Archive notice: This article was originally published on August 1, 2005. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The film “Madagascar” has also been showing in German cinemas for several weeks. Philippe Gluckman and Denise Minter of Dreamworks Aniation (“Shrek”, “Shark Tale”) showed at Siggraph how the new style of this film was realised. A series of new tools was developed for this purpose, for example “Wig Control” and a novel inverse kinematics.
“Wig Control” is software that enabled the animators to control the lion’s mane with the help of a few “magnets”. It is a mixture of physical simulation and keyframe animation. A more complex system was developed for the lion’s tail, giving the artists the possibility to control the tail via a specially reduced bone system or let it drag on the ground.
This lecture showed once again how much development and programming effort goes into a fully animated CG feature film. Details on the production of the film are conveyed by a detailed article in DIGITAL PRODUCTION 05:05, which will be in stores from 12.08.
Further Links:
- Lecture information from the Siggraph website
