Do Penguins Fly?

This short animation is 8 years old now, but it's the stage a year in front of me which is why I thought it would be good to look at, because I think it's important to see how far this guy has come with his studio. But at the same time a big limitation of 3DCG animation is how fast software develops. There's always new features and new things to learn, and software has come on leaps and bounds since this was made.

Now I don't particularly like the character design of the little eskimo but I do think that the way he leaves the boat and acts throughout this short is very heavily inspired by the traditional 2D hand drawn animations you see, like looney tunes. I think this is very unusual for 3D CG animated shorts to remind of, normally they have there own style within the computer and it takes a lot to bring it out. This also being a limitation.

I have since looked at what Tsumikae has been up to, they are now one of five who run Planktoon studio. Which seem to be one of the most productive studio's I've looked at in a while, there's so much content on there website. Their studio reel is incredible, they appear to have their fingers in all kind of pies, from animation for games, to commercials to short award winning films, to idents for tv channels. The sophistication of the animation is on leaps and bounds from flying penguins. But what will always resonate with me is the humour in that, I'm pretty sure you'd be hard to find another animation with a flying killer whale in.



SHOWREEL 2015 from Planktoon on Vimeo.