I love the fact that while they abandoned it for a while, Disney is now keeping up the tradition of having animated shorts that play alongside their movies. Recently it was revealed Pixar is making two Toy Story shorts to go alongside Cars 2 and The Muppets, and now we’ve been sent the first pics from the Disney ‘toon that’ll play alongside this spring’s Winnie The Pooh, which you can see above and below.
Part of the reason these shorts are so great to see, is that without the pressure of being the main feature and a massive budget that makes people play safe, you can be a bit more experimental or go for a different look. They’ve done that with Nessie, coating the backgrounds in tartan and evoking the sort of thing Walt Disney himself used to do in the 40s and 50s.
Here’s the short’s official synopsis: Set in the bonny blue highlands of Scotland, The Ballad of Nessie is a whimsical and colourful tall tale about the friendly Loch Ness monster, Nessie, and how she and her best friend MacQuack the rubber duck came to live in the moor they now call home. Setting the adventure into motion is a greedy land developer named MacFroogle, who decides to build a mini-golf empire on top of Nessies home.
Directed by the Emmy Award-winning team of Stevie Wermers-Skelton and Kevin Deters (Prep & Landing, and the 2007 Goofy short How to Hook Up Your Home Theater), The Ballad of Nessie is animated in classic Disney hand-drawn style. Written by Wermers-Skelton, Deters and Regina Conroy, the film is produced by Dorothy McKim and Tamara Boutcher, and features a musical score by Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino (Ratatouille, Up). Animation on Nessie was supervised by five of Disneys top talents: Andreas Deja, Mark Henn, Randy Haycock, Dale Baer and Ruben A. Aquino. Scottish comedian Billy Connolly narrates the film.
The Ballad of Nessie hits the big screen with Walt Disney Animation Studios latest feature film Winnie the Pooh, which opens in cinemas in UK cinemas on April 15.
