These Animator Reels From Netflix’s ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ Are Incredible
Expectations were high for Warner Bros. Animation’s Green Eggs and Ham, which premiered November 8 on Netflix. The promotional pitch for the series promised “cinema-quality hand-drawn 2D animation,” a bold claim for a series, but it turned out to be largely true.
The character animation on the series is above and beyond anything we’ve come to expect from an American-produced tv cartoon series. The characters don’t just move around the screen; their actions and emotions are often specific to the needs of a particular moment in the story. It can’t be overstated how rare this is for tv animation, and something that’s only possible with the involvement of highly skilled animators and a production schedule that allows for this type of performance to be developed.
Numerous studios were involved in the production of Green Eggs and Ham, starting with Warner Bros. Animation itself. The WB credits highlight plenty of 2d feature film veterans, among them T. Daniel Hofstedt, Mike Greenholt, Skip Jones, and Chris Wahl. Other studios that did heavy lifting on the character animation include Folimage in France, Snipple Animation Studios in Manila, Philippines, Tonic DNA in Montreal, Canada, and Yowza Animation in Toronto, Canada.
Sadly, but not surprisingly, none of the individual animators, assistants, inbetweeners, and clean-up artists who worked at the studios besides Warner Bros. Animation were given screen credits. It’s a tragic oversight, especially seeing as how much of this show’s success owes to the skills of the animators who worked on it.
On the upside, a handful of the animators at the various contributing studios have posted reels of their work online. It’s really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the animation created for this series, so hopefully other animators will join in and share their work too. We’ll update this post over the next week as other animator reels become available.
UPDATE: All the reels have been removed. Don’t blame the vendor studios or Netflix. This is due to archaic corporate strictures at Warner Bros. Animation. We’re hopeful that WBA president Sam Register will take bold leadership of the situation and work to update the company’s outdated policies that deny artists recognition for their work. Allowing artists to take credit for their work is a win-win for everyone involved, and incentivizes the crew to promote a project’s unique qualities on social media, which helps fans understand what makes a project stand out from the others. Why a studio wouldn’t appreciate this kind of organic and free publicity is beyond us.
