Computer Graphics World

March 2009 17 CG I•Stereoscopy n n n n You'd need to have a mighty inventive mind to think of combin- ing Mad Magazine with 1950s monster movies and the film e Dirty Dozen, but that's exactly how two DreamWorks Animation directors started when they created the studio's latest feature ani- mation, Monsters vs Aliens. Conrad Vernon, one of Shrek 2's directors, had the idea of making a film told from monsters' points of view albeit in Mad Magazine style. Rob Letterman, one of the Shark Tale directors, wanted to create an animated feature with a Dirty Dozen plot. Put the two ideas to- gether, and you have a story in which an Army officer, General W.R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland), releases a team of imprisoned monsters to fight an alien menace. "We thought it was an interesting idea to give monsters personalities, hopes, and dreams, and take them down a comedic path," says Vernon. Fighting for Earth on the monster team are Dr. Cockroach, PhD (Hugh Laurie), Insectosaurus (Jimmy Kimmel), e Missing Link (Will Arnett), Ginormica, the former Susan Murphy from Modesto, California, a 49-foot-11-inch-tall woman (Reese Witherspoon), and BOB the blob (Seth Rogen). On the other side is the alien overlord Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson). To create the look of the film, the directors worked with pro- duction designer David James and character designer Craig Kell- man. "We put together material from old 1950s B-movies, horror flicks, and sci-fi films," Vernon says. "DreamWorks gave us a bud- get to buy 150 films on DVD. So, everyone checked them out and watched the acting, lighting, and the cameras. But, our biggest influence was Jack Davis, the way he handled humans. ey were caricatures, but you believed them in serious situations." Davis, a Mad Magazine cartoonist, also drew for Tales from the Crypt. e alien, in particular, represented an amalgam of these in- fluences. "Craig drew 30 or 40 different designs," Vernon says. "Sometimes we'd see brains through the skull, sometimes anten- nae, sequined disco shirts with belts, and squid-like legs. At one point, he had a sinister moustache, pointy beard, and sharp teeth." ey dumped the moustache, beard, and teeth, but kept the other attributes. "He has a disco shirt, 'dealiebobs' on his head, squid legs, and four eyes," Vernon adds, "all the 1950s sci-fi attributes. But, he's still quite unique to our film." Similarly, the monsters trace their origins to classic sci-fi films, but are unique to this one. Dr. Cockroach is the team's homage to e Fly. "He has a huge head, giant eyes, antennae, elegant hands, and skinny feet," says head of character animation Dave Burgess. "He looks like a toothpick with a giant olive on top." Insectosaurus is a Godzilla-sized bug; he looks like a 350-pound fuzzy grub. e Missing Link is a cross between the Creature of the Black Lagoon and King Kong. And Susan Murphy is almost as tall as Nancy Fowler Archer in the 1958 film Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. All these monsters are bipedal variations, although two have tails (Link and Insectosaurus) and Dr. Cockroach has antennae. BOB is another story. BOB is a cross between a character and a fluid simulation. Character technical director Terran Boylan worked for two years to create a rig that animators could use to control him and still have the creature look amorphous. What About BOB? "Our concept evolved over time," Boylan says. "He started out as a CG blob with a face mapped on. As we progressed, he became a metaball-like character that acts, has a face with characteristics of a blob in certain circumstances, and a head and arms that can come off." But, Boylan still needed to give animators control over this amorphous character, which would have no consistency from frame to frame. "My throw-down to the character TDs was that I wanted the BOB rig to be so simple anyone could use it," Burgess says. He and Boylan wanted to give the animators a traditional interface, one that was similar to the rigs they used to control other characters. "e trick, if there is a trick, was to have two versions of BOB," Boylan says, "one made of patches and another that's an implicit surface made of blobs." e rig for the patch version, the one the animators used, looked like a series of rings with an eyeball in the middle. "He's elaborate and flexible," Burgess says. "By default, his arms are off, but we can pop them out when we need to and rotate his eye around his head. We could also turn his face on and get eye and mouth controls. Everything else was a simulation that shows up when he's rendered." Susan Murphy, aka Ginormica, leaves a stream of particle system-created destruction in her wake as she waves good-bye to the alien robot chasing after her.

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