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■ ■ ■ ■ CG Animation Pictures Imageworks used creative lighting to give a fi nely detailed castle a graphic style to complement the Artists at Sony Tartakovsky preferred. character design that director Genndy pushed beyond the previous preparations. "I was on the show for a year, maybe a year and a half, before it went on hold for a rewrite," says James Crossley, senior anima- tion supervisor at Imageworks, who led a team of 90 animators. "Th e characters were built and ready to go. But, we had set up the characters for a naturalistic style, and Genndy wanted a diff erent style of animation. We had to achieve what he wanted with what we had. We didn't have time to start over." Tartakovsky, known for the Cartoon Net- work shows Dexter's Laboratory and Samurai Jack, had not worked with CG characters; he had not directed a feature fi lm. He and the Imageworks crew had about a year to create this fi lm. Th ey had to hit the ground running. ey had to hit Off Model All told, the fi lm has 40 main characters, plus variations of each to populate the resort ho- tel—a castle. "Th e castle is so immense, we Dracula Like most of the characters in Hotel Transylvania, the Imageworks crew had modeled and rigged Dracula before director Genndy Tartakovsky entered the picture. Dracula was so important, though, that he was one of the few characters that changed to accommodate Tartakovsky's style. "He is older than the most recent model had been," says Dan Kramer, visual effects supervisor. "And a little scarier. The new Dracula is more cartoony, simple, and likeable. And, he has some resemblance to Adam Sandler." of the few c The changes to his model and rig helped animators polish his performance. "We could really shape-change and go crazy with him, and that was fi ne," says James Crossley, senior animation supervisor. 10 August/September 2012 needed to fi ll the lobby with a lot of variety," says visual eff ects supervisor Dan Kramer, who joined the project about the same time as Tar- takovsky. "We couldn't have 100 skeletons and zombies." By the time Tartakovsky arrived, the crew had already built and rigged those characters for the most part. "Th ey were 80 percent done," Kramer says. "Maybe more. We tend to build to about what we think the animators will need to do in the shots, but there's always a little bit of room for animators to work on characters during shot production." Th e director asked for changes to Dracula's face and a complete redesign for Jonathan. "Jonathan was a diff erent character before," Kramer says. "A simple character. Nothing special. Genndy likes to make his characters look more special, and in Jonathan's case, he wanted him to look goofy." Otherwise, the crew used the existing assets for the most part. For those charac-