ocean.

[00:16:47]But their luck turned for the worse when they got shanghaied by a group of pirates led by Captain Gutt, who ruled his glacier ship with an iron fist. And as they escaped from being forced into the pirate life, the herd, along with the help of Shira, who the captain abandoned, must find a way to get back to Ellie and Peaches and especially avoid the wrath of Gutt. Considering that the directors of the previous Ice Age films, Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha, were both busy working on their own features, two veterans of the franchise got promoted to fully helm Continental Drift, which were Steve Martino, who was the art director of the first Ice Age, and Michael Thurmeier, who just came out as a co-director on Dawn of the Dinosaurs. And with the help of producer Lori Forte, who came up with the initial concept when she read an article about a polar bear that got drifted into the ocean for many miles on a block of ice, the new directors put their art directing skills and sense of timing to tell the story of what would happen to the herd when Pangaea broke apart to form the continents we know today.

[00:17:59]And as the characters crossed the waters to find their way back home, the team created their adventure to be a loose adaptation to Homer's Odyssey, even throwing in references with some of the dangers that they encounter like the lotus berries and the sirens.

[00:18:18]Huh? No, no, they're not real. They're they're monsters. Also, the updated element of family took a more prominent role in the fourth film. Manny trying to deal with Peaches, who became an angsty teenager in the film, resonated with Martino since at the time he was also raising his daughter who was getting into the same age and noticed how other parents tried to deal with their teen.

[00:18:42]The movie was also an opportunity to expand on an idea that was only mentioned in the first film. Huh?

[00:18:49]Zack?

[00:18:51]Marshall?

[00:18:52]Birdie?

[00:18:53]Uncle Fungus? In Continental Drift, Sid's family made their full introduction to present first hand how they feel about Sid.

[00:19:03]And while his mom, dad, Marshall, and Uncle Fungus momentarily reunited with the sloth, there were a few that were missing like Zack and Birdie, whom the latter might have been the one close to being included since concept art of Sid's family also featured his older sister.

[00:19:21]As heartless as they can be for abandoning him, their emotional moves serves a purpose to provide the feature with a lesson that family is not about who you're related to by blood, but it's who will always stand by your side and support you for being you.

[00:19:36]They also served the feature with a new prominent character to the franchise with Granny, voiced by Wanda Sykes, who is like if you take Sid's dysfunctional traits and double down on them to give the movie a big dose of of energy. I'll bury you all and dance on your grave. If they kiss, I'm going to puke. I'll push them overboard. You guys say it was an accident. The wrinklier the raisin, the sweeter the fruit.

[00:20:04]>> Ooh, granny like it. Granny like it very much. This is my first bath in decades.

[00:20:13]Speaking of granny, there was a process that went into creating her pet precious. She was originally going to be a giant squid, but then they changed her species and added to her design to be more like a prehistoric whale with large teeth and lumps on her back, which worked out well because it ended up resembling a Livyatan melvillei.

[00:20:35]Considering that the herd faced an event so big that it literally changed the world, the effects team faced a real tough task to not only make the forces of nature imposing, but also believable.

[00:20:49]On top of the water being more amplified than the levels that reached in the meltdown, the layout artist had to make the moving of the giant mass look convincing so that they don't travel too quickly to break the illusion. And along with the help of their tools like CGI Studio, Houdini, and RealFlow, they even had to create new software so that the artists had easier control over the storm and the earthquake to make it look and feel real.

[00:21:17]But out of all the danger that the leads face in the film, their biggest threat is the franchise's first speaking villain since Soto in the original. Now, surrender your ship or face my fury. OR FACE YOUR FURRY WHAT? As fantastical as it may sound, even for Ice Age, the movie's biggest challenge was to create a believable pirate crew that consists of ferocious looking animals. Even the choice of who was captain wasn't clear at first, as it was originally Squint who was in charge of the ship. With a narwhal tusk for a peg leg, maybe a horn on his nose, and a crazy Napoleon complex. The only catch was that him as a problem would be too easy for Manny to solve. YOU AND I LIARS OVER, KITTY.

[00:22:09]>> [music] >> That was when they decided that the captain should be a much larger creature who could have a fighting chance against the mammoth. He was originally going to be a bear, but no matter how Peter Dinklage designed him, he just didn't look enough like a pirate. But then they changed him into something that fit more with what they were looking for. Now, you might think it's ridiculous that me, a Gigantopithecus, And along with more fur possibilities to make him resemble Blackbeard, his ability to swing from mast to mast on his ship makes Gutt the right fit to be the villainous captain.

