Creature Animation:

I liked having a longer production schedule, because we were able to animate the movie with
a very small crew (which I liked a lot). Led by head of character animation James Baxter and 5
supervising animators, the team size ranged from just a handful of animators to about 36 in the
end. For the majority of the production, we were just above 20. It was very exciting to see a movie
taking shape and finding itself over the course of production. On Kung Fu Panda 2 and Puss in
Boots, I only got a glimpse of that process in the few months that I worked on those shows.
Just to give an example, the character of Belt the Sloth was quite different when I joined The
Croods. He used to be more like an actual sloth and had a much smaller role in the story.
Gradually, he became the fun sidekick with more of his own jokes and moments. I believe part of
that was due to how much audiences loved him in test screenings. In the end, he carried a lot of
the marketing for the movie and kids were running around crying “Dun dun duuuuh.” He is now one
of my favorite toys in the office!
Cavemen Acting
One aspect I really liked about the show was that I got to work on a variety of characters, since we
did not have “character teams.” We usually animate everything in the shot, unless it’s something
like a flock of birds, which was handled by the crowds department.
The Croods family members were almost always together, which resulted in a high-character
density for many shots. All of them had a specific way of moving and characteristic behavior. Grug,
the overprotective father, was similar to a silverback gorilla. Eep, the rebellious teenage daughter,
moved more like an athletic cat. The 9-year-old Thunk resembled a clumsy chimpanzee and the
youngest daughter Sandy acted more like a dog. It was both fascinating and challenging to find the
balance between the animal-like and instinctual behavior, and relatable, human-like acting choices.
We always looked for opportunities to show that the characters made use of their arms and legs for
locomotion, and could transition between biped and quadruped mode with ease. For that, the rigs
offered many IK controls on the feet as well as the hands, to achieve compression and natural roll
and push-off motions.
Much of the charm and life of the movie existed in the relations between the family members, and
I think that is part of what grabbed audiences (that, and the furry animals). The Croods have family
issues like we do today, but they live in a prehistoric, hostile world. They needed to be believable
as a family, and I was lucky enough to work on some shots where I could show and explore those
relations.
For example, in one of my earliest shots, Eep and Grug come back to the canyon after Eep had run
away, and her Mum checks her “animal-style” — sniffing and poking her hair, while Grug goes into
a sulky gorilla pose. Eep, on the other hand, behaves more like an annoyed teenager, who has to
undergo a parental ritual while thinking about the new Guy she just met.