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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 9 of grays and tans, and subtle colors. She is the most dynamic and contrasty thing there. Even Johnny – his outfit is so colorful. He's the weird bird in the family. Everyone else is super straight- laced. They are wearing tans and neutral colors, and his hair is the wildest. That's why he fits in so well in the monster world, and why he married Mavis. He's more on the monster side of things. The human world is a little blander and more even. These two elements should look out of place in it. Is there a scene that you are particularly proud of? The wedding is one. It was really important because I have a 14-year-old daughter, and when I told her that Mavis was getting married, you could see – it got real! 'Dad, make it beautiful and don't mess up her dress.' So I was responsible to make sure we got it right. I put my best people on getting that dress right, and I personally handled the look of the wedding. That was for my daughter. The "vampire camp" is also new? It's a brand-new monster location in the world of Hotel Transylvania 2. That was really fun. It wasn't exactly what we've seen before – it wasn't in the castle. When I read the script, it was described as 'monster camp out in the woods or wilder ness.' That's a pretty broad description. What I like to do when I am creating something, even if it's not used in the script or story, is give myself a backstory for something to grab onto. We know from the trailer that it's the camp that Drac went to, so it's at least 1,000 years old. I started thinking: It's a vampire camp on Earth. It's been there for 1,000 years, but monsters have only been out [in public] since the last movie – say, a year – so how has it remained hidden for 1,000 years? I started thinking about Yosemite. When you are on the canyon floor and you have those rock walls and grand monoliths sticking up – those are 3,000 feet high. I thought, what if they were 30,000 feet high? What if you could hide something? It would be a natural wall. We made these mountains that were all rock, and they surround this camp area and keep it completely hidden. In doing my research for this, I came across a town in Norway that they built so deep in a crevasse that during their winter months, they don't get any natural sunlight. They built a mirror up on the mountain to bounce sunlight into the town square. If you had 30,000-foot walls all the way around this camp, vampires could go out all day long. None of this is ever said but gave me something tangible. So I knew the geography and I could start populating that geography. Giving myself that backstory really helped. But you still had to get the moon in there? In the trailer sequence, whenev- er I read that part in the script, I always saw the tower they were standing on, backed by a giant moon. There's no skyline. Those cliffs are so high you never see the sky. So I cut one V-shaped trench just so the tower is right in front if it, and it's the only place you can see the sky. That way I could get my moon where I wanted it. Tell us about the camp's design. The fun part was populating in- side that camp – [determining] what a monster camp would look like. There are half and half [buildings] – log cabin meets gothic haunted house. Every- thing came from that. I started with the main house – the bottom half is very bunkhouse and the top has the gables and fireplaces, and feels more like a haunted house. It's a combina- tion of Goth meets woodsy. ● While the plot in Hotel Transylvania 2 tells the tale of two separate worlds coming together, the visual design of the film extends that concept, resulting in a touching, beautiful production. ■ LITTLE DENNIS INHERITED HIS DAD'S WILD HAIR, WHICH PRESENTED A SCALABLE DESIGN CHALLENGE IN 3D. Marc Lous (mlous@postmagazine.com) is the senior editor/director of video content for Post Magazine, CGW's sister publication. VIDEO: GO TO EXTRAS IN THE SEPTEMBER.OCTOBER 2015 ISSUE BOX C G W. C O M