With the “Dog man“The crazy Canine Crusader Comedy/Adventure adapted from Dav Pilkey’s popular Children’s Graphic Novel Series (A Spinoff of His” Captain Unders “books), Dreamworks Animation continues their experiments in graphic 2D style. Not surprisingly the trend began with ”Captain: Underpants: The first epic movie ” And transferred to “The Bad Guys”, “Puss In Boots: The Last Wish” and “The Wild Robot.”
But the irreverent “dog man” is the strangest and wildest of gang. It’s about a superhero police with a dog head (after reconstructive operation), who fights against Arch Enemy Petey, “the world’s most wicked cat.” It drives the use of 2D-like graphics even further than “Captain underpants”, with titles that appear in the air, a la “yellow submarine”, which Petey often interacts with.
In accordance with Pilkey’s style, however, the film does not talk to children or adults and takes all kinds of snappy chances, including casting by Pete Davidson as the sarcastic Petey, Lil Rel Howery as the fast police chief and Ricky Gervais like Flippy, the fish with telekinesis.
Author/director Peter Hastings (“Animaniacs”) was immediately drawn to “Dog Man”, after previously collaborating with Pilkey on “The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants” series. But he wanted to strengthen Pilkey’s offbeat humor, sincere feelings and graphic stylization. He even made the vocal effects of dog man and came up with his own dog language.
“Dave and I grew up in the 70’s on cartoon movies and all the kind of pop culture of the time,” said Hastings to IndieWire, “and you can really see it in his books. It’s really simple: you only see dog man from the profile and buildings are crooked without windows. I wanted to expand it. ”
Hastings also wanted to expand the theme for childhood trauma, as areas with the unexpected arrival of Li’l Petey (Lucas Hopkins Calderon), the children’s clone in Petey, whose innocence affects both dog man and Petey. “I asked this question about Dogman and Petey in the beginning:“ Will they have a family? “, Said Hastings.” Dogman has this situation where he loses his family and Petey type gets one. Dogman wants one and Petey doesn’t, but the solution to both their problems ends the same thing. “
In the case of animation, while the front and rear end was handled by Dreamworks, the majority of CG animation was made by the UK’s based jellyfish (Netflix’s “The Twits”). “Because of how the books are as tactile, as they are drawn, we really wanted to preserve it but bring our skill level at the same time. We called the “advanced handmade”, Hastings.
To translate Pilkey’s special style, they brought in production designer Nate Wragg (“Puss in Boots: The Last Wish”) and art director Chris Zibac (Captain: Underpants: The First Epic Movie “). The characters became immediately recognizable, and each frame was full of Visual details and jokes, especially graphic titles.
The challenge was to keep it simple but on a large scale. Signs had globe heads with minimal facial expressions, consisting of 2D line drawings on top of the 3D models. The characters’ tactile quality was modeled after stop movement, including animation mostly on two (one image for each two frames) for rough movement.
Dog man heads were first tested in 2D so that they could understand how to translate it into a feasible 3D model while the books preserved the handmade appearance. However, the ears and arms are independent from his body, so they can become moving parts in the style of Pilkey.
In the meantime, Ohkay City evokes a retro urban environment, which comes alive at the end when the buildings turn into tangled MECHA robots for a maximum battle. “Nate and Chris went crazy about the city,” Hastings said. “We stopped going on a different path. I made a much longer sequence out of it and then gave some of them attitude and views.
“We also loaded the city with all kinds of hidden things,” he added. “Easter eggs and signs and characters. I will say that there is a como by George and Harold (from “Captain underpants”) which is quite obvious. “
