User:PrimalMustelid/sandbox5

Conception and development

Background

Chris Wedge was the director of the 2002 film Ice Age and a co-creator plus voice actor of Scrat.

Blue Sky Studios was an animation studio specializing in 3D computer-generated imagery (CGI) animation that opened in 1987 and was established by a team of co-founders. In 1998, the studio produced their first animated feature, the short film Bunny, which won multiple awards for animation. The year after, it was acquired by the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and became a division for Fox Feature Animation. With production resources from the large film company, Blue Sky Studio was able to recruit more talent and initiated production on the animated feature film Ice Age. By then, the animation studio was well-versed in 3D computer animation, having previously helped to animate for many other films and cooperating with various sets and actors. They aimed for a "non naturalistic" vibe for their second film but also wanted to make both their sets and characters immersive like in a children's picture book. The 2002 film Ice Age, directed by the studio co-founder Chris Wedge, was a box office success and spawned the Ice Age franchise consisting in part of four theatrical sequels: Ice Age: The Meltdown in 2006, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs in 2009, Ice Age: Continental Drift in 2012, and Ice Age: Collision Course in 2016. During the studio's lifetime, it also produced several other theatrical films outside the Ice Age franchise including during the acquisition of 20th Century Fox (including the animation studio) by The Walt Disney Company in 2019. In 2021, Blue Sky Studios closed, with a Disney spokesperson citing the COVID-19 pandemic as the reasoning for the decision. The upcoming film Ice Age 6 is being developed by 20th Century Animation under Disney.

Early conception and design

"Scrat came out of the request of, 'Quick, we need this character!' It wasn't, 'We have this thing that is going to be our mascot.' Nobody had any idea. He was just another fun character. I do remember having a wall full of drawings [of him]. I remember thinking this guy is twitchy. He moves quickly. So I did drawings of him digging a hole and looking frantic. He is a nervous character." - Peter de Sève, character designer.

Tara Bennet, The Art of Ice Age

The origins around Scrat's conception is unclear, with Louisa Mellor of Den of Geek stating that he "seems to have more origin stories going around than Spider-Man". According to The Art of Ice Age by Tara Bennet, multiple artists had encountered different inspirations that all led to the development of Scrat's characteristics. During the production of Ice Age, Chris Wedge struggled to think of an introduction showcasing the setting's climate but imagined the possibility of a glacier pressuring one small character or a group of characters. The studio artist Peter de Sève was the lead designer for the Ice Age characters and derived his animal designs from his research at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, New York. He noted that he was told not to design any rodent character for the film but later took design inspiration from kangaroo rats in his research. According to Wedge, de Sève dug through hundreds of his sketches to pull out that of a squirrel character with large eyes and striped body later known as a "proto-version of Scrat"; the movie director then accepted the character concept for his film and told him to simply add saber teeth to the design. Later at the same day, the storyboard artist Bill Frake suggested that the squirrel be used for a storyline involving him burying his nuts for the winter and storyboarded it with the approval of Wedge. The film producer Lori Forte confirmed Wedge's account regarding Forte and him wanting the "pre-historic squirrel, a sabre-tooth squirrel" to be in the movie after having observed de Sève's works in his office.

Wedge noted that Scrat's skittish movements and exaggerated reactions were similar to those of cartoon characters in the golden age of American animation but then stated that his characteristics were actually derived from personal experiences by different studio staff members. He recalled that the fictional squirrel's movement was inspired in part by the chipmunks that quickly scattered, stopped, and twitched outside his studio's window. Frake meanwhile reportedly drew his inspiration from a "peanut-obsessed" squirrel in his backyard in Lake Arrowhead, California that distracted him while he was storyboarding for Ice Age. He said that it sought nuts on the porch and repeatedly tapped on his sliding doors. He attempted to ward it off by throwing a pizza crust at it and yelling at it out of frustration, resulting in the squirrel tearing his deck chairs and chattering at him.

In a 2009 blog, the film co-writer Michael J. Wilson said he took inspiration for the character and his from his daughter, Flora, who at age 3 called a squirrel "Scrat," combining the words "squirrel" and "rat". His account conflicts with court documents in 2003 that reported de Sève being the character creator and the film model maker John Dodelson naming the character "Scrat" while sculpting a clay model for the squirrel.

