Chicken Joe (Jon Heder) and Cody Maverick (voiced by Shia LaBeouf) in Surf's Up Courtesy of Sony Pictures Animation

"When I went in and met with [the filmmakers], they told me who they were thinking of casting and they were telling me Jeff Bridges and James Woods and these are like icons," enthuses LaBeouf. "I'm all about that. I love working with people who I respect. That's the whole point."

Add to that mix a talented array of character actors including Deschanel, Jon Heder, Sex and the City's Mario Cantone, and The Drew Carey Show's Diedrich Bader to round out the cast, and Surf's Up found itself with a group of performers that would not only lend their voices to the project, but their unique acting styles too.

"We would film everything," says Jenkins. "So we would pick up nuances of their performance, their facial characteristics, you know, the odd smile that you wouldn't even normally think about — the sarcastic smile maybe that would cue another actor to go 'What are you smiling at?' We very determinedly would go for the stuff that was off the cuff. And it's led to some just fantastic filmmaking."

Capturing that naturalism was especially important to Surf's Up and its impromptu, documentary style, complete with faded archival footage of surfing penguins and shaky camera work. The film's co-directors, Ash Brannon and Chris Buck, also incorporate themselves into the film, providing the offscreen voices who give direction to the characters during the many penguin interviews that are peppered throughout the film. The boom microphone and the camera even get into the action when, for instance, the camera lens cracks after being pelted by rocks thrown by a particularly camera-shy character. Water even beads on the lens as Cody paddles out on the wave.

The filmmakers certainly had a rich history of surfing documentaries to look back on such as Bruce Brown's iconic Endless Summer films and Stacy Peralta's Riding Giants. But the documentary that resonated most with the Surf's Up crew, according to Jenkins, was 2003's Step Into Liquid, directed by Dana Brown, the son of Endless Summer director Bruce Brown. The film is a virtual travelogue of gorgeous waves and surfing hotspots from around the world with the best surfers around the globe riding high.

Released three months before Surf's Up went into production, Step Into Liquid's influence is felt throughout the animated film. The film's comic foil Chicken Joe, played with appropriate aloofness by Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder, is said to have been born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, a nod to one of the surprising surf spots discovered in Liquid. Surf's Up also has a similar understanding of the poignancy of the sport that made Step Into Liquid so memorable, such as when surf lessons in Liquid bridge the gap between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Superstar surfers Kelly Slater and Rob Machado also show up in both films, cameoing in cartoon form in Surf's Up as surfing analysts for the fictional SPEN sports network.