Disney's Feast Trailer

Today I watched a trailer for the upcoming Disney Animated Studios animated short Feast. Although very little of the narrative is made clear in the trailer. Literally a man finds a stray dog, starts feeding the dog, the dog eats a lot, finds a plant, then runs with the plant. But I was still intrigued.

Admittedly it doesn't look like the most original thing in the world, in fact fairly bog standard for Disney. We've seen this kind of thing many times before from them with animals, especially dogs that form relationships with humans then go off on an adventure, for example Oliver and Company, 101 Dalmatians etc.

But I don't have a problem with this. It looks incredibly formulaic and we've seen cute dog characters as main protagonists a thousand times before. But its a formula that works for Disney and to be honest, who does cute animal characters better than Disney?

Moving on, what gripped me about this animation is its style. The puppy character is incredibly simple looking and could probably be drawn by anyone within two minutes. But he's also rendered in 3D to give the film a very nice combination of 2D and 3D animation. The characters are basically flat compared to characters out of Wreck it Ralph for example that have textures and no obvious shadow lines.

The style of this animation reminds me of one of Disney's other shorts, the critically acclaimed 'Paper Man'. This used a similar style in that appeared to be traditionally 2D animation but it was rendered in 3D to give it a smoother look. Paperman was great so I am really looking forward to Feast. Even if it doesn't look particularly original.