Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2

I went and saw Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 the other week after much anticipation. After seeing the first one when it first came out I was blown away with the animation and I love the aesthetic style of the characters. 4 years later the sequel came out and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was able to watch it with a greater knowledge of animation and notice things that I wouldn't have known about when watching the first film back all those years ago.

Cloudy is one of those films that is extremely cartoony, the animation is over the top and in many scenes the characters aren't restricted by human constraints e.g. stretchy limbs and breaking of the joints to create a more fluid motion in the arms or legs is a common feature that arises in both films. In animation you can break the joints, but it should be done in a subtle way that can enhance the pose, however because this film is so stylised it can get away with it as it fits in with the overall feel and aesthetic of the animated feature.

I've always been a fan of this style of animation and it seems to be an occurrence with Sony Pictures Animation as they used this style in Hotel Transylvannia. It's taking the poses and really pushing them to get an appealing performance. As an audience, you know that movements like this wouldn't really be possible as a human yet it is so enjoyable to watch. I think depending on the context of a scene would determine whether this type of animation would be suitable. As you can see with Cloudy it's not used throughout the film, just in certain places to convey emotions such as, panic, excitement, fast past action etc. Having a whole film in this extreme cartoon style would be overkill and it would lose its appeal.

I would really love to try out this style at some point as it's something I've held back on so far. It would be interesting to see how I would take to it and what I could achieve. What I might do for a test and to get to grips with this, is take an over the top movement from Cloudy and try and replicate it myself, then from this I could hopefully go on and create my own shot/scene.