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e d i t i o n 4 , 2 0 1 8 | c g w 2 7 all things Disney can be found, from Star Wars to Marvel, Pixar, and the Muppets – all of which had to be re-created to fit into this film. It is here where Vanellope meets the Disney princesses (see "Oh My Princesses," page 29). Cast of Characters Once the Internet was built, it had to be populated. Like the original Ralph, this movie features a mishmash of environments and characters, only this time they span far beyond the video-game realm to include just about every genre. And, there would be many of them, far more than a Walt Disney Animation Studios film has ever had. So, every vertex would count. The first test contained 150,000 charac- ters. And, the number continued to increase from there. To put the daunting task of character creation into perspective, consider these numbers: Bolt had 57 characters; Wreck-It Ralph, 233 (421 variants); Zootopia, 182 (687 variants); and Ralph Breaks the Internet, 434 characters with unique sculpts and 6,752 variants. Also, a new crowd system enabled some scenes with 500,000-plus unique characters, though the system was able to generate twice that number. So, who are all these characters? Some are from the first Ralph, but mostly they are new ones, some with larger roles and some just faces in the crowd. "What I love about the Ralph series is that almost anything goes. We have characters that are all over the board appearance-wise," notes Dave Komorowski, head of characters and techni- cal animation. From a cra standpoint, there is every kind of keyframe animation style as well, notes Kira Lehtomaki, head of anima- tion. "But it all works together," she adds. Litwak's Pack Although Ralph and Vanellope made their feature-film debut only six years ago, in animation, that can mean a lifetime. Time and technology marches on, requiring these characters to be reworked due to a number of advancements in the past few years, especially in terms of lighting and rendering. "A lot of our technology changed since the first Ralph, and our system couldn't even open up the original Ralph because our simulation engine, rig- ging systems, and even our renderer have changed," Komorowski says. Ralph received some facial work, more hair, longer legs (for better performance), and wrinkles on his clothing. According to Komorowski, the group had difficulty with Ralph's rigging on the first film due to his proportions – Ralph is an 8-bit game character whose legs are as long as they are wide, making it especially difficult to bend his legs and get an appealing pose. Also, Ralph's clothing is more detailed and moves better now. There are a lot of subtle wrinkles. Plus, there is a lot of cloth sliding thanks to the use of Marvelous Designer's 3D tool for a more realistic, natural result. The same can be said about the detail and sim- ulation of Vanellope's clothing. "If you look on the inside of her hoodie, you can see the pilling that we've added," Komorowski points out. In contrast to Ralph, Vanellope is not from the 8-bit world and has a lot of S curves to her posing. Her motion is fluid and zippy. One of the bigger adjustments to Vanellope was her hair, specifically her ponytail. The technology six years ago didn't provide a way for the animators to run a hair from her scalp to her ponytail. Now, the groom reacts like an actual person's hair would. In fact, the artists devised a new way of designing hair across the board in this film, employing a solution developed for Zootopia and also used on Moana, whereby look dev and technical animation define hair grooms using a hierarchy of strands that allow for improved art direction while still maintaining a believable feel when simulation is added. New Main Characters There are many new characters that help Ralph and Vanellope navigate the Internet, including Yesss, the trend-predicting head algorithm at BuzzzTube. Yesss' poses and movements are big, snappy, and exaggerated. She changes hairstyles and clothing oen, and her outfits are quite a spectacle – aer all, she is a trendsetter. Her clothes are very defined and have very sharp angles "because she's a very sharp and quick-witted character," Lehtomaki says. The ultimate creator of cool, Yesss sometimes sports a large faux-fur jacket made out of fiber-optic cables whose tips light up, changing constantly based on her data intake. Code, meanwhile, moves through her hair. Shank is another complex avatar, who fits hand-in-racing glove into the dark, gritty urban environment of her edgy online game, Slaughter Race. "There is a subtlety to her acting and performances," says Komorow- ski. Through Shank and her posse, the artists pay homage to the various car racing games that use lower-level motion capture where- by their foot contact is not always perfect to the ground. "We do this purposefully in the film because we wanted to evoke the fun in some of those games," Lehtomaki says. Shank wears layered clothing: a hoodie SOME NETIZENS, LIKE SHANK AND HER GANG, ARE VERY DETAILED.