History of Warner Animation Group Part 1

In the wake of the closure of Blue Sky Studios, there has been a new animation studio to fill in their niche: Warner Animation Group (WAG for short), whose credits over the years include The LEGO Movie, Storks, and Smallfoot. What makes WAG similar to Blue Sky is that while they're not as successful as the likes of Disney, Pixar, and DreamWorks, WAG is willing to be more experimental than, say, Illumination. For the next two days, in honor of WAG's 10th anniversary, I will talk about all ten of their films and talk about what happened behind the scenes.

Before all that, however, I’ll do a brief recap of Warner Bros Feature Animation. Since the Looney Tunes are so iconic, and many, and I mean MANY, people already talked about the old Looney Tunes cartoons, I will, instead, put a link to a book that kids might be interested in: What Is the Story of Looney Tunes? by Steve Korte.

What Is the Story of Looney Tunes?: Korte, Steve, Who HQ, Hinderliter, John: 9781524788360: Amazon.com: Books

During the 90s, after the success of Tiny Toon Adventures, Batman: The Animated Series, and Animaniacs, Warner Bros decided to jump on the animated feature train to compete against Disney, who were releasing hit after hit with Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. Warner Bros Feature Animation was founded in 1994, and they produced five movies: Space Jam (1996), Quest for Camelot (1998), The Iron Giant (1999), Osmosis Jones (2001), and Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003). Unfortunately, all these films, except for Space Jam, were box-office failures. Here’s a more detailed link about WBFA and their films below.

The Fascinating World of Warner Bros. Feature Animation - Immortallium's Blog (immortalliumblog.com)

After the failure of Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Warner Bros decided to shut down the studio. From there, they decided to save their animation energy onto television and the direct-to-video market, mainly using the properties of Hanna-Barbera and the DC Superheroes. However, they’d still distribute animated films from other studios such as Corpse Bride (2005), The Ant Bully (2006), Happy Feet (2006), and even the anime epic Summer Wars (2009).

In 2008, Dan Lin suggested an action-packed movie starring LEGOs. When Warner Bros first heard of the idea, they thought it would be too similar to Michael Bay’s Transformers movies, but after looking at the LEGO Star Wars video games of the time, they figured out that it COULD be possible to make a full-length LEGO movie. This idea would turn into The LEGO Movie.

Released February 7th, 2014, The LEGO Movie tells the story of an ordinary construction worker named Emmet Brickowski, who simply agrees with what everyone else says. One day, Emmet falls into a pit and touches a red rectangular object named The Piece of Resistance. After meeting the punk girl Wyldstyle and wise wizard Vitruvious, Emmet gets involved with a wacky adventure to save the LEGO universe from being frozen with Kragle.

While it wouldn’t be until late 2011 for The LEGO Movie to be greenlit, Lin was already at work to create a team for the movie and map out the plan for what a LEGO movie would be about by writing the script with Kevin Hageman. In Summer 2010, Warner Brothers brought on Phil Lord and Chistopher Miller, who previously worked on Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs for Sony, to direct the film and write the screenplay. Chris McKay, who previously worked on the hit [adult swim] series Robot Chicken, was also hired to co-direct the film and bring back Animal Logic, the same studio who worked on Happy Feet, to animate the movie. While the film was without a doubt CGI, the filmmakers wanted it to emulate stop-motion films that would use LEGOs as their medium. As well as animating by 2s (12 frames per second) rather than 1s (24 frames per second), having the articulations be restricted to how a real LEGO figure could move, and examining real LEGO toys, the effects in the film, like fire, water, and smoke, were also all made from LEGO bricks, as were the backgrounds. Animal Logic achieved this by creating a software called LEGO Digital Designer, which allowed the animators to build their sets before they turn it into files for their own animation software.

Those blue round things are, in fact, water.

In January 2013, Warner Bros decided to reenter the animated film race by creating a Think Tank, which is similar to Pixar’s Braintrust, to have a group of filmmakers come together to think of ideas and give feedback on their movies. Along with Lord and Miller, the Think Tank consisted of Glenn Ficarra, John Requa, and Nicholas Stoller, and thus rebooting their animated feature division as Warner Animation Group.