Wedge credited himself, de Sève, and Frake for the creation of Scrat and noted that his conception came from him wanting to establish a comedic sequence in the film's introduction while showcasing the environment as a large-scale force. The sequence for Scrat involved him trying to store his acorn for the winter season only for the glacier to disrupt his practice, in fact being responsible for cracking the glacier using his acorn and causing it to move. He initially conceptualized Scrat having stored many nuts but later simplified the number to just one to highlight Scrat's scarce food management. Scrat at the end of the introduction sequence was originally going to be killed by a mammoth stepping on him to set a dark comedy tone for the entire film. The marketing department for 20th Century Fox then proceeded to use the clip as a teaser trailer, but Wedge initially disapproved of that due to wanting to keep the sequence from being spoiled to audiences. However, the director found out that preview audiences had positive receptions towards the teaser and wanted more screentime for Scrat, then opting to keep him alive and use him for more of the movie's scenes. From there, Scrat became a prominent character of the 2002 film. Since the first Ice Age movie, Scrat's dialogue-free voice was provided by Chris Wedge in the franchise.

Shortly after the 2002 release of Ice Age, which received positive receptions, Blue Sky Studios sought to have a project to fill in a production gap before the start of their next feature film. The director Carlos Saldanha and the same creative team for Ice Ace produced the 2002 short film Gone Nutty, an animation that features Scrat as the protagonist. The team developed a better understanding of Scrat's character and improved their technological uses in animation.

Frake defined Scrat as "the personification of [the] struggle" between characters trying to survive and the environment that threatens them as if it was an antagonistic character. He said that he worked around tight budgets and technological limitations by using the artstyles of both German Expressionism and abstract art to portray Scrat as an individual escaping from a hostile environment while trying to keep his much-needed food intact. Similarly, the Gone Nutty story artist William H. Frake III explained that Scrat never keeping his nut in the end is a metaphor to humans and their struggles to keep what they need, that he is meant to be relatable to audiences in his joy and pain.

Copyright and trademark controversies

The fashion designer Ivy Supersonic, who created the character Sqrat in 1999, compared her character's self-proposed potential worth to that of Mickey Mouse until she found out about the usage of a separate Scrat character from Ice Age in 2001.

In May of 1999, the New York City fashion designer Ivy Supersonic reportedly encountered a squirrel that apparently had a rat-like appearance while walking at Madison Square Park. She formulated a "$100 million idea" of an animated squirrel-rat hybrid character that ends up in "wacky adventures" and is targeted for child audiences, comparing its potential value to that of Disney's Mickey Mouse. She was hoping that her idea would be used in mainstream media, hiring a lawyer to apply for an intent-to-use trademark for "Sqrat" and recruiting her friend Peter Levine to create concept art for it on a banner. The furry rodent in question had large buck teeth and a poofy tail. Iris Cole-Hayworth, a former friend of Supersonic, revealed that Supersonic was very passionate about her project, gave away merchandise of Sqrat in 1999 and 2000, and even did an interview about her character with CNN in February of 2000.

Her project at first attracted interest from other people according to 2003 court documents, as the film producer Lou DiBella and the TV director Michael A. Simon commissioned a pilot script by Norah Lally for an animated series about Sqrat, who was potentially to be voiced by the American musician Tommy Lee. However, the two producers could not come to an agreement with Supersonic's lawyer and father Jerome Silberstein, resulting in the project's cancellation. Afterward, Supersonic discussed an animated web series for Sqrat for the internet company Urban Box Office Network but rejected their $50,000 offer because she felt that her concept was worth "7 figures".

In November of 2001, a friend of Supersonic from Los Angeles, California informed her about the film Ice Age and its character Scrat and told her to get a lawyer. Supersonic said that she was in Los Angeles in 2000 and had a suitcase of Sqrat plot scripts, then trying to figure out who stole her idea. On 30 February 2002, a month before the theatrical release of Ice Age, she filed a lawsuit against 20th Century Fox for copyright infringement. The 2003 court documents and later accounts have recorded the inconsistency of Scrat's origins according to Blue Sky Studio staff members. While the two characters have their names spelled differently, John Dodelson told Business Insider that he originally spelled Scrat with a "q," evident by internal emails from the studio. Besides the name, the lawsuit alleged copyright of artistic choices of the two similar characters. The cartoonist Mort Gerberg, brought in by Supersonic's attorney, noted similarities between the two in their long snouts, overhanging front teeth, and projecting eyes and therefore came to the conclusion that Fox copied from Supersonic.

