This gives me instantaneous confidence on the short. It seems both a technical achievement and a heart-warming story. Pretty much the feeling I had when I first heard about Day & Night.
It also reminds me of the Johnny Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet segment from Disney’s Make Mine Music.
The score, which seems quite good from the clip is by Jon Brion, who composed the music from ParaNorman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, among others.
Goodness gracious, the photo-realism on this is stunning. I have a feeling it’s gonna be an anthropomorphic classic in the vein of Red’s Dream. Hopefully with an ending not as tragic!
I absolutely squealed upon seeing these umbrellas on my Facebook newsfeed today. This looks like it’s going to be an awesome short! I love that they’re doing something reminscent of Pixar’s oldest shorts (like Red’s Dream, as said before). That plus that incredible photorealism plus the charming story (which evokes memories of both WALL-E and Paperman) equals another amazingly awesome Pixar short! They guys in Emeryville know how to do it right!
There’s no denying how beautiful the animation is, and how realistic. And the expressions of the Umbrellas are awesome.
I hope I like this short. idk, it just seems done to me. The two objects falling in love thing. (I have nothing against it, my favourite Pixar film is WALL-E!). But when watching it the feeling I felt was cliche. I hope there are some twists and originality in it. But it’s Pixar, so I’m sure there will be.
By the way. there’s a new image. If the photo-realism seemed amazing before, look at this!
And I found a longer synopsis:
[i]It is just another evening commute until the rain starts to fall, and the city comes alive to the sound of dripping rain pipes, whistling awnings and gurgling gutters. And in the midst, two umbrellas—one blue, one not—fall eternally in love.
From Pixar Animation Studios, director Saschka Unseld and producer Marc Greenberg, “The Blue Umbrella” opens in theaters on June 21, 2013, in front of “Monsters University.”[/i]
For some reason that screenshot reminded me of a scene from the abysmal Resident Evil: Retribution, specifically when Alice was standing in the middle of Shibuya Junction in the rain (SPOILER for film: It’s not real, it’s all a simulation ) and she’s surrounded by all these umbrella-wielding people.
Not that I’m implying Blue Umbrella is gonna suck as bad as that film. It’s just something which flashed in my mind.
In fact, I’m very excited for this short. One of my pitches for my final-year animation project was about a living gramophone which goes through several time periods in history, a la The Red Violin. It was too ambitous and I eventually changed it to something along the lines of Brave Little Toaster where it rediscovers its previous owner (during her childhood) as a grownup in an antique store, and even that got canned when I evnetually joined somebody else’s project team. I do hope to resurrect that story again some day in another form.
Anyway, that’s me reminiscing when I think about the premise for this short. TL:DR story cut short, I have high hopes for this. I hope Pixar surprises me like it did with La Luna!
This looks very cute! I was wondering if it would be like things we’ve already seen, but knowing Pixar, there must be more to it. I was more interested when I read that it is supposed to involve “Blue” getting beaten up in a rainstorm in the process of trying to find his love. The look of it is quite realistic, too. Nice!
Maybe, TDIT, but for what I saw in the clip and images, I think this kind of logo fits the product better than one with an umbrella icon endorsed. As everyone said, it’s classy.
It is a classy logo. My initial reaction was the same as TDIT’s, though, that an umbrella in the logo may have been nice. However, I’m sure once I actually see the short film, I’ll probably just say that the logo is perfect the way it is (like always).
) and she’s surrounded by all these umbrella-wielding people.