Animated, Comedy
Synopsis
Stranded in the wilderness, a mule deer (Ashton Kutcher) and a domesticated bear (Martin Lawrence) try to make their way back to the safety of a town preserve before a hunter catches them.
Cast: Martin Lawrence, Ashton Kutcher, Gary Sinise, Debra Messing, Billy Connolly, Jon Favreau, Georgia Engel, Jane Krakowski, Gordon Tootoosis, Patrick Warburton, Cody Cameron, Danny Mann, Fergal Reilly, Nika Futterman
Producer(s):
Crew: Director - Jill Culton, Director - Anthony Stacchi, Director - Roger Allers, Writer - Steve Bencich, Writer - Ron J. Friedman, Executive Producer - John B. Carls, Executive Producer - Steve Moore, Producer - Michelle Murdocca, Film Editor - Ken Solomon, Film Editor - Pam Ziegenhagen, Original Music - Paul Westerberg, Original Music - Ramin Djawadi, Art Direction - Luc Desmarchelier, Art Direction - Andrew Harkness, Casting - Mary Hidalgo, Casting - Ruth Lambert
Distributor: Sony Pictures Entertainment
Release Date: 09/29/2006
Running Time: 87 minutes
OFFICIAL SITE
| PG | Parental Guidance Suggested |
Production Notes:
- Notes provided by Sony Pictures Entertainment. -
In Sony Pictures Animation's first feature film, the animated action adventure comedy Open Season, the odd are about to get even.
Boog (Martin Lawrence), a domesticated grizzly bear with no survival skills, has his perfect world turned upside down when he meets Elliot (Ashton Kutcher), a scrawny, fast-talking mule deer. When Elliot convinces Boog to leave his cushy home in a park ranger's garage to try a taste of the great outdoors, things quickly spiral out of control.
Relocated to the forest with open season only three days away, Boog and Elliot must acclimate in a hurry. They must join forces to unite the woodland creatures and take the forest back!
SYNOPSIS
Boog (Martin Lawrence) is living the perfect life. In the tranquil town of Timberline, the genial grizzly bear enjoys all manner of creature comforts, courtesy of his surrogate mother, Beth (Debra Messing), the kindhearted forest ranger who rescued him as a cub. Boog relishes the perks of fame as the star of Beth's nature shows in the town's amphitheatre; and in Beth's converted garage, Boog watches his favorite tv shows, eats eight square meals a day and nestles in a comfy bed each night with his teddy bear, Dinkelman. Yes, Boog seems to have the perfect life - until Elliot appears.
Elliot (Ashton Kutcher) is a scrawny, fast-talking mule deer who arrives in town unconscious, missing an antler and strapped to the hood of a truck belonging to fanatical hunter Shaw (Gary Sinise). When Elliot awakes, he begs Boog to untie him. Boog finds Elliot's rapid fire pleas hard to ignore, and he releases the hapless mule deer. However, as if to prove that no good deed goes unpunished
- Elliot tracks Boog down to his home and lures him out for a crazy night on the town-a bender which results in both of them being relocated to the forest.
Boog awakens in the wilderness, panicked to find himself far from the comforts of home. When Elliot promises to help Boog find his way back to Timberline in exchange for space in Boog's cushy digs, the bewildered bear with no survival skills has no choice but to agree to the unlikely partnership. With open season upon them, Boog and Elliot must first work together merely to survive. The odd couple embarks on a hilarious journey, enlisting the aid of some helping hands- er, paws-along the way as they join forces with the denizens of the forest to turn the tables on the hunters, and once again make the forest safe for its four-legged inhabitants.
Sony Pictures Animation's debut feature-length CG-animated film Open Season, the highly-anticipated family comedy action adventure, assembles a top cast of voice talent, including Martin Lawrence, Ashton Kutcher, Gary Sinise, Debra Messing, Billy Connolly, Jon Favreau, Patrick Warburton, Gordon Tootoosis, Jane Krakowski and Georgia Engel.
Columbia Pictures Presents A Sony Pictures Animation Film Open Season starring Martin Lawrence, Ashton Kutcher, Gary Sinise and Debra Messing. The film is directed by Roger Allers and Jill Culton. The co-director is Anthony Stacchi. The screenplay is by Steve Bencich & Ron J. Friedman and Nat Mauldin. The screen story is by Jill Culton and Anthony Stacchi from an original story by Steve Moore and John Carls. The film is produced by Michelle Murdocca. The executive producers are John Carls and Steve Moore. The coproducer is Amy Jupiter. The imagery and animation is by Sony Pictures Imageworks, Inc. The songs are by Paul Westerberg, and the score is by Paul Westerberg and Ramin Djawadi.
