Mindbender’s Teaser For ‘The Food Thief’ Is As Wild And Fun As CG Animation Gets

It’s not just that Mindbender’s technical skills are superb, especially their innovative rigs, but it’s also the studio’s intent: they using rigging in the service of achieving a truly wild, mildly disturbing, and slightly grotesque effect. In other words, they’re creating cartoons.

Feature animation studio rigs are at least as sophisticated as what Mindbender uses, and some studios have rigs designed to handle smears and all kinds of distorted character effects. The reason that we don’t see more of this type of work in the mainstream is not for lack of technical skill, but for lack of creative vision. Self-imposed restraint and naturalism have always been the order of the day in cg animation. Even when feature productions contain exaggerated cartoon elements, everything else in the production – the vocal performances, scripts, cinematography, and overall production design – is grounded in the language of live-action filmmaking, and designed to minimize the impact of the cartoon effect.

For more about The Food Thief, check out this behind-the-scenes look posted on Burman’s website.