Did the animators purposely make the character look so much like a real person?

He look nothing like Adrien Brody to me.

Very commonplace for animators to do that.

I don’t really see how that would happen by accident.

@drdoombot I found the resemblance to be so striking that it was distracting to me!

I got wet.

@Blondesjon well there’s my answer, they did it on purpose to make you wet. Thank you for clearing that up for me!

I am a giver. :)

Animators very often use a real person to develop a character. When The Little Mermaid came out, it was widely known that one of the real people they based the mermaid on was Alyssa Milano.

The entire film was based on a true story.

@eponymoushipster And they based the evil Mermaid her name escapes me on Divine, the drag queen in John Waters movies. I think that is awesome!

@knitfroggy Ursula? wouldn’t surprise me.

The Octopus/Witch Ursula was based on Divine and Pat Carroll

Yes Ursula! Can’t believe I couldn’t think of that!

some people say Squidward on SpongeBob is based on me, but I think they are just being mean.

@evelyns_pet_zebra i think you look like johnny rotten and susan powter…

@eponymoushipster well, if those two had sex and then had a kid, it would look just like me, I’d guess.

@evelyns_pet_zebra I would love to see that

In many animated films, it is quite common for the animators to incorporate features of the actor who is voicing the part into the look of the character.

They normally shoot footage of the actor while he’s recording the lines and this is made available to the animators. The voice work is all done prior to the animation since it must all sync up so it just makes sense to do that.

To me it was most noticeable in Shrek (Mike Myers) with the donkey (Eddie Murphy) and John Lithgows long chin on Lord Farquard etc.

But the more you become aware of it, the more you tend to notice it. That Mammoth looks exactly the way Ray Romano would look if he were a Mammoth and there is no getting around how much that saber tooth looks like Denis Leary.

As I said, the more you know, the more you notice…

Buttonstc is right.

Obvious examples from Finding Nemo: Barry Humphries/Bruce the shark, Geoffrey Rush/Nigel the pelican, Willem Dafoe/Gill the moorish idol.

@buttonstc That’s awesome.

But I wonder if they have to make changes, because I know that they develop characters from imagination, and then make various sculptures to put them into perspective.

Hmm I’m not sure if they would ever choose the cast before creating the characters, but I might be wrong.

I’m not sure of all the timing involved in what gets chosen when in each and every case. I’m just going by what I have heard various folks discuss about the process.

I know that from the time they do the voice work until the finished product is in tjeaters is several years-much longer than regular movies.

And I am pretty certain that the voice characters are chosen before pretty much anything else because some of the actors spoke about how all they had to go on were some general rough sketches in storyboard form along with the script for some of the more complex action sequences.

I’m thinking particularly of the sequence where they are being chased by the dragon while trying to escape the castle.

Also, many times actors in the same film don’t necessarily physically work together in the recording process either.

This is one of the reason why a lot of actors love being voices in animated films. No getting dressed up, no elaborate rehearsals or blocking shots etc. which can make regular film work grueling.

The other reason they gave is that they look really cool in the eyes of their young children.

:D

Hmm I learned someting new from an article with Spike Jonze in GQ. For a film yet to be released, they filmed the actors while they did the audio. Then the CG team recreated the faces of the digital monsters to match the expressions of actors during audio recording.