Open Season has been rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for Some Rude Humor, Mild Action and Brief Language.
Open Season will be released nationwide by Columbia Pictures on September 29, 2006.
The Evolution Of OPEN SEASON: 1, 2, 3D
"I got the idea for Open Season from stories I'd read about these wild animals who would become somewhat domesticated by living in the outskirts of mountain resort towns like Ketchum, Idaho or Mammoth in California," says syndicated cartoonist Steve Moore (acclaimed for his wry comic strip "In the Bleachers"). "One day the animals would invariably do something to seriously annoy the townspeople and they would be tranquilized and moved to the wilderness. I always wondered what happened once they were dropped off in the wild, having lived on leftovers most of their lives - how did they survive in the woods?"
The idea evolved into a treatment written by Moore and his producing partner John Carls. Armed with that treatment and a stack of Moore's wonderfully funny cartoons, the pair pitched the idea to Penney Finkelman Cox and Sandra Rabins, executive vice presidents of the newly-formed Sony Pictures Animation.
At the request of the Sony executives, Moore and Carls fleshed out the story and expanded their treatment ... and Open Season became the first feature film slated for production at Sony Pictures Animation. The treatment was sent to Jill Culton, considered one of the most original storytellers in the world of feature animation. Culton (whose credits include Monsters, Inc., A Bug's Life and Toy Story) was attracted to Open Season in large measure because of her own love of the outdoors, and the sandpaper relationship between the lead characters of Boog, the grizzly bear and Elliot, the mule deer. Additionally, she was a fan of Moore's work. "I have always been attracted to Steve's humor," Culton says. "He shows us an alternate reality, a world where the animals are smarter than we are-and behind our backs, they're mooning us!"
Director Culton signed on to the project and began developing it into a strong narrative. She was soon joined by the multi-talented Anthony Stacchi as codirector (Stacchi's impressive list of credits includes Curious George, Antz and James and the Giant Peach) and veteran Roger Allers as director (he previously co-directed the Academy Award® winning blockbuster The Lion King).
Culton and Stacchi worked on the story, adding a villain, Shaw the uber-hunter. "Even as the story evolved," says Culton, "it still remained what it was originally
- a buddy comedy with a twist - about animals who become empowered by fighting back against the hunters."
Adds Stacchi: "Steve gave us a great tone and a `real' situation for the characters
- wild animals caught between our world and the wilderness - and Jill and I worked to find a simple emotional story to exploit it."
Over the course of constructing the story, Allers notes, "the characters certainly evolved. Boog started off being somewhat more cool and unflappable, but wound up being more vulnerable, which created a greater arc for his character. Elliot began a little less savvy, and he grew to be more manipulative, which really makes him a lot more fun. It was an interesting journey, watching these characters develop."
One challenge in writing the final script was in keeping the story moving while maintaining the humor. "The humor had to actually grow out of the characters, their natures and their situations," says Allers.
"We had only one rule when it came to tone or humor," explains Stacchi. "It had to make us laugh and push the characters and the story forward. We wanted to make a movie we would love to see, rather than a movie solely for children or another demographic."
As the story was being refined, the team was developing the project's visuals, working with the artists and animators to formulate a unique look. "We spent about a year defining the look of the characters, the level of detail, and what defined the environment," says visual effects supervisor Doug Ikeler. "The first year was about creating the highest quality of animation possible in order to bring the characters and the story alive."
Talented Voices
When Boog is introduced in Open Season, he is living a cushy life in Ranger Beth's garage in the town of Timberline - but his idyllic existence is turned upside down one day by the arrival of of Elliot, a mule deer, who is tied to the hood of a hunter's truck. Alive but unconscious, Elliot wakes up and begs Boog to untie him. Boog agrees and soon lives to regret it. "Elliot's a loser and he's desperate for friendship," says Allers. "He gloms onto Boog and makes Boog's life miserable, precipitating a series of events that forces Ranger Beth to relocate Boog to the woods."
