See the progression of Alex. Photos courtesy of DreamWorks Animation SKG.

At the Central Park Zoo, Alex the Lion, Marty the Zebra, Gloria the Hippo and Melman the Giraffe are the star attractions. They’re groomed, well-fed and hundreds of fans adore them. To the four “Zoosters,” their home is a paradise. But Marty the Zebra is curious. What’s it like outside the zoo? His quest entangles his three friends in a madcap misadventure, which, ultimately, results in their arrival on a remote island. Can four domesticated animals from New York survive in the wild? And when nature rouses their primal instincts, can they survive — each other?

Madagascar, the latest animated comedy from DreamWorks, was directed by Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath, and written together with Mark Burton and Billy Frolick. Darnell, who previously directed Antz, relates that production began four-and-a-half years ago, when hand-drawn animated features were still in vogue.

When Madagascar was developed, “I don’t think it was pitched as any particular medium,” he says. “That kind of stuff, at least in those days, came out of development as what made the most sense, with the story that we were telling. Once I got involved (my own interest is in CG), it was easy for me to motivate it and steer it in that direction.”

Madagascar marks McGrath’s debut as a feature director. “With my background, there’s a little bit more to 2D,” he says. “The CG realm was all new to me. I learned a lot from Eric as well as PDI [Pacific Data Images, officially PDI/DreamWorks]. Eric really wanted to tell the story in a fantasy world that actually was tangible, that you could step into. That’s one of the things that CG can offer. The advancements that PDI’s had since Shrek, we were able to take this world, stylize it and actually use the aesthetics of 2D in a 3D world, so you get the best of both worlds.”

Regarding CG’s technological advancements, Darnell says, “People aren’t working on great pieces of technology unless there is a need. In our case, the creative kind of drove what we did technologically. For example, in the beginning, we could only get four or five furry characters on screen at one time, and we needed 500. So a big effort went in to develop the systems that would allow us to do that. We knew we had a big organic jungle with four million leaves blowing in the wind, and that’s finally what we were able to achieve. But no way could we do that four years ago.

Madagascar was co-directed by Tom McGrath (left) and Eric Darnell. The movie became CG once the directors steered it that way.

“Water is always difficult in computer animation, because while nobody quite knows how to make it look right, everybody knows when it looks right. You know when it’s water. To create a system that would be believable but would also work in the design of the film (it’s not photorealistic water, either), and also be controllable that we could use it to help tell our story, were huge challenges for the technology folks.

Says McGrath, “So many times we were asking, ‘Can we do that?’ And they’d go, ‘We’ll get back to you’.” He chuckles. “And then they’d come back and go, ‘Yeah, we can do it.’ (They would say,) ‘Alex can’t touch his mane. In fact, nothing can touch Alex’s mane.’ And we were going, ‘Oh, really? How are we going to stage this?’ And they’d come back a week later and go, “WE CAN TOUCH ALEX’S MANE! Wooooooo! We can touch Alex’s mane!’ They’d go cheering off and we’d (exhale sigh of relief).”

“The other technological challenge was driven by a creative [need],” Darnell says. “We’d talk about animation style in the film, so we set out from the very beginning this very broad style with squash-and-stretch. But it’s difficult to do in computer graphics because you basically have a virtual puppet that you have to construct before you begin animation. All the controls and capabilities have to be built into this puppet before you start. With hand-drawn animation, if you want to draw a guy that’s normally six feet tall and stretch him out to be 12 feet tall, or flatten him on the ground, you just draw it that way. And you’re done. To design a puppet with those kinds of capabilities was a big challenge for us, because we wanted to be able to do that, too. And ultimately can squish our characters to be 12 inches tall or stretch them way out, or have the jaw drop down to the belly button, or when a hand sweeping through the frame, scale it three or four times for a few frames. A lot of times, when you do this, it’s not something that you see; it’s something that you feel. Again, these are tricks of the trade that animators have been using for decades, but it’s that much harder to get into CG. The technical directors that set up these guys have a big challenge with that, too.”