Ice Age

[Ben]

Still such a weird release date…

[Daniel]

Clips:




Couple of chuckles. One more week!

[Dacey]

Apparent Blue Sky didn't do the animation on this, which I guess isn't surprising given they're closed now. The animation looks...kind of stiff?

Also, is Scrat not in this AT ALL???

[Daniel]

If the merchandise is to be believed, he's definitely in it! Can't do Ice Age without Scrat!

[Ben]

It’s not BlueSky branded, so…?

[Dacey]

The supposed reason that Scrat isn't in the new Ice Age movie. Does anyone have any information on this outside of this tweet?

https://twitter.com/IWantJustice/status ... 2049562624

[Ben]

I always thought Chris Wedge came up with Scrat and voiced him? And, er…Sqrat is not Scrat…!? This seems a little-a lot bizarre!?

[Bill1978]

So I hopped onto the Wikipedia page for Ice Age characters are there are these 3 paragraphs:

The origin of Scrat is disputed. Cartoon designer Ivy Supersonic claims she created the character in 1999, after seeing a squirrel-rat hybrid in Skidmore College's Case Green. She called her character "Sqrat" and says she presented the idea to 20th Century Fox movie executives. A CNN report by Jeanne Moos of Ivy's discovery was aired in 2000, two years before Ice Age went into development. Supersonic claims the studio's own documents actually identified the character in Ice Age as "Sqrat", though her creation was not sabre-toothed.[2]

Ivy Supersonic was offered a $300,000 settlement by Fox Studios. She turned it down and subsequently lost in court. The case is currently in appeal (Case #04401 Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, NYC). She still has hopes of receiving damages for her claimed infringement.[2]

Supersonic did win a partial summary judgement from the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board in a reverse suit, Fox Film Corporation v. Ivy Silberstein (her real name), in which Fox had tried to prevent her from registering the trade mark "SQRAT".[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_I ... ters#Scrat

[Dacey]

So the character isn't sabretoothed.

She calls it "Sqrat" and not "Scrat"...

Then she claims--falsely--on Twitter that she has "won" when Disney still has the full rights to the character and she doesn't. She can't just release her "Sqrat" stuff now. I'm not sure who she's trying to fool here.

[Ben]

A CNN report by Jeanne Moos of Ivy's discovery was aired in 2000, two years before Ice Age went into development.

Not Bill's quote, but Wiki can’t be right here. Ice Age came out in March 2002, so the film was not "in development" in 2002 — it was about to be released! And any animated film is at *least* a year or two in development, which puts Ice Age on track for actually be "in development" from 1999 onwards, at least. And we know that Fox had tapped BlueSky not long after Toy Story changed the animation scene and every studio wanted their own CGI franchise, so it’s hard to believe that talks about a collaboration wouldn’t have been being held maybe as much as four or five years previous to this. All of which *does* suggest this was all happening around the same time, and maybe someone saw something that inspired something else, but to suggest a blatant rip-off of something so obvious is a little hard to swallow when all these things are checked and double-checked by the lawyers.

Such a shame, since Scrat is still probably my favorite CG character, simply because he’s a prime example of "pure cinema" in animation, and the best throwback to classic shorts characters that’s been done in modern digianimation. She may well have something of a case, but they offered her a payoff (which often happens when two concepts are similar and everyone just wants to move on) and she accepted it. The fact she has a silly name doesn’t really help her credibility…

[James]

So the character isn't sabretoothed.

She calls it "Sqrat" and not "Scrat"...

Then she claims--falsely--on Twitter that she has "won" when Disney still has the full rights to the character and she doesn't. She can't just release her "Sqrat" stuff now. I'm not sure who she's trying to fool here.

It’s possible her “win” is that Disney has agreed not to go after her for her Sqrat stuff and she gives up all claims to Scrat. As for Scrat not being in the new one, that could just be Disney being prudent until a settlement was finalized since Scrat wouldn’t be absolutely necessary to what appears to be a sort of spinoff with another character. All speculation, of course.

[Dacey]

Someone sent me this on Twitter. Granted, it's a Wiki page, so grain of salt, but it seems she's pulled this sort of "thing" a lot...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Supersonic

[Ben]

Seems like bad news, tbh.

[Daniel]

Real wacko.

[Dacey]

This..."film" looks like crap. And I put "film" in quotes because, from what I've gathered, this is a repurposed TV pilot for a now cancelled series, and even then that doesn't excuse how bad the animation is. Simon Pegg is the only returning cast member, and while I'll try to get through the whole thing, I'm not sure if it's going to be easy. Nothing about this looks finished!