[00:22:49]But just like to his crew and to the pack, he was also rough for the animators because his beard had to be animated in a different way.

[00:22:58]Instead of having it all be one big mass, each strand was given its own physics so that his beard can flow the same way that a head of hair would.

[00:23:08]Speaking of the fur, the pirates had a careful balance to their design so that they look like they're dressed as pirates, but it's actually their fur whose inspiration came from real animals both in the past and present to provide credibility to how they were groomed.

[00:23:25]One of the first drawings I did was Dobson. I gave him what looks like a striped shirt and sideburns.

[00:23:31]>> We gave him this kind of skull cap, this little polka dot skull cap with the two feathers coming out. We thought, "Well, maybe we're going too far. It looks a little ridiculous." And then we found actual reference for bird that has these red feathers on their head with polka dots on it.

[00:23:43]>> So, I wanted to come up with a way to design a flag on his back that you wouldn't know this was a flag if you just happen to look at him. They were even topped off with having an international cast voicing them that included Peter Dinklage leading as Captain Gutt, Aziz Ansari, Alain Chabat, Nick Frost, Kunal Nayyar, Rebel Wilson, and Jennifer Lopez as Diego's love interest Shira. Even among those around Manny's family, the film included a variety of familiar names to voice the new characters, including Keke Palmer as teenage Peaches, Josh Gad as her friend Louis, and other mammoths voiced by Nicki Minaj and Drake.

[00:24:27]Okay, Nicki was already bad enough, but having Drake involved in a kids movie really did not age well. Say Drake.

[00:24:35]For the conclusion of Scrat's arc after following the map to a possible land of acorns, script supervisor Ed Corcoran came up with the idea of Scratlantis, an advanced civilization of Scrats whom, unlike the original Scrat, have opposable thumbs and rich with all the acorns that the little guy could ever want. The scene wasn't just fun for the animators to create. Composer John Powell enjoyed working on the music where he got to play with Beethoven's Ode to Joy by speeding it up and changing the German lyrics so they could be more related to Scrat and nuts.

[00:25:18]When Continental Drift came out for Ice Age's fourth round in theaters on July 13th, 2012, it did have to face a few storms while on its travel. Critics were less amused than before, where they felt like it could still have some funny moments, but the charm of Ice Age wore off and it started to feel repetitive with its ideas. On the other hand, audiences were a lot more forgiving to the feature, and its box office performance was almost as great as Dawn of the Dinosaurs with more than $161.3 million domestically and over $877.2 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing animated feature of that year.

[00:26:04]While the scale of the adventure was bigger than ever and the cast featured over a dozen new characters, the impact of the picture was admittedly not as strong as its predecessors.

[00:26:17]But while franchise fatigue was starting to set in, it gave the pack some new material as they do what they can to live in an Earth that is becoming more different than what they used to know.

[00:26:28]And while it may not have been appreciated when it came out, this will be the kind of movie that in many years from now, where everyone will be cybernetically enhanced and xenomorphs will ravage the Earth, the memories and connections that people made with Continental Drift will forever live on.

[00:26:47]I face my fury.

[00:26:56]Face your furry what? Just like the herd, the fourth movie may be quite dysfunctional, but they still got enough heart to pull through and come together so they can look forward to their ever-changing world. family Meanwhile, the first movie's director, Chris Wedge, was still involved with all the Blue Sky films, mainly as an executive producer and still being the voice of Scrat. But at the same time, he was also hard at work directing and writing another feature where he once again collaborated with his partner in Robots, William Joyce. And unlike the studio's other features, this one aimed to deliver more on the action by turning Joyce's 1996 book, The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs, into Epic. It's the story of Mary Katherine who returns to the home of her estranged dad, Professor Bomba, where he is still obsessed with finding tiny people in the forest. While this did make him a pretty bad father, she learns the hard way that he was right all along and magically shrinks to the size of an insect by the protector of the woods, Queen Tara, as her final act before she passed away. She also entrusted MK with the pod that will become the queen's successor, which she must keep away from Mandrake and his army of Boggans who seek to fill the forest with rotten decay. And the only thing that stand in their way are the Leaf Men army who protect the plant life residents called the Jinn. So, with the help of the veteran Leaf Man Ronin, the rebellious rookie Nod, and a couple of gastropods named Mub and Grub, MK must not only protect the pod so that it could bloom during the night, but also save the entire forest from Mandrake's dark powers. Even though this was released several years after Robots, Wedge and Joyce's second feature started prior to the 2005 film. In fact, the idea all started before Blue Sky was making movies in 1998, where the two visited the Frick Collection Museum in Manhattan to see the Victorian paintings that feature fairies in the Irish mythology, sharing the idea about taking European folklore and place it in a modern American setting.

