Little-creature feature
By Scott Berls
Before Eric Darnell ('83) directed the animated feature "Antz," which has generated upwards of $84.2 million in sales, he became interested in directing on a more personal level.
As a broadcasting student at the School, Darnell's interest in directing began one day in his home while watching a football game on TV.
The quarterback was having a bad day. A very bad day. When the QB finally threw a touchdown pass, the camera zoomed in and showed the receiver.
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Darnell's computer-animated
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Photos courtesy DreamWorks Pictures
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| Z, above left, laments about his lot in life to his best friend, a soldier ant named Weaver in "Antz." Shown below are characters from "Gas Planet," one of the first animated short features hailed for "invisible" computer animation. It is continually requested by animation festivals around the world. |
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And the opposing team. And the crowd. And the scoreboard. And the mascot.
Why, he wondered, didn't anyone think to show the quarterback?
"I wanted to see the quarterback," Darnell said.
"It was," he continued, "kind of the first time I realized that there was somebody making those decisions."
Darnell had an inkling that maybe he could be the one making those decisions. It was the day when armchair quarterback Eric Darnell first set his sights on somehow finding a successful seat in the director's chair.
Years later, that seat is well-worn.
Darnell, 38, along with co-director Tim Johnson, orchestrated the movie "Antz," a break-through computer-animated feature film. It's about Z, a worker ant who must leave his ant colony and journey to the surface world, (you know, the one all of us live on) in an attempt to save his fellow ants from the evil General Mandible.
Darnell himself has also undergone a journey to get to "Antz," one that started in a place called Prairie Village, Kan.From Kansas, where he was born and raised, Darnell enrolled at the University of Colorado.
"We (he and his family) would visit Colorado on vacation quite a bit," he said. "That was probably the biggest factor (in his decision to go to CU)."
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Photo Courtesy PDI
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Eric Darnell
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"It was far enough away from home, but close enough so I could go back easily," he said.
Darnell's degree is in broadcast. How did he go from journalism to animation?
"The actual news stuff wasn't as interesting as just getting my hands on the film equipment," he said.
Darnell said he remembers several of his CU professors fondly.
"I sure had a great time at school there," he said. "For me, having a liberal arts background has served me well."
He said film teacher Stan Brakhage "opened my eyes" to the world of film. He also remembered his reporting teacher, Professor Sam Archibald.
"[Sam] believed a journalist's main role was to find information," Darnell said. "At the same time, he gave the same multiple-choice tests year after year after year."
For students like Darnell who were willing to hunt down the old tests, a good grade was assured.
"I don't think he (Archibald) considered it cheating," he said. "I think he considered it being a good reporter.
"Right after graduation I just started making experimental films in my basement," Darnell said.
Four years later, he used those films to get into the California Institute of the Arts. While at the institute, Darnell made a video for the music group R.E.M.'s song, "Get Up." Also while at the institute, Pacific Data Images recruited Darnell as an intern. He graduated from the California Institute with a master of fine arts degree in experimental animation and began working for PDI in 1991 in the Character Animation Department.
He directed an animated short for PDI, "Gas Planet," that received the Ottawa International Animation Festival Special Jury Prize. With that success under his belt, Darnell left PDI in 1995 to join DreamWorks and assist with the early development of the DreamWorks animated feature film, "The Prince of Egypt."
In 1996, DreamWorks merged with PDI, and Darnell was brought back to PDI to direct "Antz. " It was the first full-length computer-animated feature film co-produced by DreamWorks and PDI and also the second fully computer-animated feature film ever made.
"Antz" breaks new ground in computer animation in three key areas: facial animation, crowd sequences and water-simulation effects. PDI developed a new system to create facial expressions that corresponds to the actual bone, muscles, fat and skin of the human face. In other words, animated characters could convey their emotions via their faces, allowing the ants to actually "act."
Another PDI innovation allowed the computer to create and then position crowds of ants, a process that would have been impossibly time-consuming if done by hand. PDI's tools were also responsible for water that looks and behaves more realistically than anything previously seen in computer animation.
Besides the animation, "Antz" featured the voice talents of several big-name stars, including Woody Allen, Anne Bancroft, Gene Hackman, Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone and Christopher Walken, who were drawn to the movie like ants to a picnic.
"One of the most exciting things about 'Antz' is our cast," said producer Brad Lewis. "It's as if we imagined the perfect cast for our film, and those are the people we got."
"The professionalism of all the actors really came through in the recording sessions," said Darnell. "Unlike any of their other films, they weren't on a set or working opposite another actor; they were saying their lines with a reader feeding them cues. They really relied on our guidance, but it was amazing to see how quickly and how easily they were able to experiment and try things a different way."
Darnell said he is in the "very early stages" of developing a new animated feature at PDI.
"Right now, I'm drawing," he said.
But one thing he's not doing is taking success for granted.
Whether it's drawing, directing or just being creative, he said, "I just have to remind myself how lucky I am."
Darnell lives in Campbell, Calif., with his wife, Laura; their son, Rex, 5, and daughter, Leah, 1.