OSMOSIS JONES
© 2001 Warner Bros.

Related Links

0

Inner Space never looked so good

It can definitely be argued that Warner Bros. is no stranger to the world of animation. However, even with cartoon legends like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig in its stable, as well as experience in producing such live-action animated fare as this summer's CATS & DOGS, the studio has never had a resounding hit in the cartoon feature market. But the "powers-that-be" hope to change all of that with their latest release, OSMOSIS JONES.

Combining big name voice talent, one of Hollywood's hottest directing duos and a proprietary animation technology (a necessity nowadays for any studio tackling animation), OSMOSIS JONES looks to become the standard by which all animated/live-action splits are judged in the future.

"OSMOSIS JONES is a buddy cop film that uses animation, live action and CGI to make an arresting adventure that takes place inside the body of a zoo worker a place we call the City of Frank," says producer Dennis Edwards. "Frank is played by Bill Murray and his world is all live-action. [He] plays a guy who cleans up at the zoo and who will eat almost anything. He really doesn't take care of himself. Osmosis Jones is your classic maverick cop. [Voiced] by Chris Rock, he thinks that he is the toughest white blood cell on the Immunity Force [the animated world inside of Frank.] Frank accidentally ingests a deadly virus named Thrax (voiced by Laurence Fishburne), so Ozzie has to team up with a multi-symptom cold pill named Drix (played by David Hyde Pierce). Drix is a by-the-book Robocop kind of a one-man SWAT team who uses this giant cannon arm that carries around soothing relief medicine. So you've got the maverick cop and the by-the-book Robocop who have to find some way to work together to save the life of Frank."

Laurence Fishburne voices bad guy Thrax in OSMOSIS JONES.

© 2001 Warner Bros.

Pop singer Brandy, William Shatner, Ron Howard and Joel Silver round out the cast of A-list voice talent, while the Farrelly brothers apply their "no holds barred" comedy stylings to the live action portion of OSMOSIS JONES.

Interestingly enough, the film was originally written with a more even dispersal of live-action and animated screen time in mind. However, through the course of its development, the project was split at approximately 70.1 minutes of animation (just long enough for consideration in the Academy's new animated feature category), with the remaining one third set within the live-action world. Nevertheless, the film's producers assure that the Marc Hyman penned project will not feel like two separate films. On the contrary, the live-action "outside world" and the animated "inside world" rely on each other equally.

"OSMOSIS JONES is a very cutting edge 2D-3D animation mix something that probably has never been attempted before as far as the complexity of the work," says associate producer Aaron Parry. "It's a very different movie as far as the way it deals with live action. It's not ROGER RABBIT, but it's nothing that has ever been done before. It's the largest, probably the most difficult project we've ever attempted here from a digital effects standpoint. It's almost wall-to-wall effects throughout the entire movie."

The technology developed for this feature, while definitely revolutionary, is perhaps better described as evolutionary. After all, it was the film's predecessor that actually made the use of this unique art style possible.

"This is the next generation where we went after IRON GIANT," says Parry. "We actually started using digital backgrounds in IRON GIANT and, of course, the Iron Giant was a 3D character made to look 2D. This is really the next evolution of that technology where we can use it to keep the cost of the film down, yet buy a really complex urban setting."

What Parry is alluding to is the process by which a three-dimensional rendering like the character of Drix, for example is converted into a two-dimensional drawing, which can then be painted or changed like any other hand drawn element with an end result that is virtually impossible to identify as digital. In addition, not one drop of paint was used when developing the film's elaborate backgrounds, but rather, they were all created via computer using a system that lends itself to time and cost saving benefits.

Bill Murray and Molly Shannon star in OSMOSIS JONES.

© 2001 Warner Bros.

"[The film contains] one of the biggest animated freeway shots with a ton of cars in it," says Klja Erman, CGI Technical Director. "Of course, we don't want to go in and animate every object on its own, so all the cars you see in any of the scenes except for those that are involved in a specific action are being generated and controlled procedurally by a script that is running in the scene. That means all we need to do is specify a number of cars per freeway and determine parameters that, in turn, will determine their actions, their speed, their capability of changing speeds, lanes and behaving oddly just like a regular car would do."

Furthermore, the use of this kind of digital technology allows for complicated shots the likes of which have never been attempted in a cartoon feature.

"We wanted to provide some amazing cinematography, so we had to build stunt doubles for our 2D characters in the 3D world that would go through the same process as the cars and Drix to match up perfectly with their environment," says Parry. "There is an example of a scene where the traditional animators will actually animate the characters into a pose, we will freeze camera and do a 360 i.e. in the MATRIX and come out of it again into two-dimensional animation."

No matter how far technology advances, however, the need for traditional animation and character design will always remain. After all, what film would be successful if its main characters didn't "match up" to their celebrity voices? Enter Ricardo Curtis, lead animator for the character of Osmosis Jones. It's his responsibility to insure that the character embodies both Rock's distinct voice and the director's distinct vision.

"Osmosis is a white blood cell, so we had to design something that looked like a white blood cell generally believable," says Curtis. "When we decided the voice was going to be Chris Rock, then we had to put some Chris Rock-isms in it. So we went back and redesigned a little bit [Rock] has big teeth, a large mouth and he hits a lot of accents. We could have made [Osmosis] very cellular, but the further you take him away from [a human appearance] the less believable he is as a performer."

The same can be said about Mayor Phlegmming, voiced by the legendary Shatner. Lead animator Dave Brewster really had to do his homework in order to make the character "match up" with the voice.

"I tried to watch as much of the original STAR TREK footage, as well as every other film Shatner did to try and find out how he blocked out his physical presence," says Brewster. "He has a lot of shoulder movement, as well as these long dramatic pauses between each thing. It's almost like Shakespearean kind of stage acting. There are a few scenes you'll look at and see it, not in a mocking sort of way but sort of integrating it into the voice."

Ultimately, it will be up to the summer movie-going audience to decide whether the characters match up, the technology works and the live-action/animation split is acceptable. However, with a number of similar projects in the production hopper (one that includes the studio's popular Looney Tunes characters a la SPACE JAM), Warner Bros. is banking that its latest endeavor will take the human body (or bodies) in a darkened theater by storm.