Nov 23, 2018

Universal is producing a new Woody Woodpecker short for Youtube.

Woody Woodpecker's new short film is now available exclusively on Youtube through Universal Pictures International and Universal 1440 Entertainment.

The ten original five-minute shorts, featuring Woody and Winnie, Buzz Buzzard, Wally Walrus, Andy Panda, Chilly Willie, Splinter, and Nothead, will be available on three dedicated YouTube channels in Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, and English The episodes will be directed by Alex Zambrano. The episodes are directed by Alex Zam ("Chairman of the Board," "Inspector Gadget 2," "Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2"), who also directed "Woody Woodpecker," a live action/CG hybrid produced for the Brazilian market.

Here's the trailer in English. Pretty cool!

According to Universal, the new short film was made because of the success of the Youtube channel they launched in 2017." When we launched Woody Woodpecker on Youtube in 2017, the channel immediately got a great response and the Portuguese-only channel for Brazil was a big breakthrough." We knew there was a unique opportunity to do more with this favorite classic character. "Our Brazilian channel has over 2 million subscribers and our Spanish channel has over 700,000 subscribers, with very high engagement and viewing time.

As part of the new series, two episodes will be set in Brazil. The shorts will premiere online in December. In addition, a new short documentary, Bird Gone Wild: The Woody Woodpecker Story, will be released alongside the episodes. The 13-minute documentary features the creator of the new short and looks back at the origins of the Walter Lantz Productions character created by Ben "Bugs" Hardaway in 1940.

More recently, Woody has been revived to a high production standard, as in The New Woody Woodpecker Show, led by Bob Jacks in the late 1990s. Judging by the trailer, this new short was made on a much more limited budget. Still, the animators must be commended for their attempt to incorporate unique poses and drawings into a digital 2D film.

But still, there are genuine misconceptions about how shapes and forms work in the design of characters. But still there is a genuine misunderstanding of how form and shape function in the design of a character.

There are also obvious mistakes in the drawing. For example, in the panel below, the top of Woody's beak is drawn twice in two different positions. There are countless model sheets of Woody, and Lanz's character is a simplified design compared to the classic Warner Bros. and Disney designs. While it might have been easy to overlook the errors in this low-budget revival if it had at least captured the essence of cartoonishness that is the defining trademark of Lantz's shorts, this trailer is a reminder that the makers of these shorts knew what these characters should look and move like and sadly misses the mark in that it shows that the makers of these shorts understood how these characters should look and move.

It is a shame that the new production did not go the extra mile to ensure that the elements that made the early shorts so successful on Universal's Youtube channel were realized.