There are also touches of Renée Zellweger seen in Angie. “I really credit the animators for putting Renée’s expressions into her character,” Jenson comments. “There’s a sweetness to the way her eyes crinkle up and the way her mouth is a little asymmetrical when she talks, and they captured that brilliantly.”
Bergeron notes that even the sharks were differentiated according to their characters. “Don Lino is played by Robert De Niro, which is why he’s got that mole. We printed out every expression we could find in De Niro’s filmography, from comedy to drama, to make sure we reflected him in his shark. We tried to make every expression Don Lino has a De Niro expression. He also has sharper lines than Jack Black’s character, Lenny. Lenny is a gentler shark, so we softened up his character. His teeth aren’t as sharp as the other sharks and he has the rounder nose and fuller cheeks.”
Jack Black says, “They captured my essence in the character,” while admitting to one reservation about Lenny’s appearance: “I think they went overboard with that pot belly. I gave the animation team a strict ‘talking to’ about trimming that down.”
His protestations fell on deaf ears, however, as Vicky Jenson counters, “We loved Lenny’s belly. You just want to tickle it,” she laughs.
As usual, the actors were all filmed during their recording sessions, which provided inspiration to the animators, led by supervising animators Ken Stuart Duncan, Lionel Gallat, Fabrice Joubert, Fabio Lignini and William Salazar. Bill Damaschke confirms, “On all the animated films we make, the reference tapes of the actors are hugely helpful. But on this particular film, they took on an even greater importance, because the animators were on a quest to capture these actors and create a new kind of alter ego of each actor in his or her character. They would watch the tapes over and over and look for the smallest details and nuances in the actors’ performances to extract and bring to the characters.”
In the case of Will Smith, Duncan says, “We also studied a lot of Will’s music videos to get a sense of how he moves. It was great to watch the recording sessions of all the actors. There were nice little moments even in between takes that I tried to draw upon in the animation. It’s not only what they’re saying that’s important, but also what their behavior is in between the dialogue.”
“As an animator, one of the most rewarding things about working on this movie was being able to work with talents on the level of this cast,” Gallat adds. “Almost everything we do is based on the voices and what is laid out by the actors to bring the characters to life. So it was very important to us to have such great actors who really enjoyed what they were doing. It showed in their performances and it enabled the animators to have fun animating the characters.”
With the rewards came challenges, and challenges spawned new breakthroughs in computer animation. “Today’s technology allows artists to realize what they dream,” says Jeffrey Katzenberg. “It is a constantly evolving process in which the power and diversity of the tools we’re able to put in the hands of our animators grows exponentially with each one of these films. Things we did in ‘Shark Tale’ are already light years ahead of what we did on ‘Shrek 2,’ which came out less than six months ago.”
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