Sean Sexton, the lead character animator on Kung Fu Panda 4, details the challenges they faced creating some of their most important characters.
It's been almost ten years since their last adventure, and now Afterembodied by Jack Black in his original version, he returns to Kung Fu Panda 4 to become the Spiritual Master of the Valley of Peacewhile looking for someone to succeed him Dragon warrior and faces a new villain, La Camaleona, whom she brings to life Viola Davis.
The character of The Chameleon has been a complete challenge for DreamWorks, which in its thirty years of history has faced with it one of the most complex characters que ha creado.
According to Sean Sextonthe head of character animation at Kung Fu Panda 4La Camaleona “is really difficult for the rigging department and the animation team to move because there are a lot of details.”
“We had 8,130 individual controls. Every little peak on her head, the lapels of her dress, everything, was completely animatable,” she adds.
The Chameleon is the most complex character DreamWorks has ever made.
To this we had to add the added complexity that they were facing a chameleon that had to change shape and size on several occasions in the film, transforming into up to ten different characters throughout the adventure.
To make La Camaleona transform into the two-meter snow leopard Tai Lungthey had to take the rigs – that is, the skeletons to animate – of both characters and superimpose them in order to animate them simultaneously, so the effects department could merge them together later.
“We would have, let's say, 8,000 controls for La Camaleona. And then we would have another 5,000 checks for Tai Lung. We had to move them all so that La Chameleon could transform into Tai Lung. It was complicated and took a long time,” says the head of character animation for Kung Fu Panda 4.