The court case process later revealed to the detriment of Supersonic that Levine's banner drawing of Sqrat was actually slightly modified clip art. Jerome Silberstein attempted to find the original artist of the clip art to make a deal to make his daughter the owner of the image. However, Fox lawyers had outfoxed Silverstein by already having created their own deal with the company behind the clip art and gaining rights behind the retroactive license. The company had also attempted to offer a deal to Levine and his business partner for clip art rights, but the two refused it. An arbitrator settled the case by offering a split ownership of the clip between Fox and Supersonic while Scrat remained in copyright of the former. While Fox never denied that Scrat was based on Supersonic's character, the case judge Richard J. Holwell ruled that Fox's character differed from Supersonic's to the point of it being coincidental similarities and granted copyrights for the two names to their respective owners.

With the copyright case over, the Sqrat-Scrat legal conflict turned into a trademark issue, named Fox Entertainment Group, Inc. and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation v. Ivy Silberstein, that lasted years. Supersonic also used protest methods against Fox such as camping out in front of the apartment of the chairman Rupert Murdoch. However, her lack of usage of her Sqrat property was hurting her in court, and she was beginning to run out of money for the case to the point that she her to represent herself. She had succeeded in stalling Fox from trademarking the "Scrat" name repeatedly for years based on United States Patent and Trademark Office records. Once Disney purchased 20th Century Fox in 2019, they effectively acquired Scrat but also had to deal with the inherent lawsuit from Supersonic. In 2020, Disney settled the trademark dispute by allowing Supersonic to sign an agreement in which she could keep her "Sqrat" trademark, and she sold T-shirts and other merchandise of the character.

In 2022, the absence of the character from The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild sparked rumors that Disney had completely lost the trademark dispute, although Scrat later appeared the same year in his own series Ice Age: Scrat Tales.

Later uses

Carlos Saldanha, the director of the sequel film Ice Age: The Meltdown, informed Bennet that his involvement in Gone Nutty had helped him to plan out his personality and role for the sequel. Additionally, he wanted Scrat to play a major role in the overall plot instead of being mostly disconnected segments to the plot of the other main characters. As a result, he decided that Scrat would be the cause of the glacier meltdowns at the film's beginning. Gone Nutty had also served as a basis for another short film No Time for Nuts, released in 2006 with the theatrical film and also making Scrat the protagonist.

The third theatrical film and second sequel in the Ice Age franchise, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, features a female counterpart to Scrat named Scratte. The film director Saldanha explained that Scratte was intended to extent Scrat's role in the story in a way not previously explored in other features. De Sève stated that Scratte's personality is the opposite of Scrat in that she is "good-looking and smart". He further explained that Scratte was intentionally portrayed as having aesthetic and evolutionary advantages over Scrat including her elegance, calmness, and flight ability. Scratte's voice actress Karen Disher said that her high-pitched squeaky voice was done to roughly imitate Wedge's voice and therefore show both Scratte and Scrat being the same species. She also revealed that Scratte also had a "devious and seductive side" in contrast to Scrat. Referring to her directing role in the 2011 television special Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas, she also mentioned that Scrat "is the greatest and most fun character to work with" because of his flexible and comedic romance-like relationship with his nut.

In regard to the 2012 sequel Ice Age: Continental Drift, the studio staff wanted Scrat to play an even larger role in escalating events that affect the other major characters. The art director Nash Dunnigan said that he and his colleagues wanted to stretch Scrat further both literally and figuratively, that his comedic acts would be felt planet-wide. Likewise, in the 2016 film Ice Age: Collision Course, they sought to Scrat's antics even wider in scale by involving his plot in outer space and having him interact with futuristic technology similar to the time machine in No Time for Nuts.

The production team behind Ice Age: Scrat Tales had to remake the animation model for Scrat from the ground up and revealed that they had the idea of Scrat taking care of Baby Scrat from the parental experiences of Michael Berardini, the first episode's director. The series was intended to have Scrat be tormented by his inner conflicts between the adopted baby and the acorn.

Repeatedly prior to the studio's closure, Wedge expressed zero interest in Scrat keeping his acorn in peace. He said that it was a rule set for Scrat because it was the main premise for Scrat-based storylines. In the later years of Blue Sky Studios, Scrat was referred to as the studio's mascot by both Chris Wedge and Peter de Sève, the latter of whom recognized him as a breakout character.