"When he wakes up in the woods," Culton continues, "Boog discovers that he is stuck with Elliot, who promises to help Boog find his way home -- but only if Boog agrees to let Elliot stay with him back in Timberline." As the two begin their journey, they meet a territorial, type A squirrel named McSquizzy, a pair of wise-talking skunks, two shell-shocked ducks, and members of Elliot's former herd. Also roaming the wilderness are a pair of hapless campers in their Airstream trailer, accompanied by their troublemaking dachshund, Mr. Weenie, and a maniacal hunter - a myriad of wonderfully original characters all in search of their own voices.
"In animation, inspiration from the voice talent is where it all begins. We might get to the computer with the dialogue framework or temporary voices, but as soon as we have the actors' voices, the movie comes alive," notes co-producer Amy Jupiter. "Picture the scene in Pinocchio when Gepetto realizes Pinocchio can speak. The voices give the story spirit and inspiration. The animation gives the voices and the characters life."
Once an initial draft of the script for Open Season was completed, the team began searching for the actors who would lend their voice talents to the characters. The filmmakers were particularly interested in finding two principal actors who would capture the contrast between Boog, the gigantic grizzly bear and Elliot, the scrawny, one-horned mule deer. During early casting sessions, film editor Pam Ziegenhagen-Shefland paired up voices to images of Boog and Elliot. The filmmakers listened to the tests without being told which actor was doing the voicing.
Observes Culton: "We reviewed many different voices, and finally, when we paired Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher, lightning struck. Martin brought this terrific smooth swagger and confidence to Boog, and Ashton's playful, manic energy was perfect for Elliot."
"One of the things I particularly loved was the different tempo in the voices of Martin and Ashton," adds Allers. "When they meet in Boog's garage, Ashton as Elliot is a little hyper - he's like `Look at this! Oh, wow, this is cool! Look at that!' As Boog, Martin is a little bit slower at processing things - he's like `Hey, wait, that's my bed! Hey, no, get out of there!' I just love the sassiness of the Elliot character pitted against the innocence and the stodginess of Boog."
"When we first began the casting process, we laid Martin's voice recording over drawings of Boog, and the warmth, the deepness and the resonance of his voice convinced us that he could fill this giant bear body," adds Stacchi. "And Ashton's voice fit perfectly into the character of this tiny, scrawny little mule deer. His comic energy goes well with Elliot's erratic, all-over-the-place personality."
Lawrence brought a great sense of worldliness that had not originally been part of his character. "The temptation would have been to play Boog like a teenager who'd lived at home too long," says Open Season's co-head of story Donnie Long. "Lawrence brought a sophistication and coolness to Boog that he didn't have before. It made him much more specific and entertaining, rather than a generic `out of his element' character."
Lawrence approached the development of his character pragmatically, he says. "Boog is a 900-pound grizzly with no bear skills. He's never been in the woods. He's domesticated and living in the lap of luxury in Park Ranger Beth's garage.
He's the star of the `Wild Life Show' in town and he's just loving it all. He starts out as a cuddly, lovable bear, who one day realizes he has no real grizzly-bear skills."
Similarly, Kutcher imbued his character with unique touches. The creative team marveled at how the actor utilized his boyish charm, infectious energy and charisma to find countless ways of delivering the same line, employing a different spin on each take.
Asked why he took the part of the scrawny Elliot, Kutcher jokes, "I was forced into it, at gunpoint. Not really. I met with the filmmakers and they showed us the concept art of what the characters looked like. They already had the story laid out and storyboards to go with it. As they took me through the story, it gave me a lot of confidence. It showed how much preparation had gone into the project before a single frame had even been shot."
"I came into the project with a definite character in mind - a small deer who would be a balance against this big grizzly bear," recalls Kutcher. "I arrived with a bouncing-off-the-walls energy, like some kid who's had too much sugar. I basically just turned my censor button off, because when kids talk, they go on and on sometimes, so much so that you forget what they're talking about - like when they're in the back seat of the car and they just keep going and going. There's nothing in their brain that says, `Maybe I shouldn't say this. Maybe I should stop talking.' The directors really helped me to find the energy to keep the idea going. They just kept pushing me for more, and I usually needed a nap about halfway through each session!"
The mechanics of voice recording for Open Season prevented the actors from performing their scenes together. To meet that challenge, the directors were always ready to "act" as the scene partner, imbuing the dialogue with an approximation of the already-recorded-and, in certain instances, the not yet completed-recorded reading from their co-star.
Lawrence praises their tireless efforts in keeping the recording sessions on track and says, "They told me where I needed to be, what energy I needed to have and what I needed to project at any given moment. I didn't have the opportunity to meet Ashton [during recording]. Yet, when I look at the scenes in the finished movie, you would think that we had hung out, that we were familiar with each other's comic timing. That's a tribute to the magic the directors were able to achieve."
