Behind Disney's Chicken Little

Austin's guide for his animators made them ask themselves three things about each character: what does the character believe, how do they work individually (independent of outside influence) and given their physical limitations, how do they overcome day-to-day challenges? Stubby fox arms and flightless goose wings are a bit more challenging than your standard pencil-tested skinny, agile figure. In addition, each character's individual walk describes his or her personality. Once the personality becomes evident, the different characters can react off each other. That, said Austin, is the recipe for humor: Stick some characters in the same room and show how they work together. It's their differences and individualism that provides "comedy for free," without it being sweated over in the script. Apparently, the classic Disney artists working on an 80-minute feature would storyboard a film to fit in 60 minutes. The time left was saved for character interaction.

It was important, said Austin, that when placed on a model sheet side by side, the characters vary in size and shape, as well as have recognizable silhouettes. He then showed a CG model from his Maya program to show how the characters like Foxy and Goosey were constructed. The animators used what's called a "broken rig hierarchy," as opposed to the traditional standard CG skeleton that your mama used to make. Instead of having the head parented to the neck, the neck to the spine, the spine to the pelvic bone, etc., these characters' bones were not parented to any part of the rig at all. When an animator would move the "waist" control for instance, only the waist would move, leaving the knees and shoulders resting where they were. This made the characters resemble silly putty in no time, but having body parts that move independently of each other made for good bending and brought out the "snappy" quality.

Speaking of which, Foxy's tail had its own model sheet, dictating its behavior by Foxy's mood. When Foxy was a good girl, the tail was more snappy; when she was a bad girl, it was less so and more slinky and snake-like. Even the lip synch, which was instructed to be subtle enough so as not to distract from the character, was always pushed to be "more punchy." In fact, the only body part instructed not to be "snappy" or "punchy" was the eyes. The goal of the eyes was simply to convey emotion and thereby bring the character to life, so realistic animation on the eyes would help sell the believability of the character. As Austin himself said, "The golden word is believability."