The wild and crazy Zoosters are on the run again. Their Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa adventure takes off where the 2005, Madagascar exploits ended. The hysterical antics of the familiar gang—Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer), Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith), Alex the Lion (Ben Stiller), and Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock)—begins with a perilous plane ride out of Madagascar, that leads to a heartfelt family reunion in Africa.

This star-studded escapade is even more spectacular than the first, due in part to the amazing efforts of the DreamWorks animation team. I had the wonderful good fortune to connect with the film’s Head of Effects, Scott Peterson. Who so graciously took time out of his busy schedule to give Renderosity a behind the scenes look at the creation of Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa…

Melman (David Schwimmer), Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith), Alex (Ben Stiller), Marty (Chris Rock)
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ™ & © 2008 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.

Dee Marie: Thanks so much Scott, for taking the time to discuss your role in the creation of the second installment of DreamWork’s mega hit, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. Your official title for the film was Head of Effects…what are some of the job functions for that position?

Scott Peterson: My responsibilities include supervising the effects department in a creative capacity. I partnered with John Swanson, a production supervisor who manages our department schedule and resources.

Together with leads from the department, we break down the visual effects that we see from storyboards into systems and tasks.

Penguins Kowalski (Chris Miller), Rico, the Skipper (Tom McGrath) and Private (Christopher Knights)
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ™ & © 2008 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.

DM: What were some of the new challenges that you encountered for this project?

SP: Some new challenges that our department tackled were large grass planes, CG Clouds, and water. I balance the needs of the story with our available resources, and make decisions to help us achieve the best look and stay on cutting edge of computer graphics. I also have daily rounds with the artists to evaluate their work and give them feedback.

Marty the zebra (center, Chris Rock) shoots the breeze with two of his own kind
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ™ & © 2008 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.

DM: Primarily, which CGI software programs did your team utilize to create this epic animation adventure?

SP: The effects department uses Maya extensively to create particle and fluid simulations. All of our rendering software is proprietary, including our particle renderer and particle filtering tools. Maya is a very open package that allows us to develop interesting techniques to simulate dust, water, and lava.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ™ & © 2008 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.

Some hero simulations are written entirely as custom scripts outside of Maya, like the wind-swept fire that Krzysztoff Rostek created for the plane engine and the flaming reentry effect that Carl Kaphan created for the plane crashing sequence.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ™ & © 2008 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.

We wrote some special Maya particle field plugins that rotates particles based on vorticity of the simulation, and a plugin that pushes particles into chains in order to produce liquid-like tendril shapes.

DM: What other ways were plugins used?

SP: We used the vorticity plugin to create large billowing dust for the plane crash and the jeep driving along the dirt road. It became a very useful tool to make many atmospheric effects. The particle chain field helped us simulate splashes very quickly without needing to resort to expensive fluid simulations.

Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith), Moto-Moto (will.i.am), Melman (David Schwimmer)
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ™ & © 2008 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.

DM: Within Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, there were many invisible effects—for example: the scrunch of grass when walked upon. What were the most difficult and/or time consuming of those used?

SP: Characters interacting with grass was the most difficult invisible effect that we worked on. The grass is a very expensive element because it takes a long time to render, and there are several departments working on it at the same time.

One large field of grass that recedes miles into the horizon is broken up into different pieces depending on the department. Layout works with the grass in small slabs that are roughly 10 feet by 10 feet in size. Technical Directors then convert those slabs into height and density maps for the surfacing department that are hundreds of yards in size.

Alex’s dad, Zuba ( Bernie Mac), Alex’s mom (Sherri Shepherd), Alex (Ben Stiller)
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ™ & © 2008 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.

Lighting cuts the grass up into regions using curves that form logical scene boundaries that they use to break scenes up into multiple layers. Lighting breaks grass up into dozens of layers in order to manage the amount of computing resources required per layer.

Effects cuts the grass up into a hero section, where the foreground characters interact with the grass, and a background section where crowds interact. We have several interaction tools.

DM: Specifically, what kind of interaction tools did you use?

SP: Jonothan Gibbs wrote a tool called smoosh for Shrek 2, to provide collision avoidance for Puss-In-Boots' fur against his hat and boots. John Fuetsch added collision response animation to smoosh to make it suitable for characters interacting with grass.

Unlike fur, individual blades of grass can make a difference, and sometimes we actually need to adjust errant behavior on a blade-by-blade basis. I so much appreciated the special effort that Licca Hung, Olive Lin, and Stuart Tett put into making that grass believable—and invisible.

Marty the zebra (center, Chris Rock), and Alex the lion (right, Ben Stiller)
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ™ & © 2008 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.

DM: Thank you so much for the in depth explanation…it will now be impossible to view an animation and take a character walking on grass for granted. As that process alone must have been extremely time consuming…from concept to finish, what was the production schedule like for Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa?

SP: Our production schedule was about 12 months, and a skeleton crew worked on preproduction for about six months before that.

Marty (Chris Rock), Alex (Ben Stiller), Melman (David Schwimmer), Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith)
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ™ & © 2008 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.

DM: Did your team ever feel rushed to meet deadlines?

