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s e p t e m b e r . o c t o b e r 2 0 1 5 c g w 1 7 elcome back to the Hotel Tran- sylvania, where monsters go to relax, away from the presence of humans. Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation have sched- uled another visit, following up the 2012 spook-tacular animat- ed feature Hotel Transylvania with the hauntingly entertaining Hotel Transylvania 2. The new film brings the human and monster worlds closer together, as Mavis (Selena Gomez) and Johnny (Andy Samberg) marry and give birth to Dennis, leaving Dracula (Adam Sandler) to wonder if his grandson is at least partially a vampire. Mike Kurinsky is a produc- tion designer at Sony Pictures Animation and spent two years working with a team to develop and refine the look of the film's environments, characters, and props. Here, he talks about his work on the film and a number of its visual highlights. Did you work on the original Hotel Transylvania? I worked a little on the initial film at the end (see "Pose by Pose," CGW August/September 2012). I came in at the end to work on the lighting and color script. I do painting that informs lighters on how scenes and sequences should look. That's all I did on the first one. Can you elaborate on the role of a production designer? A production designer oversees the overall look of every aspect of film – from the environments, to the characters, color and lighting, and texture – making sure it's consistent with the style that had been set. In this case, I had a first movie that was already set by a different production designer. The rules of Hotel Transylvania were already set. I wanted held to those rules but also find ways to put my own touches on the movie to make it feel fresh and new. What were the guidelines? I inherited things that would not change. You have a castle, and it's iconic. It's almost like a character in the first movie, and you don't want to change that. But are there ways to make it look and feel different? Yeah. Lighting is always a way you can take an environment and completely change it. Where were you able to put your own touch on this film? In this movie, I had many opportunities, aer reading the script. There were sequences in the script where I went, 'Oh my gosh! A wedding that takes place in the hotel!' Johnny and Mavis get married and have a child, so we have a wedding sequence. Every day you have these hotels that transform banquet rooms into magical, one-night wedding receptions. This is Drac's hotel, so it would be a big event. He would do the whole hotel, so here was a chance to take something that already existed in the first film and light it and swap out some colors of drapery, and I gave it a fresh, new feel. That was my way of taking what's old and making it new. Are there new characters in this film? There are a lot of new char- acters. The biggest one is Dennis – Johnny and Mavis's son – who is four years old and just about to turn five. He is sort of the center of the whole movie, about the human world and monster world coming together. Dennis is right in the middle of that. Is he human? Is he a vampire? Nobody really knows. The folklore in the movie is that if you don't receive your fangs by age five, then you are human. And he is dangerously close to being five. It's a contrast of this kid trying to figure out who he is, because he is surrounded by both [heritages]. What was the challenge of designing Dennis? First, visually, parts of both Johnny and Mavis had to be represented. Because he was a boy, and Johnny was so much fun and has crazy hair, we leaned more toward Johnny in his look. That's where his hair came from. That was a lot of fun. But his eyes are Mavis's eyes. They are the exact same color. So we wanted the soul of him to be represented by his mother, but his outward appearance comes more from his dad. His hair is unique? It's one thing to design in 2D and draw a giant head of hair on a new character, for instance, but once you actually build him in CG and model that to scale, and put him against existing characters…you can't change their proportions. They are who they are. He'd need a ginormous head to support this ginormous hair. Dracula literally couldn't hold Dennis because his hair was too big, and he couldn't even get him close to himself. Dennis's hair and head were twice the size of Dracula's. You have to capture the spirit of the design, but it has to work in an already existing world. How do you adjust for that? I do all my work in the com- puter, but in a 2D way. I work in [Adobe's] Photoshop. In the old days, I was a background painter at Walt Disney Feature Animation, and you would start with a blank whiteboard and do a painting. I don't think any differently in Photoshop. I pull up a blank whiteboard/ screen/window and start drawing on it. And those drawings become a painting. Those paintings get passed on to Imageworks, which is our production house, and they translate those paintings and drawings into 3D. Is that the typical way design is done? I have a few people – like my layout designers – who don't work in color. Maybe they would start thumbnailing a little bit on paper, scan their thumbnails into the computer, and put layers on top of that, and keep refining and refining. I know character designers who still do W MIKE KURINSKY ESTABLISHED A BACK STORY IN HIS MIND BEFORE DESIGNING THE ALL-NEW VAMPIRE CAMP ENVIRONMENT.