Capturing the vocal performances for an animated movie brings enormous dimension to the characters and, in turn, provides inspiration to everyone working on the film. A perfect example was the character of the increasingly deranged hunter, Shaw, as imagined by actor Gary Sinise. "Gary is a kind of buttoned-down, serious actor," observes Allers. "He approached Shaw in stages, increasing and accelerating the wackiness until he suddenly came out with this crazy laugh that we all loved. It was great fun to watch him transform himself into a mad man with this insane laugh."
For Sinise, voice sessions often occurred after he'd spent a full day filming his hit series "CSI: NY," which ironically turned out to be an advantageous situation for him. "I'd be working on the set of `CSI' all day - looking at DNA, and checking for clues, that kind of thing - my character is pretty low-key and totally focused on his work - and then I'd drop by the sound studio and do a two-hour voice session after work," recalls Sinise, "and really get to release a lot of tension, which was great. The character of Shaw is big and loud and `AARRRGGGHHH!'
- he's totally wild. It was unusual and very different from what I did all day long ... and a lot of fun."
According to Stacchi, Debra Messing brought her special gift of comedic charm to the role of Park Ranger Beth. "Beth is a little over-indulgent with Boog and she does kind of treat him like a dog, which makes for a funny situation, given Boog's size," says Stacchi. "When he asks her for a fishy cracker, there is a gentleness between them. When she sings him a lullaby, it is a very sweet moment. Beth's teddy bear song is really the heart of the movie."
Adds Culton: "When we started working with Debra, she was pregnant and we continued our work after she gave birth to her son. So, I think her personal journey added to the charm and authenticity of Ranger Beth. When she sang the teddy-bear song to Boog, she could relate to it as a mother."
Open Season offered the Emmy Award-winning Messing her first foray into animation, an art form she loves. She was happy to be able to act without "having to get all dressed up and put makeup on," she says. Yet the difference between taping in a sound booth as Beth, and performing before a live audience (during her multi-year starring run in the award-winning series "Will & Grace"), was somewhat of a challenge. "It wasn't easy for me at first," she admits, "because I didn't have the immediate gratification and that immediate gauge of how something was working. But that's the way it is with movies, and there were jokes that would make me laugh on the page, so I thought, `Well, you can't go wrong.' Still, it was fun to find moments that I never envisioned as funny, or weird, or quirky, and to play around with the material and be surprised at how it turned out. That made for a great, fun experience."
At the opposite end of the spectrum from the warm and fuzzy Beth is the curmudgeonly (yet also fuzzy) squirrel, McSquizzy, voiced by Scottish actor and comedian Billy Connolly. Connolly brought a wee bit o' his homeland to the imperious rodent, according to Donnie Long. "Billy Connolly added Scottish slang and phrasing to McSquizzy that we would not have guessed existed. It was gratifying to have such an excellent Scottish actor in the role."
As with the other actors, some of Connolly's voice sessions were videotaped, so that animators had the option of incorporating the actor's look and expressions into the character. Connolly says he enjoyed the process, but he was a bit confused at first as to what an animation director actually does. "When you turn up for an animated recording and you see the director, you ask yourself, `What, does he direct? Wee squirrels on pieces of paper?' But then you learn that you still have to be directed in terms of reading the lines and deciding on the mood of your performance. Could you do it angrier? Could you do it happier? Could you do it slower? You wind up doing four or five versions of every line. Now, I know how necessary the directors are, but before this experience, any time I saw an animated film or cartoon, I would ask, `What does the director do? Does he wait for Donald Duck to turn up? Tell him to go into makeup and get some powder on his beak?' Not anymore. Now I bloody well know."
During their journey through the forest, Boog and Elliot encounter a crew of beavers busily constructing a dam, under the direction of their foreman, Reilly (Jon Favreau). "Reilly is the cutest-looking beaver in the forest but, when his voice comes out, it's that of a hard hat construction worker. He's all power, all force," observes Culton.
Favreau brought a New Yorker's no-nonsense sensibility to his character. "I was very impressed with the implied cultural differences between the various species in the forest, like the Scottish squirrel," recalls Favreau. "I wanted to add a little bit of the American sense of pride in workmanship that our construction unions tend to embody. I thought that would be really funny coming out of the mouth of a beaver."
