I just learned that the theme music for the Sugar Rush game seen in Wreck it Ralph is performed in Japanese by the girl group AKB48. In the english version a well. Very odd choice. I guess it's supposed to be a Japanese developed fictional game then? Anyway, if you get past the intro by AKB48, there is a japanese trailer with a few new scenes. One that stood out to me was Veneloppe being bullied by a character I haven't seen in other trailers.
The short playing with Wreck it Ralph is called Paperman and I saw it at this year's Ottawa Interational Animation Festival. Visually, it looks amazing. The story is told without spoken lines and is, well, pretty sappy, but it's sweet. The cool part about it is that the figures of the characters were rendered without pupils in their eyes and missing other facial features, and artists animated the facial expressions by hand! You can read a quick explanation about this process here. They were trying to achieve a hand drawn look while still getting the best of the computer's capabilities. It's a cool effect but it may be impractical for a whole film.
The director of this short signed a poster for me. He wrote, "Good luck in animation."
Le sigh.
Hit the jump to see a clip from the Toy Story short Partysaurus Rex, playing with the re release of Finding Nemo.