[00:29:19]While the paintings were enough to give them that spark to make a movie based on what they saw, it did take several years before the project got off the ground, especially as they were occupied with the production of Robots. In the early 2000s, they brought in James V. Hart to join the writing in order to create the first draft of the script. And then a little later, production designer Greg Couch got involved to establish the style that is meant to be reminiscent to classic story illustrations.

[00:29:49]But, it wasn't until when Robots was just about finished when the talk about making this got serious and that they would make an adaptation of the Leaf Men book since it was reminiscent to the art in the Frick collection.

[00:30:03]When the reality of its production started to set in motion, Joyce brought Wedge and Hardt to a meadow near his house in Katonah, New York to show all the fireflies glowing in the woods, giving them that sense of wonder as if they were witnessing the magic of nature and get their first true taste of the tone that they wanted for the feature.

[00:30:24]By the time they went to convince Fox to produce it, they decided to take a similar approach to what they did with Robots by building some proof of concepts for their pitch. This time, they fabricated items found in Bomba's collection that ranged from pieces and evidence of the small civilization in glass cases and jars to a full-size recreation of his magnifying helmet. The good news was that it was enough to get their approval in the summer of 2006.

[00:30:53]The bad news was that it didn't take long afterwards for them to change their mind. But, that didn't mean that the project was over. They did get the studio's blessing to have it be made elsewhere.

[00:31:05]But, with an animated movie that had Pixar levels of ambition, where could they go to have this made?

[00:31:12]Wait.

[00:31:13]Pixar?

[00:31:15]Yeah, sure. Let's go with that. What?

[00:31:18]That one? For real? But, it's so >> Perfect. It's perfect. Since Chris Wedge was good friends with John Lasseter, they discussed with the Disney-owned studio to see if the Leaf Men movie would be done at their place, which would have been crazy to see one of the Blue Sky co-founders directing a movie at a rival studio. So, why didn't it happen?

[00:31:41]Well, just as they were settling the rights to the picture, it turned out that Fox changed their mind.

[00:31:47]Again. This time, however, the company was more serious to have it be done at Blue Sky and officially greenlit the project on September of 2009.

[00:31:59]Unlike with other features he worked on, William Joyce wasn't able to be fully involved with this production since he was busy working on several other projects like The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and DreamWorks Rise of the Guardians. Then again, when it came to adapting his Leaf Men book, he was more interested in bringing the world to life than the story since the filmmakers wanted to make something that was a lot more action-packed than the subdued tone that the source material had. This also allowed the Blue Sky team to have a lot more creative freedom to make their own narrative for the feature and craft their own characters such as a human protagonist, a comedic snail and slug duo, and replace the villainous spider queen from the book with the leader of the Boggans, Mandrake. The Leaf Men think they can keep us contained.

[00:32:51]Surround our beautiful island of rot with their hideous green forest. But, along with the small world in the forest, the one thing from the novel that remained in the feature is the Leaf Men.

[00:33:04]And since they established a more realistic design that put emphasis on the details of nature, they got senior research associate Hugo Am al-Hayat to be their science advisor and he made an entire presentation all about the theoretical physics of a person who is 2 in tall.

[00:33:23]They also brought in martial art experts to study their movements and how they hold their weapons since the Leaf Men are supposed to be little samurais of the forest armed with their arrows and katana.

[00:33:34]Speaking of which, one animator, Scott Carroll, actually served in the military, which made him the perfect reference for the performance of the Leaf Men's commanding leader, Ronin. We had to study ourselves to really find the little tiny things that make him feel real. Don't worry. I've got a plan.

[00:33:53]I kind of became known for Ronin reference mainly because I had been in the military before, so I kind of remembered what it was like to brace up and stand with your back really straight. As for Mub and Grub, they were originally a type of plant tenders called lollies. But, when Greg Couch got his hands on them, he decided to update their look to be a slug and a snail respectively.

[00:34:17]Also, as the comic reliefs with no skeletal structure, their movements are based on the classic animation exercise of bringing a flower sack to life. Along with the addition of their eyes protruding out of their heads to provide the artists with extra material to play with their gags. For the characters beyond the main cast, the Jin were not easy to create at first. As the citizens who represent life in the forest, they were originally people like the Leaf Men who wore a variety of different plants as their clothing.

[00:34:50]The only problem was that they came off creatively weak and didn't embody what they meant to conceptually be.

