production notes hotel transylvania - Visual Hollywood

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA (2012)PRODUCTION NOTESextreme opposite by making the animation cartoony and fun and exaggerated,” he says.“In television, you’re allowed to stylize and use caricature to make each project lookunique, and I wanted to bring that to the movies so badly. We pushed the animationstyle to be very broad and very physical. We wanted to make it super expressive. Themovement in the movie is all caricature, unrealistic movement. That’s what gives thismovie its energy, and energy in a film is everything to me.”“When we say that the animation style is ‘pushed,’ we mean that facial features areexaggerated, body proportions are exaggerated, and when you see the charactersanimated, it’s fun and unique and most definitely not like real life,” Murdocca explains.“Every aspect of the character design lends itself to this ‘pushed’ animation style.There’s a scene in which Dracula and Jonathan are walking and Dracula’s legs look likebig, long spider legs. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”ABOUT THE CHARACTERSCasting the film helped the filmmakers tofocus on the movie they were making andstriking the right comedic balance and tone,as Tartakovsky explains. “I think what we’vedone is to take these iconic characters andreshape them. We had to stay true to thecharacters, but we wanted a fun movie with monsters, no t a scary movie – we broughtcomedy, not scares. It’s just that our main characters are monsters,” he says. “Forexample, our Dracula is over-controlling and manic and crazy and obsessive – it’staking those elements of his character and pushing them tenfold. The banter is verymodern, conversational, and timeless, so it feels very contemporary. The end result isthat the characters still have that iconic feeling, but modern, updated, and funpersonalities.”© 2012 Sony Pictures Animation 4