Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1011494
F E A T U R E 54 cgw | e d i t i o n 3 , 2 0 1 8 pleasant, and we animated her as soly and warmly as possible. We kept her very calm and smooth, in a way that characters don't usually move in the Hotel Transylvania world," says animation supervisor Alan Hawkins. "When you are first introduced to her on the boat, you see her move in a way that's a little outside of the style of these films. But when she gets into her evil reveal, she starts moving a lot more sharply and quickly, her lines are less so and rounded, and she gets a lot more straights in her posing." Hawkins continues: "It was important to Genndy to create a character that's a match for Dracula, not just emotionally, but physi- cally. Dracula is our most pushed character – he can do almost anything – and so with Ericka, we had to find a way to do that as well. When she's being really evil, she's doing some pretty extreme stuff that is on par with what Dracula can do." According to Ford, the most challenging character, however, was Van Helsing. Times two. The team had to build both a young and old version. The younger character has a very distinctive hairstyle that resembles horns, and that iconic shape had to carry over in the older gent, despite his thin, fine hair. The character's face changed quite a bit in the aged version, too; therefore, two different models were built. Creating further complication was the older man's mus- tache. "Mustaches in general are hard to control because they move based on what the skin is doing underneath," explains Ford. "Genndy's animation style really pushed this character into extreme poses, and this had an adverse effect on the mustache. And our CFX team had to figure out how to get this mustache to look appropriate." Old Van Helsing is also Ford's favorite character in the movie. "He's not an attrac- tive man, but he has so much detail and so much personality. He's got skin that feels old and weathered, and then there's that scraggly mustache," says Ford. "I love the performances that the animators got out of him. He's not scary; he's almost endear- ing in a way." Also new is a huge kraken which appears in a battle sequence near the end of the film that highlights work by all the teams. "Like all things in Hotel Transylvania, Gen- ndy didn't want it to be scary; it had to have some humor to it," says Ford of the char- acter. "So, there's this giant creature with SWEET ERICKA MOVES SMOOTHLY. WATER PLAYS A BIG ROLE IN THE FILM. THE YOUNG VAN HELSING MODEL. DETAIL INSIDE THE GREMLIN AIRPLANE.