Rudolph's Shiny New Year
During a blizzard, while Santa is at home, when he gets an unexpected letter from Father Time, who is asking for help to find Happy the Baby New Year before New Year's Eve, otherwise it'll be December 31 forever. Santa then decides to send Rudolf to help because he is the only one that could navigate through the snow storm.
As Rudolf and General Ticker ask Quarter Past Five to take them to Father Time's castle, the wicked vulture Eon the Terrible flies by. He is supposed to live for one eon, which ends on January 1, then turn into ice and snow and die. To prevent this he plans on capturing Happy to keep the year from ending. Later when Rudolf meets Father Time he inquires on why and where Happy would run away. Father Time replies he ran away because everyone would laugh at his abnormally big ears and that he is probably in the "Archipelago of Last Years", where the Old Years retire and rule over an island that forever stays in the year they ruled in.
Rudolph first travels to the island belonging to a caveman named One Million B.C. (O.M.). He lives on an island with dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. Rudolf is told that Happy was here but ran away when everyone laughed at him. Then Rudolf visits the islands 4000 B.C., 1492, 1893, and 1965 with the help of the whale, Big Ben, but had no success on finding Happy. Later the trio head for the island 1023 which belongs to Sir 1023, whose island is filled with all the fantasies in the medieval era.
During this Happy became friends with the 3 Bears. Later when he is playing a game with him Happy has to remove his hat, when he does the bears unsurprisingly begin to laugh at his big ears, which causes him to go away. Rudolf and his friends having no success on finding Happy go to the island of 1776, who is ruled by Benjamin Franklin, when Rudolph reaches there he learns the same thing happened to Happy again.
Later Rudolf and his friends see Happy on Eon and he takes Happy to his Island of No Name.Eventually the group reach the island and they make an effort to rescue Happy. But, Eon awoke by the sound of O.M.prevents them saving Happy by sending an avalanche upon them and enslaving them inside giant snowballs. Using his nose Rudolph manages to free himself by melting the snow. Rudolph then climbs up to Eon's nest where he finds Happy, who refuses to leave. Rudolph shows Happy his nose and tells him his own story of being bullied because of his nose. Then he asked Happy to let him see his ears. Happy lets him, and Rudolph, like everyone else, laughs at his elephant sized ears. Happy gets upset again, but Rudolph describes that Happy's ears had made him feel so good in the inside that he had to laugh out loud, just like everyone else did.
With this Happy shouts out with joy, but this causes Eon to awaken. Rudolph tells Happy to take his hat off. At seeing Happy's large ears, Eon bursts into uncontrollable laughter which sends him tumbling down the side of the mountain and into the remaining snowballs, freeing O.M., 1023, and Sev. Later with Santa's help, they return to Father Time's castle with Happy in time for the beginning of the new year. A celebration, happens and everyone wishes Happy a happy new year.
Observations About Rudolph's Shiny New Year
Another thing was in the beginning the music was the same Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, but with different lyrics to indicate Rudolf will be in the movie. Additionally I saw how good the characters emotions where, like how the eyebrows would move with the eyes to show a certain emotion.Furthermore some of the shots were zoomed in or out, for it to zoom in I think it was part of the editing process because camera's weren't able to zoom in or out back in those days. The zoom ins and outs were probably in a circle surrounding in darkness. Also part of the editing process was the background music, like when things went wrong or when the evil Eon showed up the music would get intense. It would sometimes crossfade to differentiate to another scene. Additionally this movie probably doesn't have as many photos and the same frame for second if compared to the stop-motion movies of today. It's not as smooth as today's stop motion pictures like ParaNorman. ParaNorman was done so well that you couldn't tell it was a stop motion unless you were told it was.