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RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET www.postmagazine.com 36 POST NOVEMBER 2018 with the updated Hyperion. Then, those sets had to be fleshed out into individual locations within the Internet-scape. Some of the more interesting locations are Slaughter Race, BuzzzTube with all its ever-changing video screens, the seedy Deep Web, eBay and Oh My Disney, where characters from the studio's various properties (Star Wars, Muppets, Pixar, Marvel) can be found and where Vanellope meets the Disney princesses (see "Oh My Princesses," page 37). Once the Internet was built, it had to be populat- ed. 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, making it the studio's most ambitious movie to date in terms of characters and crowds, as well as environments. 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 char- acters, though the system was able to generate twice that number. So, who are all these characters? There are some from the first Ralph, as well as new ones with sig- nificant roles. Also, there are a plethora of Netizens, who live and work inside certain areas of the Internet, and Net Users, representing Internet users from the outside world. LITWAK'S PACK Although Ralph and Vanellope made their fea- ture-film debut only six years ago, in animation, that can be a lifetime. "Our system couldn't even open up the original Ralph because our simulation engine, rigging systems and renderer have changed," says Dave Komorowski, head of characters and technical animation. With the updated Hyperion renderer, though, colors in this film are lusher and more vibrant. Also, Ralph received some facial work, more hair and longer legs (for better performance), and his clothing is more detailed and moves better, as does Vanellope's. "You can see the pilling on the inside of her hoodie," Komorowski remarks. One of the bigger adjustments to Vanellope was her hair, specifically her ponytail, which reacts realistically. In fact, the artists devised a new way of design- ing hair across the board in this film, defining hair grooms using a hierarchy of strands for improved art direction. 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 often, and her outfits are quite a spectacle — af- ter all, she is a trendsetter. 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. CAST OF CHARACTERS Ralph's city was bigger and more complex than anything Disney artists had ever done. Artists conceptualized the Internet as the biggest city anyone has ever seen.