When The LEGO Movie was released, it did very well at the box-office, earning over 468 million dollars at the box-office on a small 60-million-dollar budget, and got great reviews from critics and audiences. When the Oscars for 2015 were announced, fans were enraged that it didn’t get the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, though it did get nominated for Best Original Song. Phil Lord, however, didn’t really care, as he admitted on Twitter that he made his own Oscar out of LEGOs.

In September 2016, WAG released their second film, Storks. In this film, a big question is answered: What would happen if babies were really delivered by storks? Well, in this movie, storks used to deliver babies, but they stopped because babies are too precious and annoying. Now, they’ve repurposed their headquarters into an Amazon-esque website called Cornerstore. However, one human baby left behind was now 18 years old, and her name was Tulip (Katie Crown). Junior (Andy Samburg), son of Cornerstore boss Hunter (Kelsey Grammer), has been assigned to fire Tulip so he can be promoted to boss of the company. However, Tulip accidentally turns on the baby-making machine (in this movie, babies are made from letters) and creates a pink-haired baby girl! Now it’s up to Junior and Tulip to return the baby to her parents without Hunter or his assistant Pigeon Toady (Stephen Kramer Glickman) finding out.

Production for Storks began shortly after WAG was founded, and Think Tank alumni Nicholas Stoller and Pixar veteran Doug Sweetland, who was an animator on their first seven films and directed the short film ‘Presto’, were put on board as directors. Stoller was inspired by the 1987 live-action comedy ‘Raising Arizona’, starring Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter, and noticed that in the movie, every character wanted to keep the baby for themselves. He and Sweetland incorporated that element into the movie, as well as adding crazy cartoony antics reminiscent of the old Looney Tunes cartoons. This is Warner Animation Group, after all.

The wolf pack forming a car, which they can’t do in real life.

Since Animal Logic was busy with a LEGO spinoff starring Batman, the animation for Storks was done at Sony Pictures Imageworks, best known for working on the majority of Sony Pictures Animation’s films.

When Storks premiered, it got mixed reviews from critics and audiences, and only did modestly at the box-office: It earned back 183 million dollars on a 70-million-dollar budget, perhaps because it had to compete against Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. However, Storks would win the Heartland Award for Truly Moving Picture, while other eligible films like Zootopia, Finding Dory, and even Kubo and the Two Strings got snubbed!

WAG’s next film was The LEGO Batman Movie, released February 2017. In this film, Batman’s butler and caretaker Alfred discovers that the Caped Crusader’s biggest fear isn’t snakes, clowns, or even snake-clowns, but is, in fact, being alone. For Batman’s sake, Alfred adopts a young Batman fan named Dick Greyson, much to the Dark Knight’s dismay. Meanwhile, the Joker schemes up the ultimate plan to get rid of Batman for good and take over Gotham City.

In The LEGO Movie 1, part of its humor is the heavy use of pop-culture references, so it would make sense for Batman to become a prominent side character who’s an egomaniac that satirizes the dark and gritty side of him that his movies often portray him as. As an idea for a spinoff, they decided to give this Batman his own movie, as it would still retain the style and tone of the original film. Chris McKay, who was both a story and animation supervisor for The LEGO Movie, was director for this film. The pop-culture aspect would turn into a massive homage to the entire franchise, highlighting many of Batman’s moments from the comics, shows, and movies.

For McKay, his first job as a director was a tough one, especially when the schedule was limited to about 2 ½ years to develop an entire animated movie. He even had a hard time to develop his own ideas for the picture, including how he wanted to portray both Batman and his sidekick Robin, who are, simply put, as different as night and day.

When The LEGO Batman Movie premiered, it did very well at the box-office, earning over 312 million dollars on an 80-million-dollar budget. It also got great reviews from critics, and some fans even consider this movie a predecessor to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Much like The LEGO Movie, fans were outraged when ‘LEGO Batman’ got snubbed for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, and instead, The Boss Baby was nominated that year.