[00:34:57]It wasn't until Couch approached the Jin not as people, but as living plants.

[00:35:03]When commenting about his solution, he stated, "I finally realized it's not that they're people who wear plants, they're plants behaving like people.

[00:35:13]It's a change in how you look at things, turning it on its head. They weren't pine cones that behaved like people or people wearing pine cones, they were a manifestation of a pine cone, some sort of expression of the natural world.

[00:35:28]Sometimes you have to look at something the other way around and that's when I love my job most." And with the Boggans, they were originally more humanoid like the Leaf Men or at least like Mandrake, but then they decided to make them like creatures so that their presence can feel more frightening.

[00:35:47]Even though its setting may be technically small, an extravagant and highly detailed forest from the perspective of a 2-in person makes this one of the largest sets ever for a Blue Sky film. So much so that they weren't able to fully create the whole environment. That's why they had to plan out their shots carefully so that they only had to develop the sets that would be in front of the camera in order to save time, money, and space in their computers. An example of this technique was used in the Boggan's home of Wrathwood. Instead of creating an entire kingdom from a dead tree stump where Mandrake's massive army resides, the team only created parts of the inside so that they could cut corners while maintaining the illusion of its colossal size and still able to implement the smaller details within.

[00:36:41]However, even if they used those little cheats to make the film, that didn't stop them from creating some, in lack of a better word, epic moments.

[00:36:57]That ambush scene where the Boggans come out of their camouflage and ready to go after the Leaf Men and Queen Tara was one of the most complex moments of the film where it took two years to develop.

[00:37:09]They had to sacrifice some parts in order to keep it in the feature, but the scene was vital to have in order to establish the general scale of the action, the kind of danger that the Boggans are in the forest, and the high level of realism in the animation that the team wanted to capture.

[00:37:27]For the music, Epic was Blue Sky's first movie that wasn't composed by John Powell.

[00:37:33]Instead, Danny Elfman was brought in to work on the score, which was his second film with William Joyce after Disney's Meet the Robinsons.

[00:37:43]And since they got Beyoncé to voice Queen Tara, she also collaborated with Sia to make the feature's original song, Rise Up.

[00:37:52]>> [music] [music] >> Throughout most of the production, the movie was under the title of Leaf Men.

[00:38:10]It wasn't until a year prior to the feature's release when the marketing group at Fox decided to switch it to Epic, which was a choice that Wedge was not a fan of. And if you think that's bad, you should see what the movie's called in other countries such as Hidden Kingdom, Epic Hidden Kingdom, Mary and the Secret Kingdom, Epic: The Secret World, The Secret Kingdom of the Forest, Epic: The Battle of the Secret Kingdom.

[00:38:40]Why the fridge are they more generically vague than just Epic? Well, now I'm just embarrassed.

[00:38:46]When the Leaf Men jumped into the big screen on May 24th, 2013, I wouldn't say that the movie's theatrical run was epic, but it did turn out fine.

[00:38:58]Critics were pretty mixed with the feature by stating that the story is pretty lackluster and the characters don't have much charm, but the animation is beautiful enough to pick up a lot of the slack and make this passable.

[00:39:11]As for the box office, it did struggle on its opening weekend where it started in fourth place behind Fast and Furious 6, The Hangover Part 3, and Star Trek Into Darkness. But again, it came out okay with a domestic earning of 107.5 million dollars and a worldwide total of over 268.4 million dollars. It was cutting it close to its 93 million dollar budget, but it was just enough to come out modestly profitable.

[00:39:43]Ultimately, Epic may not have come out as the studio's biggest feature, but its title did resonate with how this was one of their most ambitious films that further pushed the team's creative skills and technology to create worlds that were unlike anything they crafted before and immersed audiences in new kinds of adventures that could happen in the most unexpected places. But once Blue Sky put down their sword and grew back to normal size, they were getting ready to go back into some familiar territory and revisit some old friends with a new sequel. But this time, it wasn't ICE AGE.

[00:40:24]WOOHOO!

[00:40:26]AWKWARD.

[00:40:29]>> [music] >> HEY, thanks for watching. If you had a great time with the third part, then consider giving this a like and subscribe to my channel if you haven't yet so that you'll know when the next part is coming. As they move forward to the mid-2010s, Blue Sky's next features include a couple more follow-ups including their last Ice Age sequel and a movie where Charlie Brown changes the rules of computer animation. The story of Blue Sky Studios continues in the next part. So until next time, see you later, dudes.

[00:41:15]Keep celebrating. I'll be pooping on your party promptly.