Lots of DreamWorks News from the Comic Con Panel: 'The Croods' Footage, 'The Penguins of Madagascar', 'Kung Fu Panda 3', 'Me and My Shadow'

DreamWorks Animation Panel at Comic Con 2012 DreamWorks Animation hosted a joint panel at the San Diego Comic Con for its three upcoming projects Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, Rise of the Guardians, and The Croods. The panel was moderated by EW’s Anthony Breznican and featured Bill Damaschke (CCO of DreamWorks Animation), James Baxter (supervising animator for The Croods), Tom McGrath (director of Madagascar 3) and Patrick Hanenberger (production designer for Rise of the Guardians).

In addition to learning more about those featured films, a few tidbits were revealed about other upcoming projects as well. Here’s a summary of the panel below:

The Croods footage: Other than a movie posted revealed months ago, we haven’t heard much about DreamWorks sprint 2013 release The Croods. Finally, The Croods had their moment as the first trailer was screened. Here’s EW’s synopsis of what was seen:

The footage starts out with a distinctly Brave-like feel, featuring the eldest, unnamed daughter escaping her cave to scale a sheer cliff face. Then after her family’s cave is ruined, the dusty, monochromatic world of the Croods explodes into a wildly lush and dangerous landscape filled with giant animals and vibrantly colorful plant life. The film, explained Damaschke, takes place in the fictitious Croodacious Period. “We call it evolution’s puberty.”

The Penguins of Madagascar Movie: Much like its other spin-off film Puss in Boots, the cat’s out of the bag for this one. Turns out that the famously hilarious penguins of Madagascar from the Madagascartrilogy are making their way onto the silver screen in their own feature-length animated film called, wait for it, The Penguins of Madagascar. The penguins already have a TV series also called “The Penguins of Madagascar”, but apparently viewers want more penguins.

It reminds us of the Disney anecdote (which Chelsea discusses in Episode 1 and Episode 11) where after the success of animated short The Three Little Pigs, Roy Disney went to Walt essentially saying, “They want more pigs! Give them pigs!” Walt denied Roy’s request for three more Pigs sequels by saying, “You can’t beat pigs with pigs.” If only DreamWorks would follow that advice: you can’t beat penguins with penguins. Either way, the Penguins film is due out 2015.

Kung Fu Panda 3 Announced: According to EW, Damaschke was “guilt tripped by an audience question into revealing that Kung Fu Panda 3 is in the works.” That seems to be all that was mentioned about the project, but again: you can’t beat pandas with pandas.

2D Animation in Me and My Shadow: Audience questions have been good this year for pulling juicy tidbits out of the panelist. A audience member incisively asked if DreamWorks would ever go back to 2D, hand drawn animation (since their last 2D film was nearly 10 years ago in 2003 with Sinbad). The response came that the shadow in Me and My Shadow, a film about what would happen if your shadow took over your life, will be traditionally animated. Kind of cool! Definitely getting a Peter Pan vibe from that description. It’ll be interested to see the 2D shadow inhibiting the 3D world.

Lots of news from DreamWorks; not too shabby for one panel! What was your favorite piece of news revealed at Comic Con for DreamWorks? Sound off in the comments!