Press - Rough Draft Studios

No one will ever mistake Bart Simpson for Bambi, but Springfield's best-known slacker and Disney's four-legged forest dweller have one thing in common: Both are animated in classic, pencil-to-paper, 2D animation. When "The Simpsons Movie" opens Friday, it will be the first 'flat' feature-length cartoon in over a year, and the first major one since Disney gave up on 2D with 2004's unmemorable "Home on the Range."

Computer-generated (CG) animation may be the way of things now, but a CG version of Springfield's first family just wouldn't cut it - as anyone who remembers the Halloween episode starring a digital Homer would attest. After some 20 years on TV, everyone knows the real dimension of Homer, Marge, Bart and company - which is a challenge when trying to make their simple shapes fit the big screen.

"You can't take it too far away from what people are used to, or they'll feel like something's wrong," says Rich Moore, one of the sequence directors. "We tried going all the way to really fluid animation with everything animated on 'ones'[a separate drawing for every frame of film], but it started not looking like the Simpsons. It was a little too slick."

Moore and company dialed down the slick, saving the fanciest animation for fast-moving action scenes. Even without CG animation, Springfield's citizens will still look rounder (if that's possible for Homer) and pop off the screen just a bit.

"We added a simple shadow level to add some depth to the characters," explains Claudia Katz, Rough Draft Studios' producer on the project. "Another change from the series was to combine 2D animation with CG effects," as when Homer commandeers a computer-drawn construction crane. "It's something we did a lot of on [creator Matt Groening's now-canceled 'Futurama'], but was never done on 'Simpsons.' It's definitely a challenge to bring 3D in without it getting too fancy or losing the hand-drawn look."

Katz promises the movie's backgrounds will be richer, too, and not "done in flat colors lit by a single light source" as on TV. "Everyone agreed that wasn't going to play on a 100-foot-wide screen, so you're going to see deeper-looking compositions."

That screen size may be the biggest change of all from the TV show. "The Simpsons Movie" is filmed in ultra-wide-screen CinemaScope, just like "The 10 Commandments" or "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" or ... "Sign of the Pagan."

"CinemaScope gives a more epic feel," explains Moore, a veteran director from "The Simpsons'" earliest seasons. "It was one way to really let people know they weren't watching a TV show. It took a few days for us to get the hang of working in that aspect ratio. On TV, you're really used to doing standard over-the-shoulder shots, closeups and wide shots, then all of a sudden it's like, 'How do these work in CinemaScope?' We studied a lot of 'Scope movies from the '50s and '60s. They're beautifully composed, and we just kind of followed their lead. But if you have a really tall guy onscreen, you're out of luck."

While the Simpsons TV series is animated in Korea ("Where American cartoons are made!" as Springfield newscaster Kent Brockman once noted), a good chunk of the movie was done in the U.S. Even though Katz claims the change "let us get better acting out of the characters," Moore admits their minimal design "gives the illusion they're thinking and feeling.

"Back in the first season, we studied the Muppets a lot. Kermit is just a piece of felt with ping-pong balls for eyes, but with just the slightest change of expression on his mouth, the audience projects emotions onto him. Homer's the same way: Depending on the angle, his blank expression could mean he's hungry or sad. The audience does a lot of the work."

The "Simpsons Movie" studio, 20th Century Fox, is doing its best to keep the movie's plot under wraps, but advance word is that it revolves around a Homer-triggered environmental disaster. There could be celebrity cameos, but Moore does boast that "Every character that's ever appeared in the show" will put in an appearance."

Then he adds, cryptically, "If you like Lenny, you're going to like this movie."

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