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D E PA R T M E N T 31 KEYFRAME puss in boots A Modern Furry Tale Along with the expected blend of comedy and adventure, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish offers a surprising degree of pathos. An existential crisis. Musings on mortality. If this sounds like the makings of an indie art film, think again. Puss in Boots is back, and this time around he's dealing with some serious emotional baggage. In Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, the beloved feline is down to the last of his nine lives, and his notorious bravado has been declawed, so to speak. "We get to see a more vulnerable, authentic, and emotional side to a character that usually never lets his guard down. It's a fun space that I wasn't expecting the character to go into," says Production Designer Nate Wragg. "It doesn't feel like a sequel to just say, hey, let's see Puss in Boots do some more stuff. [This movie] explores the character in a deeper way while still getting all the adventure and comedy in there, too." Inspired by traditional fairy tale illustrations, the filmmakers faced the challenge of "updating an iconic character's look without losing the familiarity of that character," says Wragg. Every detail had to be carefully managed. Take Puss's fur, for example. "Instead of being fine-detailed fur that CG would develop without any tweaks, we have a painterly treatment on it," says Ludovic Bouancheau, Head of Character Animation. This sounds simple enough, but Bouancheau notes the vast difference in how a shaved cat looks versus how a cat with fur looks. "The modeling department delivers the model of the character 'furless,' and the surfacing department delivers the fur—length, groom, color, etc. Both combined should give us the final design," he says. WINTER 2022 31 Puss in Boots: The Last Wish images courtesy of DreamWorks Animation LLC.