At that time, around 60 employees crafted commercials and visual effects for such features as The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Moulin Rouge!, and the two Babe films. When they banish Mumble, he waddles away and begins an epic journey through Antarctica to prove them wrong.Īnimal Logic’s epic journey began four and a half years ago. Mumble’s mother (Nicole Kidman) is sympathetic, but not his father (Hugh Jackman) or the village elders, who blame poor little Mumble for disturbing the natural order of Emperor Penguin land and causing fish to disappear. The star of the film, a fuzzy young penguin named Mumble (Elijah Wood), can’t sing, which is a problem because penguins choose their soul mates with a 'heart song.' What Mumble can do, though, is dance, and that he does, to hip-hop, salsa, jazz, pop, rock-to any music he hears. Happy Feet blends a song-and-dance coming-of-age story with an epic adventure. The CG feature is the first animation directed by Australian filmmaker George Miller, who directed The Witches of Eastwick and wrote and directed three Mad Max films and Babe: Pig in the City. And dancing was but one tangle the studio had to rumble through to create Warner Bros.’ musical-adventure-comedy Happy Feet.

In the penguin world, this isn’t a problem, but for the Sydney, Australia-based animation and visual effects studio Animal Logic, making digital penguins dance became a four-year obsession. Oh, those irresistible penguins! They can’t help but charm as they shuffle, toboggan, swim, fall, tumble, huddle together, and waddle across the ice, the adults all dressed up in their jazzy tuxedos and the children as fuzzy as a stuffed toy.

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