Little review
So I did see Secret Life of Pets, after doing some shopping downtown with R and L ^^ There were some things I wasn’t super into about it, but other things I really loved! Basically the animation was gorgeous, I could see the effort that went into it with accuracy to real life animal movements balanced with aesthetically pleasing transitions. The palettes were bright, pretty and inviting, and the action scenes absolutely filled with different characters moving at once, in their own ways, so it’d be really cute to spy a little cat in the background climbing a thing independently of what was going on, but still with attention paid to the animation. At times there was maybe even slightly too much going on where I couldn’t actually focus enough to see anything in a big scene, but that may be my shitty eyesight coming into play! Oh, and I really noticed when some of the facial animation was synched right up to the voice inflection, to hilarious effect (especially with Albert Brooks’ character) ^^ Ooh, and I liked how the secondary sound effects for the animals were animal sounds, like burbling or yowling. Also casting was fun - I sorta wished Louie CK had just gone full Louie on that voice (I mean he basically did, but I’d want to see his actual character Louie, like if in the writing that dog was Louie). I’m always happy when Hannibal Buress gets work, and Jenny Slate has a pretty awesome voiceover talent! And of course the little montage at the end was super adorable. And the gardening Minions short was cute too, though it’s not exactly my humor I enjoyed the ending and the gnome crossover ^^ And that piranha XDDD
I personally had a slight issue with the character designs - I don’t like when the no-neck body type is paired with the too-humany face/eyes thing (although the butterball shapes did often result in cute animation - and I sorta wished they’d gone for no-eyebrow expression animation for all of the characters, not just some), and I’m seldom a fan of the ‘make it really ugly on purpose for interest’ Ice Age school of design (like those alligator heads, eww - and I wish not all the feral cats had radioactive eyes) :P Also sometimes it seemed like a few components didn’t mesh perfectly (like I remember seeing someone’s tongue action and it almost looked like (albeit pretty) 2d animation on the 3d body animation. And plotwise, what happened with the big snake was a bit jarring :P but all in all it was a pretty simple premise. All nitpicks though. And I hated the song in the beginning :P but most of the rest of the soundtrack was cute and appropriate! 7/10 might not pay again, but would watch again.
Do people really practice tattooing on pigs when they’re alive? ;_;
Still trying to sort things out with upcoming stuff, I will post about that later ^^ I wish I wasn't missing Nobuo Usematsu with the SF Symphony!