STACK #202 Aug 2021

FILM FEATURE

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• Peter Rabbit 2 is out Aug 4

Peter Rabbit 2 is certainly bigger, shifting the action from Mr. McGregor’s garden to the streets of Gloucester, where Peter and his pals create all sorts of mischief. Taking the gang into an urban environment, staging a boisterous brawl at a wedding, and creating a host of new characters were just some of the complex creative challenges for Pickard and the Animal Logic team. “Everything was bigger! With

the first one there were a few set pieces where there was a lot of interaction and the complexity rose, like the fight with McGregor in the conservatory. On the sequel, it sort of started with the wedding fight, which was huge. Pretty much the whole cast of digital animals was fighting with the humans, landing on their backs and getting thrown around. Peter kicks McGregor in the face, which was a super-hard shot to capture. And it didn’t really stop – the film just kept going and going, and so did the complexity. “ Peter Rabbit 2 was challenging for a number of reasons,” he continues. “The sheer number of characters onscreen, the amount of interaction shots, and combining the world of the Peter Rabbit characters with the new characters; it just added up. There were very few shots on the animation side where you could actually catch your breath, so it was an exciting challenge.” One of the major set pieces in the sequel sees Peter and his furry family creating havoc at a busy farmers market as they attempt to pilfer the produce, a sequence Pickard says was among the most complicated to realise. “The path the animals took through all the stalls, taking out the various farmers – there were so many little gags that had to happen. It was very complex and there was a lot of planning in advance to make all of these things work.” Just like the first film, certain Sydney locations ingeniously doubled for England, like the market set created in an old hospital. “It had a really beautiful sandstone façade around a central area,” recalls Pickard, “which worked perfectly for the set of the farmers market. “The first film was primarily shot at Centennial Park – a beautiful set with a planted garden and cottages built. And at the end of Peter Rabbit it all got torn down and they had to rebuild it exactly the same, which was incredible. And spooky – it was like returning to an old house that you knew. “What we did note on the second film was that we’d need to shoot from lots of different angles, so a lot more of the house was completed and the garden was bigger. The production values on the sequel are a lot grander.”

Yesterday the garden, today the world. Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway takes Beatrix Potter’s iconic characters out of their rural comfort zone and into the big city. And once again our very own Sydney-based animation studio, Animal Logic, brings them to vivid life. Animation Director Simon Pickard talks to STACK about the challenges in crafting a bigger sequel. Words Scott Hocking

A nimal Logic did such an incredible job bringing Beatrix Potter’s beloved characters to animated life in 2018’s Peter Rabbit , it was only logical that they were back onboard for the sequel, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway .

Rabbit 2 . So, a lot of the key creative team was the same. “We had this

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great starting point, I guess. We knew Will and we knew what he wanted, and we knew the

Simon Pickard

“That was something Will Gluck [director] was pretty clear on when coming back to do the sequel. A lot of directors like having a core team around them that they know and trust,” Animation Director Simon Pickard tells STACK . “We had to build that trust with Will on the first film; we got to a good place with him by the end of Peter Rabbit and he was keen to carry that relationship on for Peter

characters as well. It was a good place to be. “The team got a lot bigger on the second one,” he adds. “On the first film there were 50-60 animators, and on this one it was mid-80s, which is a big team; eight separate teams all working on different scenes at once. It was a lot more challenging and a bigger film to manage, so it was great that we had that grounding from the first film.”

See more from Animal Logic on the VFX of Peter Rabbit 2 at stack.com.au

14 AUGUST 2021

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