I had a couple of pleasant surprises recently: the CG animated movies “Puss in Boots” and “Tangled”. I confess I didn’t expect a lot from either of them and in some ways they met those expectations pretty much exactly, but they both had some really funny moments and some enjoyable character animation. I actually liked the character animation in “Puss in Boots” more than the “Shrek” movies, with some natural, fluid motion and subtle, character-specific body language.

“Tangled” had possibly my favourite CG human animation to date, as well as some superb timing and poses on one of the funniest characters I’ve seen for a while: Maximus the horse. Great stuff! To get the main humans so right, though, in both the subtle and the broad acting (along with appealing designs for the main two characters), well, the Disney folks really set a high standard with this movie I think. In fact, while I’ve enjoyed other CG movies more than this one in terms of their complete experience, I’m not sure that any of them have inspired me to just enjoy top-quality character animation like “Tangled” (although “The Incredibles” provides tough competition!).

I did the above sketch in TwistedBrush Pro Studio.

Rapunzel in Boots