"Emotionally, Princess Kida is really at the center of the film," says Haycock. "She leads Milo to fall in love with Atlantis and she provides him with the motivation to take the bold steps that he does in the film's climax. When I started working on the film, I was worried that the characters would be all about action and adventure and that there wouldn't be any opportunity to get inside them. The directors explained that the characters would have to drive the action and you have to care about them or you won't care about what's happening. They understood that from the beginning.
"When I'm developing a character, I try to keep a journal with lots of notes about them," he adds. "I can't design a character unless I know the personality. I always try to ask myself three questions: Who is the character? Where does the character come from? Why is the character where he or she is now? This helps me to understand what the character's ultimate goal is and what his or her arc is going to be. I learned this technique from some of the great Disney animators who came before me. In a sense, we're standing on the shoulders of those giants."
Cree Summer explains, "Speaking Atlantean was a real challenge. It was a very difficult language but the writers and director were very cool about it. They told me to make it my own because no one had ever heard it before. Who would know if I said anything wrong? I would get these tapes before coming in to record and I would drive down the freeway speaking to myself. It's hard to get a handle on but it sounds really cool when you get it right."
Supervising animator Shawn Keller had the double duty of animating eccentric billionaire Preston B. Whitmore and the chuckwagon chef Cookie. A 22-year Disney veteran, Keller had a ball animating these two animated oddballs.
"Preston Whitmore is a mysterious Howard Hughes kind of character," observes Keller. "He has a lot of fun idiosyncrasies to work with and, physically, his movements are very broad and exaggerated. Cookie was also a very physical character with a great voice. It was a privilege working with a comic genius like the late Jim Varney and I would listen to his voice over and over again to get all the comic timing and performance I needed for the character."
Director Gary Trousdale adds, "John Mahoney brought a great energy to the character of Whitmore. He does these wild kinds of vocal peaks and valleys where he'll be speaking calmly about something one moment and then he turns on a dime and will be laughing like a maniac and doing tai chi the next. He really captured the character nicely and made it a great marriage of animation and voice."
Another supervising animator who had two great characters to work with on "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" was Dave Pruiksma. The talented artist, whose repertoire includes Mrs. Potts in "Beauty and the Beast" and the Sultan in "Aladdin," was responsible for the animated antics of Mrs. Packard (the world-weary communications officer) and Fenton Q. Harcourt (Milo's bombastic boss at the Museum).
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