Horse Animation

Help! I'm A Fish movie poster (2000)

There is near universal agreement that one of the most challenging things to animate is horses. So when, while working on the Danish feature film Help! I'm A Fish (released in 2000), I heard of a scene with a horse I naturally jumped at the opportunity to do it.

The movie is about three kids who are transformed into fish by drinking a magic potion invented by a crazy scientist. The girl, Stella, who is turned into a starfish, befriends a small seahorse. At the end of the movie when the kids become human again, the seahorse is magically transformed into a real horse.

The horse was supposed to resemble the fairly cartoony seahorse, so we weren't going for a very realistic look. Yet, in order to make it believable, it had to move somewhat like a real horse. So how to go about it? As it happened, I knew where to look.

SunCola Fencing

SunCola "Fencing", 1998.

Every year throughout the nineties, a pair of SunTop/SunCola commercials were produced. And the SunCola ad always had the same concept:

Mr. SunCola competes in some kind of sport against his long-time foe Bob Bubble. On the face of it, the opponent is both bigger and stronger, and thus has all the advantages. But Mr. SunCola has his secret weapon: the non-carbonated SunCola drink, whereas Bob Bubble will have to content himself with an old-fashioned fizzy cola. Yuck!

On the other hand, Mr. Bubble has no respect for the rules of the game. So every film starts out with him playing some nasty trick on our hero, who therefore loses the first round. But as they both take a break for a drink, Mr. Suntop gets re-energized by his SunCola (while Bob Bubble is all gassy from his regular cola), and then, with a couple of elegant moves, Mr. Suntop  easily outmaneuvers his rival.

Here's the storyboard for the SunCola film of 1998.

SunCola "Fencing" storyboard by Dan Harder, 1998.