Hotel Transylvania

It's been quite a good couple of months for animation, some really good releases have come out and a lot more yet to come. One that I was quite interested and looking forward to seeing was Hotel Transylvania, and I was not disappointed in the slightest. The animation was something I had never really seen before in CG and it just blew me away.

Genndy Tartakovsky, the director of Hotel Transylvania pushed the character poses beyond what was natural, breaking the rules of physics. Before Genndy, Hotel T was going towards more of a Disney feel, more subtle, however when he was brought in as the new director he wanted more exaggeration. He pushed it so far, that is was going more towards hand drawn with the over exaggeration. This was far more common when it's 2D however it's rarely seen within 3D which I think is a shame because this turned out so well and was so visually appealing.

Tartakovsky went in and drew over the animated shots to show what he wanted however the rig wasn't designed to go that far, so the animators came across a problem. They had to figure out a way to almost break the rig in order for these poses to be achieved. It paid off as the final outcome was stunning. What really caught my attention was Dracula himself and the way he moved around with his cape. The cape itself had close to 100 controls which were spread over 5 different layers, this allowed for more elaborate movements and to respond in different ways. When it was completely closed, it encased Dracula fully and as he walked it was more like he was gliding around; this would then very quickly shift into another position and it looked seamless. The cape itself has characteristics of its own and really adds to Dracula's character.

Images taken from: http://danpozo.blogspot.co.uk/

 "I took all the aesthetics I like from 2-D and applied them here," he said. "I don't want to do animation to mimic reality. I want to push reality. You want to have your own identity. You don't want to have an expression that Pixar has. That was super important to me. In 2-D, the way you draw defines you, but in CG the computer takes away your identity. I wanted to make sure the movie had my point of view." - Genndy Tartakovsky

Hotel Transylvania is easily one of my favourite movies now, no matter how many different clips I watch the animation still astounds me. I want to be able to put that exaggeration into my work and have it grab the audience, but I know it will take awhile to achieve this and I will need to look more into the 2D side of things. I think it would be good if I researched into 2D techniques more as these are always transferable into 3D work and it's the foundation of any good animation.