SP: We worked some overtime on some of the biggest effects, such as the breaking dam and flooding waterhole. In general, most people in the department only worked about four weekends worth of overtime. We work hard to make realistic budgets for our films so that people don't have to walk a death march at the end of production.

Alex the lion (left, Ben Stiller) and his father, alpha lion Zuba (right, Bernie Mac)
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ™ & © 2008 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.

DM: How many artists/animators worked on the film?

SP: At our peak, towards the latter half of production, we had about 35 artists. We had far fewer early in production. The number of artists ramped up continuously based on the state of other projects running at the studio at the same time.

DM: I read that you designed a hybrid procedural tree-modeling tool specifically for use in Madagascar. What other innovative creations did you, or your team, develop for Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa?

SP: Kendal Cronkite, our production designer, created much more complex foliage for Escape 2 Africa, than she did for the first Madagascar. The problem with using a procedural method to creating foliage is that it requires a lot of time from some of our most technical artists.

The foliage that we created was also very difficult to stylize. I decided to design a tool that would empower our talented modeling department to efficiently manage thousands of branches inside of Maya.

King Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Maurice (Cedric The Entertainer)
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ™ & © 2008 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.

We no longer needed that rigorous procedural techniques of growing trees, because Maya could handle the dense geometry of foliage in real-time. Bonsai facilitates the creation and pruning of hundreds of branches efficiently. It has uses smaller, simpler procedural steps to facilitate working on many branches, but the artists’ controls the high-level shape by hand.

Its philosophy is inspired by Bonsai tree gardeners—who work with branches in small groups by pruning and bending. Working on trees interactively allows modelers to make creative and stylized choices while they are modeling trees, a task that was extremely difficult using a strictly procedural approach. While I started the tool, Jeff Budsberg did a great job taking over ownership of the tool, and presenting it as a sketch at SIGGRAPH 2008.

DM: Now that we have gone through the technical aspects of the film’s creation, I have to ask…of all the animated characters in Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, which one was your favorite?

SP: I like Moto Moto the best. Working with Fengei Lee on the effect of water dripping down his chest was a real blast.

My favorite blooper was when Fengwei first started. He accidentally made Moto Moto's wet skin look like silver; like the terminator from Terminator 2. [laughter]

Moto-Moto (will.i.am) and Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith)
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ™ & © 2008 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.

DM: Yeah, I like Moto Moto, too (his name’s so nice, you say it twice). I can see why that would rank as one of your favorite blooper moments. So, when can we expect the release of Madagascar 3?

SP: I can't comment on that question.

Nana (Elisa Gabrielli)
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ™ & © 2008 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.

DM: Ok, I understand. As I would hate for the morning news to read…Head Effects of DreamWorks forced to kill Renderosity Interviewer...how about a different question?

SP: [smiles followed by a nod of approval]

DM: Many of our readers aspire to work in the field of animation, please tell us your story. How did you manage to be among the select few chosen to be part of the DreamWorks, dream-team?

SP: I was employee number 200 hired at PDI [Pacific Data Images/DreamWorks] to work on effects for the movie Antz, about 11 years ago. The timing of my graduation from school, and PDI ramping up for producing their first film was a lucky break for me.

Before that, I was an intern for Rhythm and Hues studios. R+H was absolutely a dream to intern for, and I learned a great deal from them.

While at PDI, I worked on shots for production, and implemented several systems including a tree system for Shrek, crowds and dust for Antz, a particle post-processing pipeline for particle rendering, and earned a patent for a geometry compression algorithm that I invented for our crowd cycle geometry.

DM: I can see from your filmography, that not only do you need talent to succeed in your profession, but also a strong work ethic, which you obviously have both.

Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) and King Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen)
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ™ & © 2008 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.

DM: Thank you so much, Scott, for taking time out of your busy schedule to give our readers an inside look into the creation of Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. I now surrender the interview to you. Do you have any parting words of wisdom you would like to share with our readers?

SP: Creating great CG is hard work. When a technique becomes easy, it proliferates and becomes uninteresting. Work hard to make it special, and you'll be rewarded!

The filmmakers—and some of the zoosters—from Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
Directors Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath; Producers Mark Swift and Mireille Soria
Alex the lion (Ben Stiller); Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Marty the zebra (Chris Rock)
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ™ & © 2008 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.

 

• Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa website
• Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa is now available on:

• DVD Widescreen and Full-screen, and Blue-Ray
  2-disc DVD Double-Pack (with bonus short: The Penguins of Madagascar)
  
• DVD Widescreen and Full-screen
  
• Blu-ray (w/ The Penguins of Madagascar)
  3-disc DVD Complete Collection
  
• Madagascar, and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
  
• The Penguins of Madagascar bonus disc

All supporting images were used with permission from DreamWorks Animation L.L.C Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ™ & © 2008 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved. Supporting images cannot be copied, printed, or reproduced in any manner without written permission from DreamWorks Animation L.L.C

Get to know industry leaders and professionals
as they sit down and talk candidly with
Contributing Columnist, Dee-Marie,
Author of "Sons of Avalon: Merlin's Prophecy"