If Elliot is the lowest rung on the ladder of mule deer machismo, then Ian, the alpha deer, is at the very, very top. The prolific actor and voiceover artist Patrick Warburton was cast to fill Ian's hooves. The performer's signature baritone has voiced a variety of animated characters, from television's "The Tick" and "Buzz Lightyear of Star Command" to characters in such features as Hoodwinked, Chicken Little and The Emperor's New Groove.
"Yes, Ian is a little tough on Elliot," explains Warburton with a smile. "That's his job as leader of the herd - a group is only as strong as its weakest member, and all that. So he won't win any prizes for being warm and fuzzy - that's just not in his job description. I don't recall Vince Lombardi being all touchy-feely in his coaching, do you?"
Ian and his dictatorial ways actually reinforce the film's storyline. Observes Stacchi: "Ian, the alpha-male mule deer, is an important part of Elliot's story. Through him, we realize why Elliot is the way he is - he'd been picked on and kicked out of the herd by the biggest bully in the forest. This makes Elliot's desperate desire to have Boog as his friend resonate all the more. But, of course, in our forest, the bully actually turns out to be a childish idiot. Jill always referred to Ian as the dumbest high-school quarterback in the world. Our story department made sure he was funny and not too menacing, so he could be redeemed at the end."
Both Elliot and Ian are in love with a beautiful doe named Giselle, voiced by versatile television and stage actress Jane Krakowski, who came face to face with her own stereotypes of what being a doe really means: "When they tell you that you're going to be a doe and her name is Giselle, that old-fashioned vision pops into your head - `Oh, she's going to be all beautiful and light.' Then, when I met with the directors, I could see that they really wanted more of a feisty character. And the feistier she became, the more fun it was for me, and for all of us."
The main voice cast was rounded out by accomplished veteran actress Georgia Engel as Bobbie, a gregarious camper who loses her beloved dachshund, Mr.
Weenie, to the wild bunch, and Gordon Tootoosis as the level-headed Sheriff Gordy, Timberline's voice of reason.
All three directors participated in the recording process and, when the voiceovers were completed, Culton, Allers and Stacchi knew they had the "hub" of their movie. During the sessions, conducted over many months, the actors delivered their lines individually, working from storyboards in a recording studio. Now came time for the alchemic process of putting them all together. Observes producer Michelle Murdocca: "It's truly amazing when it's all cut together. Each actor brought something different and unique to the film."
In The Beginning, There Is The Drawing
"Every animated movie begins with a blank page," says Sony Pictures Animation executive vice president Sandra Rabins. Unlike a live action film that starts with a casting agent's copy of a script and a stack of headshots, an animated feature begins with artists creating storyboards. They illustrate the story with characters that are brought to life in still drawings.
Storyboards are initially conceived in a format similar to comic books, in which each square denotes a piece of the action. During the course of an animated film, thousands and thousands of sketches will be drawn in this format. Some will be posted on bulletin boards and office walls, most will be filed away and a few will make their way onto the screen after they have been greatly reformatted, refined and re-imagined.
"During the storyboarding phase, we go through a lot of trial and error, putting our characters in various situations, and their personalities start to emerge somewhat organically while the storyboard artists are working," explains Long. "We change and modify the characters to make them the most entertaining that they can possibly be. Once you start visualizing possibilities and personality traits, a much clearer character starts to emerge, making them easier to write and draw for."
Adds Stacchi: "Storyboarding is where it all happens. The story can be all laid out, the plot structured, and beats made clear and logical, but if space isn't made for the characters to come alive with their own idiosyncrasies and moments here, it will never happen later. We were lucky, in that our story department is full of flea-bitten, misfit mongrels just like Boog and Elliot, so they brought a lot of insight into the characters."
For Open Season, the early storyboards were the inspiration for the next four years of work for more than 200 artists and animators, who executed 1,223 shots, using more than 7,200 feet of film, from the more than 34,000 storyboard drawings produced.
The process of creating fully dimensional characters for Open Season began with character designer Carter Goodrich, who was assigned the monumental task of designing every character in the film. Goodrich is a contributing character designer for Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, and Shrek, whose illustrations have graced multiple covers of The New Yorker, and have appeared in Time, Newsweek, GQ, Playboy and the Atlantic Monthly. With bold lines and the strong shape-language for which he is known, Goodrich gave each animal and resident of Timberline his or her own distinct, whimsical personality.
