Learning about the Animation in TinkerBell and the Legend of the Neverbeast

Man, is animation a complicated business! Listening to Mike Greenholt and Ryan Green explain the process of animating TinkerBell and the Legend of the Neverbeast and specifically creating the movements of Gruff, was amazing and confusing. HA!

One thing that is very interesting that I have been learning on these Disney trips where we get to learn more about the behind-the-scenes is that it takes a TON of people to make a movie, especially an animated movie because 1 person usually only works on 1 aspect of it. So Ryan Green the story artist mostly focused on the moments between Fawn and the Neverbeast. When you think about those moments in the big picture of the whole movie, that is just a tiny chunk of movie.

Ryan was given a picture of Gruff but it didn’t have the details of his front or back or his body shape, it was just a general idea. Since Ryan has a degree in biology he decided to sketch a couple of versions of what his muscle and skeletal features would include and from there they pieced Gruff together.

Something I really loved during this interview was that Ryan and Mike were using a computer to show us how the actual animation process works and how they added movement to Gruff. Since he is a combination of several animals they needed differ parts of him to mimic those animals. His legs are wide and elephant like but he needs to also be able to dig a little. His tail resembles an opossum and he can hang from it, but they also wanted it to have cat like movements. Figuring out all the animal parts and their movements were tricky because it needed to be believable.

The animators studied animals at the LA Zoo so that they could accurately depict movements. They also studied their own pets to see how they react, to see how an animal smiles and communicates. They put those controls into Gruff’s face, his eye brows and nose.

The whole process took them 3 1/2 years. There were some overlaps with different departments but as a whole it was 3 1/2 years.

An interesting this Ryan said is that they could reuse some of the fairies. He said TinkerBell  is TinkerBell. He said it was like “hiring back an old actress”. They did tweak Fawn to give her more facial expressions since she is the main character and then there were completely new fairies you haven’t met before.

Since the end of the movie is so emotional Ryan said the animators working on those seems would just be emotionally taxed and so when they would finished their seen they wanted to work on something happy or funny. They tried to rotate through the emotional parts so it wasn’t just one person always in a sad bubble.

I feel like TinkerBell and the Legend of the Neverbeast is a unique movie, very different from the rest. It comes to a store near you on March 3! Stay tuned for more TinkerBell and the Legend of the Neverbeast interviews and behind the scenes and check out the rest of my #McFarlandUSAEvent adventures.