Animal friends who originally grew up in a civilized environment, after returning to nature, Alex the lion awakens his hunting instincts, and how the other herbivore characters will react is a new suspense in the middle of the development of "Madagascar".

This opposition between carnivores and supermarket animals, and the strong contrast between the metropolis of Manhattan and the nature of Madagascar at the beginning of the animation, are all deliberately set up by Sid in the film, because only in this way can the tension of the film be maximized, and this latent tension can always be maintained under the relaxed and witty style.

In addition to using the technique of "compression and stretching" to create a nostalgic atmosphere and humorous atmosphere, Blue Sky's animation technicians also hope to depict animated characters in a more realistic way.

For example, in the facial animation system, the animators carefully create each facial muscle to reflect all the expressions in the real world.

Hair has always been the biggest headache for animators, and the number of hairy animals in this film is more than any previous animated film.

One of the most challenging was Alex's mane the lion, which Blue Sky's technologists created to make up more than 50,000 hairs.

The technical direction and special effects department further developed the wig system designed for Ice Age, which consists of a combination of hair that moves with the movements of the head and body, an automatic dynamic system, and a manual control system operated by an animation technician.

Alex the Lion's mane has hundreds of curves, each with multiple control points, and the shape of the mane must change depending on the object and force it touches.

In addition to the characters, more than two-thirds of Madagascar's scenes take place in the jungle, and sculpting plants with computer animation is even more difficult than animals.

In addition to the simple visual effects of being dense and lush, all tropical vegetation had to be as lifelike as the characters, with more attention to detail.

For more complex images, Blue Sky's special effects department sometimes had to turn to animators to complete it successfully.

These seemingly boring contents have actually become a solid foundation for "Madagascar" and even Blue Sky Studio, effectively forming a mutual promotion and benign development from art to technology.

And this is something that the previous Blue Sky Studio couldn't think of.

Of course, practice is the only criterion for testing truth, and the market is also the only criterion for testing a movie.

The first week of "Madagascar" reached an astonishing 4,000 theaters, and the reason why it was able to get so many theaters.

On the one hand, this animation is adapted from Sid's original book, which is a strong guarantee of box office appeal for many theater companies, and who in North America will not know Sid's huge appeal to his fans.

On the other hand, the big explosion of last year's "Ice Age" by the producer Blue Sky Studio is still vivid, and of course a number of theater companies will not ignore such a studio with outstanding achievements.

Finally, although this is still a Fire Lion Pictures distribution, because it is an animated film, it is not affected by the exclusive agreement signed between Fire Lion and AMC Cinemas, and it can be released in the cinema of the cinema chain at the same time.

It is for so many combined reasons that in the end "Madagascar" has even more theaters than the opening week of "Harry Potter".

And with such a good distribution channel and the great help of Fire Lion Pictures in publicity, the first day of "Madagascar" finally made everyone breathe a sigh of relief - Friday, June 22, $13.9 million at the box office.

The next day, Saturday, $17.8 million.

On Sunday, the third day, $15.4 million.

"Madagascar" grossed $47 million in its opening weekend, surpassing Shrek's first-week record of 42 million at the beginning of the year.

At the same time, "Madagascar" is not only popular, but also popular.

The Dallas Morning News says — it's a movie that will make you laugh maniacally.

Time magazine also commented: "It's a savvy family entertainment movie. ”

The Baltimore Sun commented that Madagascar doesn't do much, it just makes you laugh, and everyone should pay homage to such minimalism.

In this way, the posture of DreamWorks Animation and Blue Sky Studios not only made the animation market in the first half of this year lively, but also made more people look forward to and pay attention to it, and Pixar's "Monster Inc" that will be launched at the end of the year is coming.

The annual battle of the three major animation studios has become an eye-catching sight that has become a bright landscape not inferior to live-action movies this year, and Forbes magazine even called these three 3D animation studios "the animation triumvirate of the new era!"

Obviously, Disney's 2D animation, which rests on its laurels, has become a street rat that everyone shouts about, and no one doubts that 3D animation is replacing 2D animation.

Disney's animation department was even more insular with a large number of 2D animators being fired and losing their jobs.

Even a comic strip depicting Pixar, Blue Sky and DreamWorks "working together" to sweep Disney's 2D animators out of the house became popular in Hollywood's media circles.

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And just as Hollywood's 3D animation industry is busy sweeping Disney's 2D animators out of the way, another more ambitious and aggressive Japanese film, Final Fantasy: Deep in the Soul, has finally been released in North America.

This hyper-realistic CGI film, which claims to never need human actors again, is the first ambitious work of Square Enix, a Japanese national video game company, to the film industry.

As a world-class game company that swept the world with its flagship game "Final Fantasy" series in the dot matrix era and the PS console era, their "Final Fantasy" is one of the best-selling game series in the world today, and has a large number of fans in the European and American markets.

And the leader behind this "Deep Soul" is none other than Hironobu Sakaguchi, the founder of the original game and one of Square Enix's core shareholders.

Speaking of this legend in the RB game world, five thousand words are not too much.

But in short, it is precisely because of the fifteen years of continuous success from the first generation of "Final Fantasy" to "Final Fantasy 9" that Hironobu Sakaguchi is no longer satisfied with just being the best producer in the game world, he wants to really be a film director and realize his original movie dream.

So Square Enix began filming, the plan for the all-CG film Final Fantasy: Deep in the Soul, directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi.

For the film, Square Enix set up a specialized film company and issued a large number of new shares to raise funds.