When the family settles down to watch DreamWorks Animation latest release Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, they will be greeted by a group of unfamiliar yet familiar faces.
To help trumpets enter the newest era, the studio has unveiled a new behind-the-scenes set to debut nationwide in a special November 21
Shrek Franchise sequel — ahead of its December theatrical release. 26 – A second fantastic sequence spotlighting some of the studio’s most beloved and long-running franchises, Only then was its classic lunar shot set.
“We bring dreams to life on the screen, so the idea is basically to let you enter a new kid’s dream. You reintroduce these iconic characters that we’ve created over the years,” says art designer Kendal Cronkhite, who helped lead the project. “The kid surfs and floats and flies through these galaxies and puts all those movie characters that look so different into one whole.”
The journey begins with an animation job Room’s latest work, The Bad Guys
, and then lead the audience through interaction in How to Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda, Boss Baby and Trolls. Viewers are guided through land, sea and space, ending with Shrek — a title that producer Suzanne Buirgy likens to DWA’s Mickey Mouse.
” Shrek
kicked off the whole thing with a really modern story, realistic look and modern jokes . It’s not timeless. It’s not classic. It’s there, right now. The use of celebrity voices wasn’t really done at that frequency until DreamWorks came along,” DWA president Maggie Cohen said of the film’s transformation into a franchise. industry impact. “But what I like about Shrek is that it’s irreverent and speaks to outsiders. It becomes a symbol of success—you don’t have to play by the rules. For me , a great flag for the brand.”
Throughout, viewers are guided by what Cronkhite describes as DreamWorks’ “fantastic” reimagining of the human silhouette, sitting on the new moon. Long known as “Moon Boy,” it was renamed “Moon Child,” the team told The Hollywood Reporter
that they removed “various genders” specific things” from the original model, so the silhouette can represent the studio’s fans and young dreamers more broadly.
“We like the idea that we now have A Moon Child, not necessarily a Moon Boy, because we want that child to be attractive to everyone,” Buirgy said.
“exist The studio, we want to say that all dreamers are welcome here, and when you think about who the iconic dreamers are, it’s the Moon Child,” Cohen added. “People wish on the stars, people look to the sky for inspiration. Get them down from the moon, surf the skies, visit new and familiar alike, and you’ve set the stage for the entertainment to come. “
Also undergoing slight design revisions are the animated characters themselves, whose art style has been revamped to create a stronger visual continuity. These include features like Characters like Kung Fu Panda‘s Po has less detail in his fur, while Shrek trio has been made according to the advancement of animation technology
“The idea was to simplify all the characters so they look more like a graphic character in that graphic world,” says Cronkhite “They’re going to be a little bit lower quality to fit that space better. “
the top of the whole piece so that it has consistency,” adds Buirgy. “Then we actually had three animators working on these characters.”
Then all the characters were set against the background of 2D art, as a reference to the matter that connects all life and makes dreams . “As humans, we all dream, so it’s part physical, part magic, part REM. That’s where our imagination comes from, so I wanted to put all of that into our DNA,” Cronkhite told THR.
The opening track also offers an imaginative new take on the studio’s longstanding theme of fairytale music, composed and modified by Harry Gregson-Williams, who originally With John Powell as Shrek
. In addition to playing tempo, the theme also incorporates more strings (versus other studios’ reliance on horns and brass) to boost the energy and create a more “celebrating” feel at the end, says Cohn.
“Music is emotional. It’s our emotional connection with Dreamworks, so the question is how do we change it a little bit to match what’s going on visually , but keeping that wow factor,” Buirgy said. “It’s a more dynamic opening than the past.”
“I love romantic, sensual, touching melodies that I want to keep and not feel like we’re going to break the door ,” Cohen added.
Throughout its history, the studio has toyed with both standardized iterations of the curtain (think balloon vs. decoy emphasis) and custom variants of what the movie previously played, such as Bee Movie , Madagascar 2 , Shark Tale , Monsters vs. Aliens and Megamind
. The plan now is to combine these approaches, with the studio sticking to the dream color palette but leaving room to change titles and characters in Biomes.
All — minus the possible Shrek , Cronkhite said — are replaceable once 281, according to Cohen. “If we open another movie with these characters, we don’t necessarily want to repeat characters that are going to be in the next movie, and if that does happen, so we do, so they’re ‘plug and play,'” Burgi said. “You could literally take one and replace the other with a new character from our beloved franchise.”
All in all, it took about eight weeks to make it behind the scenes. Months, produced by team to People, Up 26 Collaborate, consult and contribute separately. The group was led by DreamWorks veterans with decades of experience: Buirgy, Cronkhite, and visual effects supervisor Matt Baer, who worked with Mike Trull to figure out the technical elements of swapping biomes and more.
That same year, Cohen’s own greenlight came out, perhaps a full circle ahead of the studio’s hit New Age Shrek The franchise started with a more realistic CGI feel and now, with its Puss in Boots
sequel, embodies an innovative story Book visual style. It also debuts in the studio’s growing library of film-to-TV crossover series and theatrical release challenges for films in general.
“I feel like we’re really making a strong creative statement of really trying to own a franchise. But how do you really break through the chaos of the originals? So I thought it was a good time to make a brand statement and remind people why they might come to a DreamWorks movie,” Cohen said of the timing of the new curtain launch. “Without one style, not choosing a character but picking from the diversity of characters we have in the film with different tones shows that we welcome other choices.”
A previous version of this story mistook Mike Trull for Matt Trull.
2023