"We worked with the storyboards from [head of story] David Feiss, which everyone really liked, and we tried to stay within the world he created," explains Goodrich. "We would supply a group of images and the directors would choose the ones they most liked. Then we would hone in on those and keep going until the final character design was completed."
Visual-development supervisor Richard Chavez worked closely with the storyboard department and the character-development team to fashion the film's overall production design. "We do preliminary work on the concept of the characters," says Chavez. "We help the directors create design attributes to define both character and story. This early process is very organic. There is a lot of flexibility at this stage, as things have not been narrowed down and the storyline is still in flux. So anything is possible."
Goodrich's initial drawings for the design of the characters are translated into the computer and then fleshed out by visual-development artist Michael Kurinsky, who creates paintings in Photoshop to establish texture and color, especially for the animal fur and human hair. "Each animal in the movie has a specific fur," explains Kurinsky. "The coarseness and denseness of beaver fur should look different from the soft fuzzy hair on the squirrels. McSquizzy has jowls like an old man's beard. Mr. Weenie, the dachshund, has short, shiny hair and the light falls like a ribbon on his back. The animal hair has highlights that are different from, say, Beth's human hair."
"All I do is hair," says Chris Yee, CG hair lead. "And there is a lot of it in Open Season. Elliot has the most hairs, about 3,500,000. Boog has 1,600,000 and Beth has 150,000 hairs. All together, you are talking about billions and billions of hairs."
After styling the hair with a new "combing" technology, the visual-effects team also developed a new "dynamic hair system." The new tools enabled fur to move in basic groups, yet still allowed each hair to shift and act independently of each other. This was essential to creating the stylized, authentic fur in the film. Because the film is full of active forest creatures, the team had to create many different fur styles, each with distinctive qualities and movements, reacting differently to various elements like wind, water, mud, dust and of course, sticky candy food fights. Ikeler's Imageworks team took great care to ensure that each strand would respond realistically to these influences. And after many a bad hair day, they were able to produce some of the most realistic, advanced effects work to date.
"When you see Boog's fur, you want to go into the screen and hug him," says Allers. "It's amazing. The growth patterns and the swirls where it changes direction in the middle of his chest are brilliant."
Another key hurdle for the effects team was water.
"The water in the sequence-in which Boog and Elliot inadvertently destroy a dam and flood the valley below-was one of the greatest challenges in the movie," recalls CG supervisor Darren Lurie. "Water, in general, moves in a certain way and if you try to slow it down or have it flow in ways that are not realistic, it tends to not look like water. Water is one of the most realistic things in the movie-we wanted it to seem alive; to possess scale and magnitude, since water is like a character in the film." Throughout the film, this "character" is seen in a wide range of permutations - at times calm, or raging, as a trickle or a rainstorm. Consequently, Ikeler's team had to create a realistic water system - one that flowed naturally, splashing and interacting with the surrounding environments and characters. This new water technology produced its own foam, white water, mist and waterfalls. And after color and lighting were applied, the water seamlessly integrated itself into the stylized 3D environment created around it.
Looking Ahead By Glancing Back
One of the most distinctive and original aspects of Open Season is the way that the film integrates the art of classic 2D animation with the technological advances and breakthroughs now possible because of 3D. "We have created tools that are totally unique for this film," notes producer Murdocca.
The filmmakers wanted the look of the movie to celebrate the essence of 2D paintings - the graphic lines, shadows and depth of field, for example - but they also wanted to see that quality translated into a new medium. "The biggest challenge in terms of the overall look of the film was working in more of the traditional 2D animation principles," says Sean P. Mullen, supervising animator. "In this film, we were able to take advantage of a lot of the basic animation principles that were previously very hard to do in CG."
Once the story was underway, the directors began considering the visual vocabulary they wanted to use. "One of my favorite books is Eyvind Earle's book of Christmas cards," says Culton. "Every card had this old graphic look, with snow and trees and logs and little skewed churches. And each card had a strong color palette." Earle, the renowned Disney background painter, was responsible for the styling, background and color for the classic films Sleeping Beauty, Lady and the Tramp and Fantasia. Culton suggested that the artists on Open Season use Earle's distinctive style as a starting-off point in the creation of Timberline and the sweeping landscapes of the forests and trees that would serve as the visual backdrop for the film.
The underlying principle of Earle's composition - the silhouettes and the graphic effect of these elements - is what the Open Season team tried to distill from his work. "Eyvind Earle's architecture has a certain shape language, a
