I'm not a big fat panda. I'm THE big fat panda...

I went to see Kung-Fu Panda yesterday which in my opinion was an absolute triumph for Dreamworks. Faultless story telling, great voice talent and most importantly really well crafted animation.

The filmed is sandwiched in between two great little set pieces - the initial stunning dream sequence opener, animated by James Baxter, and the end credits - both sequences take a more 2D approach towards the animation. There's a lot of beautifully illustrated scenes making them resemble the more traditional Chinese arts of shadow puppetry and calligraphy.
Shine were tasked with producing the 8 minute title sequence, partly as a fitting tribute to the 900 people who had produced the movie. Typically, as soon as the first credits roll everyone piles out of the theatre - something which annoys me as I find it disrespectful to the people who made the movie. But apparently that's a fairly unique point of view I hold, as one of our movie going companions said to me last night "What, are you telling me you can read everyone's name on that screen?" and comparing my point of view to "like needing to know the name of the tube driver on every journey you make". Well, that's not an entirely unreasonable request to make.... but he's missing the point a little bit. The entertainment industry loves kudos, and I always think it should be extended further than just to the director and actors.

Shine used a mixture of Cel Animation and After Effects to deliver a stonking end credits sequence which was aimed at keeping movie goers sat down for an additional 8 minutes. The horizontal scroller format is unusual, but in keeping with the Chinese theme, and some of the images developed within the sequence manage to be wonderfully charming without competing with the typography. In fact the sequence is so good, should the credits get a credit sequence?
If you're interested in finding out more about behind the scenes from the team at Shine, there's a good article here about it all.
Personally I'd like to see more imaginative ways of displaying credits, then perhaps more people would see the film through right until the end.