Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Ending Title

Client: Sony Pictures Animation
Production Studio: DUCK studios
Executive Producer: Mark Medernach
Producer: Daniel Ridgers
Directors: Yellowshed (Comprised of designers Soyeon Kim and Todd Hemker)
Designers: Justin K. Thompson, Paul Rudish, Soyeon Kim, Michael Kurinsky and Chris Mitchell 
Lead Animators: Morgan Williams, Soyeon Kim and Todd Hemker 
Animators: Hsin-Ping Pan, Hsin-I Tseng
Effects Artist: Jesse Gregg
Image Prep Artist: Jinna Kim
Compositors: Todd Hemker, Erik Tillmans, Richard Ramazinski, Jesse Gregg
Technical Directors: Blake Robertson, Erik Tillmans, Richard Ramazinski

While I suppose I should focus specifically more on opening titles (Since it just makes things easier that way), I have to admit that the amount of effort put into Cloudy with a Chance of Meatball's end credits/titles really caught my attention. And hence it deserves a little write up of its own (I mean… I found myself watching it on someone else's tiny little screen, and she was sitting two rows ahead of me in the plane! If that doesn't say anything about it being attention getting, then I don't know what will).

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a 2009 American science fiction comedy film produced by Sony Pictures Animation, based loosely (The loosest of the loose might I unhelpfully add) on the children's book of the same name by Judi and Ron Barrett. While the book focuses on an elderly man as he tells his grandchildren a bedtime story about food raining down upon the town of Chewandswallow, the film instead focuses on an enthusiastic wannabe scientist who builds (Or accidentally messes around with) a machine to create such a miraculous phenomenon. A sequel was released on September 27 2013 just last year, focusing an original plot instead of basing it on the second book.

While the main film is animated in 3D, the end titles are instead done in a stylized 2D animation (Though then again this is a practice carried on by a lot of 3D animated films, it just depends on how elaborate they can be) with huge amounts of details, textures, colors and designs put into it, giving it a pretty cut-out sort of look (Albeit with much more fluid movements from the characters).

Practically all the characters featured throughout the film are shown in a cheerful, fun and happy sort of 'after party'. Notably a variety of different fonts are used for the credits, which works fine for this case considering how so much has already been put into the designs of the characters and settings, suitable fonts are chosen for the medium in which they are displayed on, such as when Benjamin Bratt's name is displayed on a heart rate monitor, a more digital-looking sort of font will hence be used.

The animators' aim was to end the film on an absurdly happy note, set in a zany, crazy, positively colorful wonderland made of food (Even more so than Wreck-It Ralph's Sugar Rush world). Contents in the ending sequence were based from story ideas that could then provide some sort of resolution with the storytelling of the film itself.

A few inspirations used for the sequence include The Muppets, the film Twice Upon a Time, illustrator Miroslav Sasek, Yellow Submarine, Monty Python, Schoolhouse Rock and Xanadu (For e.g,  the quality of the character animation was influenced by The Muppets and Twice Upon a Time while the FX were inspired by Xanadu).

From left to right: The Muppets, Twice Upon a Dream, Miroslav Sasek (One of his Illustrations),
Yellow Submarine, Monty Python (One of the Opening Sequences), Schoolhouse Rock and Xanadu

It took close to two months to get a somewhat 'locked' animatic done, seeing that there were so many wonderful ideas being thrown about among the teams that worked on it. There was however the issue of also going over the strict duration of 2 minutes and 30 seconds that was given to them, and trimming back to that length proved incredibly difficult (Consider that almost everything was built with a continuous camera move).

Worked on by several groups of artists, most of the designs are handled by several teams of artists at Sony. One that was led by Justin Thompson worked on the background designs, another one led by Paul Rudish designed all the main characters for animation. While incidental characters designs and FX are handled DUCK studios, as well as the preps and rigs for animation once all the designs done by the Sony teams were handed over to them.

The project was done entirely with Photoshop and After Effects. The scenes were built in 3D space and done multi plane to give the environments some diminution for the final 3D stereoscopic output (A feature I myself am interested in using for future projects). No plug-ins or third party applications were used as they were aiming to give the overall animation a much more traditional and hand made look.

Plants Layout Design

All title cards needed to be on screen for an equal and set amount of time, it was extremely difficult for the animators to get as much out of the character performances due to the considerably limited amount of time given to them. Another challenge was to hold back on some of the character animation (Despite there obviously being so much potential to animate these characters at their zaniest), so that it would not take too much attention away from the credit text.

A number of details that the animators that were particularly proud of were sadly lost in the camera movement of this sequence's transition (Such as a goat animation by their lead animator Morgan Williams and some beautiful plant designs by Soyeon). It's sad making these sacrifices for the finished product… though thankfully in this day and age, these cut out/missed out details can be shown to us animation enthusiasts online or on Blue-Ray and DVD extras. (And if I was them, I would probably bug my entire family to look at them, even if they weren't interested LOOK MAMA).

While my title sequence will not be as colorful as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatball's, I find this to still be a really helpful reference to look to. It can work as complete contrast to my own work (That uses limited colors and is quite simplified in terms of details and will possibly use only one type of font if possible) and of course gives me some ideas for the 2D character animating (Seeing that I will also be using Photoshop and After Effects).

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