BAFTA-nominated UK shop Blue Zoo Animation Studio (http://blue-zoo.co.uk) is entering the annual holiday toon stakes with an adorable new CG short, Lynx & Birds. The ultra-cute and comical story about love triumphing over fear is available to watch now on Vimeo.
The short is framed as an Attenborough-style wildlife mockumentary, in which a fluffy mama cardinal and her baby bird come face to face with a fearsome lynx. But a slight chink in the food chain reveals a heart-warming twist.
Now in its sixth year, Blue Zoo (Digby Dragon, Numberblocks) runs a popular company-wide shorts program to encourage experimentation and creative collaboration in the studio. This year’s Christmas challenge was presented in July with two requirements: to produce a characterful creature and create fur — lots of it. Animation Directors Simone Giampaolo and Francesco Mazza decided to take this to the extreme, producing a storyline with enough fur and feathers to test the capability of any render farm.
The wild and exotic lynx cat is rarely seen on screens, so the Blue Zoo look development team dove into researching the creature’s every movement, characteristic and behavior. This lead to a finely honed CG cat which balanced realistic elements and cartoony pantomime-villain performance.
The beautiful snowy woodland of Lynx & Birds is further enriched by a soundtrack performed by a 40-piece orchestra, composed by Brollyman.
“We always encourage our artists to challenge themselves and the studio with each new short, and this time they’ve really smashed our expectations to bits! From creating the challenging animals covered in beautifully rendered fur to working with an epic 40-piece orchestra, we couldn’t be prouder of the film everyone has collaborated to make,” said Tom Box, Co-Founder of Blue Zoo Animation with Adam Shaw and Oli Hyatt.
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