Ice Age: Continental Drift

The main event of the film Steve Martino made with Mike Thurmeier had already played in cinemas two years earlier as a short. Two three minute pieces showing Scrat splitting the continents ran ahead of Gulliver’s Travels in 2010 and Alvin and the Chipmunks in 2011. The geological catastrophe reached audiences first as the punchline of a gag rather than a threat, and the feature keeps that frame. The real investment is water. Blue Sky built a mixed pipeline for the ocean and the clouds: simulation data was generated in Houdini, RealFlow handled some splash effects, and the final water and cloud renders came out of the studio’s own engine, with the storm sequence the largest water job. The clouds were built in a real volume so the camera could move through them. The sea shanty the pirates sing was written by Adam Schlesinger with Peter Dinklage among the voices, John Powell scored it, and Beethoven’s Ninth turns up as well. These eighty eight minutes were shown alongside The Longest Daycare, a Maggie Simpson short that went on to an Academy Award nomination in animation. A good fit if you want the storm and ocean stretches as a display in their own right. Not for you if you expect the continents splitting to work as a genuine threat.