Really love this movie's animation, or more specifically its art, but some of the animation of water and other elements is amazing. Also the dogs move more like dogs than any dogs i've seen, but doesn't even look rotoscoped. It looks all hand-drawn, in fact the backgrounds look like watercolor, but a review from the New York Times in 1985 seems to claim computer animation was used in some way:
However, ''The Plague Dogs,'' which opens today, makes such skillful use of computer animation that its principal characters develop an amazing doggy authenticity. Human gestures have been captured this accurately by animators, but for dogs it is something new.
I'm not sure what they're referring to, and no other source i've seen suggests computer animation was used at all. There is certainly no CG, but a few scenes (like water in a stream) look very complex to animate by hand. The dogs move very realistically but I'm not sure what the NYT is implying. It seems unlikely that they would make that assertion without some kind of knowledge about the techniques used, and it was a review from the era of the movie's release in the U.S. so there might have been some info released by the filmmakers touting the techinques used.
Anyone seen anything that discusses this film from an animation point of view? Brad Bird worked on it in some fashion, maybe he has commented on it before?