Also released in 2017 was another LEGO spinoff, The LEGO Ninjago Movie, which premiered September 22nd of that year. Set in the Japan-inspired city of Ninjago, The LEGO Ninjago Movie tells the story of Lloyd, son of Ninjago’s arch-nemesis Lord Garmadon. Lloyd is also the leader of a group of ninja warriors with elemental powers (except for Lloyd): Cole, Jay, Zane, Nia, and Kai. When Garmadon summons a giant live-action cat to wreak havoc among Ninjago, it’s up to the ninja team, along with Master Wu and Garmadon, to find an artifact that will deter the cat away from the city.

Boy, this has got to be one of the most convoluted plots for an animated movie since Chicken Little! The reason for this was because of the film’s rather troubled production history: While there was a popular LEGO Ninjago series running on Cartoon Network during production, two of the show’s writers, Dan and Kevin Hageman, came on board to work on the script. However, instead of having this be based on the TV series, the movie decided to go with a new take on the toy line with a tone that stays closer to The LEGO Movie so the film itself could count as a ‘LEGO Movie’. As for directing duties, it was left in the hands of Tron: Uprising director Charlie Bean. While there are no official reports about it, word has it that production for ‘LEGO Ninjago’ was completely chaotic, with three credited directors and nine screenwriters. Not to mention that Master Wu being voiced by Jackie Chan doesn’t really fit the character.

When The LEGO Ninjago Movie premiered, critics didn’t really like it, and the film only earned back 123 million dollars on a 70-million-dollar budget. For the people at LEGO, this was the first sign that there were some cracks on the LEGO Movie empire.

In September 2018, WAG released their fifth feature film, Smallfoot, based on the unpublished book ‘Yeti Tracks’ by Sergio Pablos. On the top of Mt. Everest lies a village of yetis. They live by strict rules and rituals written on stones. Migo is destined to be the next gong-ringer, as it's said that the sun (which they think is a giant snail) will rise once the gong has rung. After being launched over the gong and over the village by mistake, Migo discovers a human that crashed on the mountain, which he calls a Smallfoot. When Migo tells the other yetis that he saw a Smallfoot, the Stone-Maker banishes him, as one of the stones says that there's no such thing as Smallfoot. Migo meets a group of yetis called SES (Smallfoot Evidentiary Society), who have found evidence of this legendary creature, and Migo sets off on a quest to prove that Smallfoot exists.

Karey Kirkpatrick, who previously directed the DreamWorks film Over the Hedge (2006) and the overlooked live-action Nickelodeon film Imagine That (2009), was director for Smallfoot, and you can see his imprint from Over the Hedge on this film. 

Migo stuck in between two cliffs.

Much like Storks, the animation for Smallfoot was done at Sony Pictures Imageworks. This time, it is more evident with the character designs looking no different than those from Hotel Transylvania. This is also evident in the fact that Natalia Freitas and Karl Herbst, who have both worked on the Hotel Transylvania films, also worked on Smallfoot.

For Imageworks, Smallfoot represented a technological challenge because the Yetis had lots of hair, and hair is the hardest thing to animate in computer animation. Herbst stated that for Smallfoot, the Imageworks crew created a new hair shader that used true multiple scattering within the hair. They then extended that hair shading model to add control over the distribution around the hair fiber to model the effect of animal hair, which tends to scatter differently than human hair. This gave artists the ability to create lots of different hair looks, which were not based on human hair, as was the case with their older models. Stonekeeper was the most technologically complex character on the project, as he had long braided hair on his head, a beard, shaggy arms, and a cloak made of stones. The studios’ in-house tool, Kami, built all of the hair at render time and also allowed them to add procedurals to the hair at that point.

As for what critics thought of Smallfoot, it got mixed reviews like Storks, but this time better, with 76% on Rotten Tomatoes compared to 65%. As for the box-office, Smallfoot earned over 214 million dollars on an 80-million-dollar budget. Smallfoot was also notable for being the only animated movie from 2018 to win the Heartland Award for Truly Moving Picture.

To be continued in Part 2.