Appearances

Main article: Ice Age (franchise)

Scrat is a major character in the Ice Age franchise since his debut in the 2002 film, relentlessly seeking to retrieve and/or bury his acorn only to be disrupted by external factors and/or personal errors. His storylines in the theatrical films and spinoffs are largely independent of the main "herd" characters like Manny (a mammoth), Sid (a ground sloth), and Diego (Smilodon), although he at times has encountered them and has caused natural disasters that put them in danger. Unlike in the theatrical films, several of the spinoff entries feature him as the protagonist.

Ice Age

Scrat made his debut in the beginning of the 2002 film Ice Age, in which he traveled across a barren ice landscape to seek a place to bury his acorn. In his burial attempt, he causes a giant fissure to crack, unleashing two avalanches in the process. After narrowing escaping from the avalanches with his acorn, Scrat is accidentally stepped and carried away by multiple animals, indicating a shift in the film's focus towards different characters. Nonetheless, Scrat has sporadically appeared in several scenes including with "The Herd" consisting of Manny, Sid, and Diego, being repeatedly thwarted in his efforts to retrieve or bury his acorn by external factors.

The end of the film, occurring 20,000,000 years later, features Scrat thawing from ice on an empty island and coming across a coconut. When he attempts to bury his coconut in the sand, he again causes a giant fissure to crack like on the glaciers in the film's beginning, activating a nearby volcano.

Other films and series

Scrat has appeared in every Ice Age film sequel except for The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild. In Ice Age: The Meltdown, Scrat attempts to reach for his acorn using different techniques but fails every time. Although he eventually succeeds, he accidentally splits a glacier wall in two and falls into the emptying flood, unintentionally saving the other animals. Scrat reached a heavenlike place full of acorns but is pulled out against his will against Sid saved him via cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The next film Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs has Scrat in a rivalry with his potential love interest Scratte over the acorn. As the film progressed, the two began to push aside their obsessions of the acorn and embrace their romantic feelings for each other, moving in near the end of the film. Eventually by the film's end, Scrat ditched Scratte for his acorn.

Scrat is also an important character in Ice Age: Continental Drift as his chase of his acorn over the Earth's core causes the breakup of the landmass into different continents and formations of iconic monuments, becoming a catalyst for natural disasters that the Herd is forced to endure. In the end of the film, he encounters an island called "Scrat-lantis" - a combination of "Scrat" and "Atlantis" - where he encounters his civilized counterparts. His greed for acorns results in the destruction of the civilization and the formation of the United States. The fifth film Ice Age: Collision Course and the prequel short Cosmic Scrat-tastrophe involves him piloting a UFO spaceship and colliding with different objects in outer space, resulting in the formation of a modern solar system. His attempted burial of his acorn in an asteroid resulted in the latter cracking and heading towards Earth, setting up the main conflict for the film.

Scrat has also appeared in multiple shorts. In Gone Nutty, he stored many acorns for the winter and attempted to forcefully insert one more into his collection. This resulted in his collection being destroyed and one acorn to hit him from the ground like a meteor, causing the landmass to split into different continents. In the second short film No Time for Nuts, Scrat and his acorn both accidentally teleport to different locations at different times as a result of a time machine that he found.

He is additionally one of the main characters of Ice Age: Scrat Tales, a six episode television series on Disney+ in which Scrat decides to take care of Baby Scrat but faces a crisis as he tries fighting for ownership of the acorn from him.

Other appearances

Scrat has also appeared in video games for the Ice Age franchise. Scrat is one of the playable characters for the 2006 tie-in video game Ice Age 2: The Meltdown, a platformer in which he solves puzzles and collects nuts. Scrat is also the sole protagonist and playable character of his own 2019 video game Ice Age: Scrat's Nutty Adventure, in which he seeks to recover his acorn from the Scratazon Temple. He is also a playable character for the 2009 tie-in mobile app game for Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. He also appears in the mobile games Ice Age Village (2012) and Ice Age Adventure (2014), the former of which involves a mechanic in which the player taps on Scrat to steal his acorns while in a theater playing Scrat clips. He has also been sold as part of official Ice Age merchandise such as toys.

Reception

Since his 2002 debut, Scrat has been the subject of overwhelmingly positive receptions to the point of being a highly popular animated character from the 21st century.