Saying that CG houses are following a trend by all the 'cute animal' films coming out doesn't really work, either. In live-actionfilm, it's relatively  easy to spot a trend, find a script, get it greenlit, into production, edited and out in the cinemas within a comparatively short space of time - short enough to take advantage of a trend within the cinema-going public. For an animated efautre, whether it be cel- or CG-animation, the lead-in time is so much more, with production timelines of several years, that it's impossible to pick up a trend and knock out a movie in time to take advantage of it. So the current focus on penguin characters in animation, from Madagascar to Happy Feet to Surf's Up are just a zeitgeist of some kind. Either that, or the inter-studio network is so riddled with corporate espionage that everyone is plundering everyone else's ideas during production - which isn't really that likely now, is it? 

jonthecelt