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RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET www.postmagazine.com 38 POST NOVEMBER 2018 Shank — a more realistic character in terms of appearance and animation — fits hand-in-racing glove into the gritty urban environment of her edgy Slaughter Race game. "We ran a simulation and then art directed her long, flowing brown hair," says Komorowski. She wears layered clothing: a hoodie on top of a T-shirt, and a leather jacket over that. Wind blows through her hair while racing. On the gross side of the scale is Double Dan (Alfred Molina), a grouchy, slug-like shifty sort of guy so named because of a conjoined little twin brother, named Little Dan, tucked into the folds of his neck. Double Dan is the proprietary of the Dark Net's apothecary, where he whips up various viruses. He jiggles as he moves thanks to muscle simulation. The basic sculpts for these and the other main characters were created in Pixologic's ZBrush, and then the models were ported over to Maya, where they were rigged and simulated using mostly pro- prietary tools. The models were textured using the studio's Paint 3D and Adobe's Photoshop. Hyperion, again, was used for the shaders. NETIZENS & NET USERS Another fun and interesting character is KnowsMore, an outdated, clunky digital academ- ic running the search bar. He was inspired by the 1950s/'60s style of animation that is simplistic yet elegant. He was created in Maya, but his cartoony eyes and the reflection in his glasses were crafted in Disney Animation's Meander. In fact, the Internet is filled with these native avatars called Netizens — colorful bits of characters of various sizes and shapes branded to their Website. They have a dig- ital quality reflected through their rather simplified look. Some Netizens, though, like Shank, Yesss and Double Dan, have larger roles in the film and thus are fully fleshed-out. In addition, there are Net Users, which are me- chanical representations of us inside the Internet. They have limited, somewhat robotic body motion and iconic expressions that kind of snap from one extreme to another. They have block-shaped heads and are rather uniform in size, but their clothes and hairstyles are unique, thanks to a mix-and-match creation system. The Internet is populated with thousands and thousands of these characters, more than a half-mil- lion, actually. "So we came up with a mix-and-match system that included facial sculpts and things like that, giving us the most variety possible," says Komorowski. The animators then used a crowd rig for these characters, a simplified version of the standard rig. Next, they ran the models through a simulation system. …BUT WHO'S COUNTING? Disney Animation is known for pushing the state of the art in technology and creativity. And Ralph Breaks the Internet is no exception. In this case, though, the challenge did not rest with a unique, singular advancement; rather, it was about expanding the scale and scope of previous advancements. In Frozen, all the characters were simulated. In Big Hero 6, the team wrote a new shader. In Zootopia, they dealt with massive scales of crowds and hair, and on Moana, they tackled wind in the hair and water. Without any of those steps, Ralph Breaks the Internet would not have been possible. Or, it would have been "less" in every way: fewer buildings, fewer characters, painted backdrops, static signs…. "Everything here was just more," says Petti. Ralph features 434 new and old characters. Advancements from previous Disney films, like Moana and Frozen, helped pave the way for innovations on Ralph.