Mission: StitchPossible
Summer movie season is in full effect – but what does that mean for Animation?
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👋🏻 SUMMERS STARTS NOW.
After one massive miss from Disney’s live-action reimagining factory with Snow White, rumors started swirling of shutdowns and cancellations for all of these animation-as-IP reboots. But then STITCH happened.
This weekend was one of the biggest in recorded movie history which means we’re going to see a lot more kick into action. Disney’s discovered their own blue-furred rascal, and I fully expect STITCH get used like SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, if only more omnipresent across theme parks, commercial collaborations, and merchandise everywhere.
At the same time, Cartoon Brew asks the question on everyone’s mind; where are the animated originals that used to run the summer theater season?
Other than Pixar’s ELIO, there’s not much headed to the big screen when it comes to animation…
📃 What’s inside this edition of KEYS & CURVES?
Animation: The Man Who Made Stitch
Motion Design: Type Takeover
Tools + Training: Moho On My Mind
Spotlight: Better Animating Through Science
ANIMATION STATION
A Good Time To Be Stitch.
Wild Robot is number one on Netflix.
Lilo & Stitch makes $341.7M worldwide on opening weekend.
The Isle of Berk is Epic Universe’s sleeper hit and another Dragon film is set to hit theaters.
Has one animator ever had a bigger weekend?
2025 belongs to one person: Chris Sanders – and it begs the question, why isn’t the animation industry running to it’s ranks looking for the next visionary source of some of the biggest IP this side of Marvel or Pixar?
That’s a question worthy of an entire podcast (or visual essay even?) but for now, we’re sharing some of the best moments in Chris’s career, in the form of inspiration for you to build off of his example.
Our friends over at Animation Obsessive wrote at length about the SHAPE AND COLOR OF LILO & STITCH, Chris’s original Lilo & Stitch pitchbook, and have you ever heard of The Big Bear Aircraft Company? (Or the story behind it all, straight from Chris himself)
Alain Seguin’s wonderful 52 TIPS FOR ANIMATORS is available digitally.
Blur Studios created this entire Secret Level episode in Unreal.
DOOM goes gigantic with the new trailer for DOOM: THE DARK AGES
Beautiful frames from THE SUNKEN KNIGHT pitch happening at Annecy
The full pilot episode of SPICE FRONTIER is available on Youtube.
Miyazaki’s first anime DETECTIVE BOY CONAN is streaming now.
RocketBoiArt posting doodles and now I want a game this loose and fluid 👀
MOTION MADNESS
Crossing The Streams.
This Stefan Kunz breakdown is the first time I’ve seen someone mix straight ahead cel animation with keyframes of photographs in Procreate (Dreams?) – which has me really excited about the further blending together of what sometimes can feel like two very different disciplines of animation and motion design. I haven’t really spent much time animating in Procreate yet – anyone out there take one of Stefan’s courses?
Kinetic type and motion branding are taking over my feeds these days; it feels like brands are starting to understand how important it is to build with animation from the onset?
It seems silly to us to say that how your logo moves and your positioning animates consistently should be as important as what font you choose and what your color palette is – but up until now it was easy for motion to be an afterthought.
That’s why when I see something like this ALT Games branding from Dia Studio, I smile. The idea that the logo operates as a controller is such an obvious and delightful idea that only comes to life when motion is built into the design process. I’m on the lookout for more examples of motion branding that sings like this one – share ‘em when you see them!
Speaking of kinetic type, Mario De Meyer is pushing the limits of new Cavalry features as they appear in the wild and fresh out of the beta. Cavalry seems like the new playground for bringing type to life in ways that would be difficult to iterate on in After Effects.
This broadcast graphics package goes hard with CC Card Dance
Super fun GUI animation built with simple shapes + native effects
Ford Mustang BTS with loads of motion tests from Jeff Thomson
TOOL TIME
The moment to MOHO is… now?
Forgive me for the hard sell, but I’ve got MOHO on my mind right now.
I’ve been boarding out a station ID for TOONAMI and wondering if there’s a better way to go at animating it – I’ve played with MOHO in the past but after evaluating it’s incredible flexibility when it comes to various rigging approaches, I’m all in now. Bone constraints that support easy IK, shape layers, frame-by-frame, replacement, and even close to the metal point-level animation?
It’s a bit hard to absorb all the ways it runs circles around animating characters in After Effects – even something as small as being able to animate layer order completely rewrites the rules if you’ve been struggling with slow, clunky, and third-party dependent animation tools in AE.
While we all love what DUIK, Limber, and Rubberhose offer – I can tell you the speed of playback and the fluid interactivity in the viewport brings back the fun in character work.
If you’ve ever given up on animating characters because it was frustrating in After Effects – I strongly urge you to give it a shot in MOHO. Here’s some of my favorite resources that I find myself returning to over and over the last few weeks:
SCIENCE IN THE SPOTLIGHT
One More Thing.
One thing you may not know about me is that way back when, before I started on this journey of animation as a career, I was in the science program and on my way to becoming a chemical engineer.
Now, it’s taken me a long time to figure out the thread on what I still connect to from my days studying to become a scientist – but I finally found an example that connects chemistry to animation!
Take a look at this close-up inspection of different elements coming together and look at what wonderful animation references is sitting just under our noses if we take the time (and a microscope) to examine – some of those chemical reactions look oddly like Trapcode Particular experiments!
Know someone that should spend some time in our Spotlight? Let us know who!
Keep on slinging the keys and riding those curves, and we’ll check back in next week! 🤩
One thing that doesn't often get discussed with regards to Lilo and Stitch is the importance of it being made at the Florida studio. They were a ragtag group of misfits out there that were semi left alone. While the LA studio were making bloated duds like Atlantis and Treasure Planet, Florida took real creative risks and came out with Mulan and Lilo & Stitch (Two of the best of that era). Instead of constantly remaking nostalgia hits, I'd love for Disney to do more to re-create the conditions where interesting original work like Stitch can be born.