Hoppity just returned from a wonderful journey to PDI and from the behind the scenes spectacular that will be ANTZ. Here is his account. You can catch the trailer with some prints of ANASTASIA, which I'm seeing tomorrow. I'm dying to see this one.
Just returned form a tour of PDI, the cg house doing ANTZ. And while we didin't get to see any thing in motion, the stuff we did see was impressive enough.
First the poster: totally cool graphic style poster. steel blue background with a solid black ant head silhouetted against it. Above it the words "one life one kolony" (hmmm....can u say catch phrase) below the head on black letters ANTZ. again a totally cool hard edge, poster.
Next the characters: imagine my surprise when i reach the second floor and in the room next to me are the actual ant scuptures! The characters are way cool, they walk upright, but on 4 legs instead of 2. the chest and arms are at a right angle to the rest of the body. Saw numerous facial expressions sculpted, and a few characters, some were approx. 2 feet high. They are digitizing these sculptures to use as the models in the movie. The look of the face is very much like the grass hopper from james and the giant peach. Not exactly but its the closest comparision i can come up with.
Next storyboards: plastering the walls around me were numerous storyboards and character designs. All of them with an insane amount of detail. There was an ant bar, an awesome ant city, and numerous insect designs. They all perfectly fit into the look of the film which is very organic and earthy. The lighting in many scenes was very dramatic. If the renders come out looking like this we are in for a treat. coolest storyboard was one that depicted row upon row of an ant army. Imagine thousands upon thousands of ant soldiers lining up and you get the idea. there is a hard edged "military/fascist" look to what we saw, very cool, very un-toystoryish
A few other facts: 2-4 hours per frame, release date spring 1999, trailer before "mouse hunt"
One last note: PDI's next project could potentially be a film called "shrekk" (hope i got the name right) there were a few storyboards of this scattered around but couldnt get a good look at them. Our guide hinted that this is what they wanna do next.
