Say Ride the Cyclone were to be adapted into a film; imagine how much fun it would be to see it animated.
Because for the main plot, like the intro song and the mostly dialogue scenes in limbo, you could easily do a stylistic, but still grounded in realism style that a lot of modern animated projects are doing right now (think Arcane or Into the Spider Verse). But once each of the kids go into their respective songs/fantasies for what their life could have been? What if those were done in completely different styles?? Imagine the additional, visual storytelling that would tell about who they are as characters?
Like say, for Ocean's number, WTWN, everything became more simplified, and the characters (especially Ocean herself) turned into a more rounded, chibi-like style to enhance just how cutesy and likeable she's trying to portray herself throughout that number.
Or for Noel's Lament, everything goes black and white, and the characters become even more 2D stylized, and the film scales down to a smaller millimeter frame, more reminiscent of cartoons from the early 20's, when animation was just starting out, to enhance his idealization of "the olden days" (as Ocean puts it).
Mischa's song, This Song is Awesome could be animated with a more choppy frame rate, and the character designs turn a little more jagged around the edges, kind of like animated music videos (I'm thinking a Gorillaz band vibe). But as he transitions into singing about Talia, the colors start to bleed out over their lineart, and become more paint-like and Talia herself moves like a rotoscoped character (think Loving, Vincent that came out a few years ago) to enhance the sense that she's somewhere between a real person and a fantasy Mischa's built in his mind.
Ricky's song would, of course, be stylized after those sci-fi cartoons from the 90's, like X-Men or Captain Planet.
For the Ballad of Jane Doe, I would love to see something like what Wolfwalkers did back in 2020, where most of the characters (in this case, the other kids) are for the most part, animated like traditional, 2D characters with very clean lines and neat movements, whereas Jane herself stands out for having messier, sketchy line art, and looks more and more unfinished in her animation as the song goes on, because she can feel more and more of her own identity being lost.
Constance's Sugar Cloud I could see done in the classic 2D Disney style (i.e., the Renaissance era of Disney, like the Lion King or Little Mermaid days) because not only is it really smooth and colorful and just all around nice to look at, but it reminds the average moviegoer of their childhood growing up with those movies (among others, obviously), which ties in nicely with Constance's preceding monologue about remembering her own life, and the good that came with the bad.
I'm even tempted to envision the first half of the finale song in a different style, when the stage production would show a quick projection of Jane/Penny's life after she returned to the world of the living. Imagine watching this animated film, and for that segment alone, it becomes that really hyper-realistic, almost uncanny valley CGI animation style, to show that she really has joined the world of the living, i.e. our world, among us, the living breathing movie goers watching this, and watching the other kids still in limbo fade back to that main art style for the final number.
I don't know; it just feels like something that would be so engaging to see from an already compelling storyline and characters. Especially with more experimental animation projects on the rise right now
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