A Bit Twitchy, There, Pal

When Professor Leeper told us we were being shown a movie by Blue Sky, I knew I’d heard the name before. I wasn’t able to associate it, though, until he mentioned Ice Age. So when I saw Bunny for the first time, I was able to see a few similarities in the style of the animation and characters. The most obvious trait of the titular Bunny character was her twitchiness, at least in my eyes, because I recognized that trait from another Blue Sky character; Scrat the squirrel.

Scrat and the Bunny both have a distinct rodent-like behavior that makes them stand out from more human characters. Not that they don’t have human traits; both are very expressive and have a good measure of intelligence, but both have this very twitchy behavior that prevents them from being still figures. They can’t stay still, even more so than other organic characters in animation, and the attention to that detail is both fascinating and appreciated. They act like small rodents just as much as they look like small rodents. I know that this doesn’t seem like much of a big deal, and that this effect is pretty commonplace amongst other productions, but the way Blue Sky pulls the effect off makes both characters seem so much more lifelike.

Also, I apologize for not being able to include a video of Bunny; Blogger's search function won't show the video, which probably means that due to copyright reasons it is not allowed in a Blogger post.