Despite the controversy surrounding the seven dwarfs, the recently shuttered MPC aimed to find the difficult sweet spot between painterly and photoreal in “Snow White,” translating them in a way that does justice to the hand-drawn aesthetic of Walt’s revolutionary debut feature from 1937. It’s shame that it’s one of the VFX studio’s last hurrahs, after working on the Oscar-winning “The Jungle Book” (2016), the Oscar-nominated “The Lion King” (2019), and the “Mufasa” (2024) prequel.
However, MPC doesn’t stand alone. They followed Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” (2010), the first of the Disney live action remakes, which benefited from the tech achievements of Sony Pictures Imageworks, while Weta Digital created something iconic with the friendly dragon from David Lowery’s “Pete’s Dragon” (2016).
Let’s see how the dwarfs stack up against some of these other notable CG characters:
“Snow White”
For “Snow White,” MPC applied its photoreal animation skills to the dwarfs in collaboration with Andy Serkis’ performance capture Imaginarium Studios. The iconic dwarfs were split between voice talent and performance capture actors, who also served as puppeteers for on set interaction with Rachel Zegler’s Snow White and other actors. The use of practical puppets on set also helped match camera and lighting by cinematographer Mandy Walker (“Mulan”).
Here’s the breakdown: Doc was voiced by Jeremy Swift and performance captured/puppeteered by Jonathan Bourne; Bashful was voiced by Tituss Burgess and performance-captured/puppeteered by Leah Haile; Dopey was voiced by Andrew Barth and performance-captured/puppeteered by Jaih Betote; Grumpy was voiced by Martin Klebba and performance-captured/puppeteered by Omari Bernard; Sneezy was voiced by Jason Kravits and performance-captured/puppeteered by Dominic Owen; Happy was voiced by George Salazar and performance captured/puppeteered by David Birch; and Sleepy was voiced by Andy Grotelueschen and performance captured/puppeteered by captain Sandy Foster.
MPC utilized the captured data to animate the dwarfs in post. Additionally, their costumes were designed by famed costumer Sandy Powell, scanned in the computer, and then animated by MPC.
The look of the animation is both realistic and heightened. While they retain their familiar, caricatured look in a way that reflects being aged up a few hundred years, they’ve also been given magical powers. This makes sense since they live in a magical forest.
Meanwhile, two of the dwarfs have been given minor character arcs: Doc discovers that he has special healing powers when dabbling with the precious gems, and the child-like Dopey overcomes his fear of speaking with the help of Snow White.
But, of course, where MPC really shines is with the “Heigh-Ho” scene in the mine and the “Whistle While You Work” scene in the cottage. They turn the mine into an immersive ride worthy of Disneyland, complete with a magical light show, and transform the joyous clean up into a theatrical showstopper, where every dwarf gets more to play with.
“The Jungle Book”
Jon Favreau’s hybrid of live action and animation on “The Jungle Book” achieved a new level of photographic-based realism, led by multiple Oscar-winning production VFX supervisor Rob Legato. The integration was more sophisticated and seamless and everything was designed as it would be with a camera in live action. You believed that the real Mowgli (Neel Sethi) belonged in the virtual jungle with the CG Bagheera (voiced by Ben Kingsley), Baloo (voiced by Bill Murray), Shere Khan (voiced by Idris Elba), Kaa (Scarlett Johansson), and King Louie (voiced by Christopher Walken).
MPC, led by animation supervisor Adam Valdez, utilized new computer programs to better simulate muscles, skin, and fur. At the same time, they relied on subtle facial cues that didn’t stray too far from an animal’s normal range of motion, per Favreau’s instructions.
Weta Digital animated King Louie, led by animation supervisor Paul Story. But, unlike the Serkis-led “Planet of the Ape” franchise, he was keyframed, not performance captured. The character was treated as an orangutan derivative (gigantopithecus) with an “Apocalypse Now” vibe to be a little scary. Weta made sure to add some of Walken’s facial features as part of the animation process, including iconic lines, wrinkles, and folds.
“The Lion King”
For “The Lion King,” Favreau and Legato went further, creating a virtual production game changer with their Nat Geo approach to animation. They created the environments and camera layout in VR with a live action crew, using the real-time Unity game engine (with animated assets made by MPC). The assets went back and forth throughout this process and MPC completed the animation in post. The result was unprecedented photorealism for an animated movie that called itself “live action.”
MPC (led by VFX supervisor Valdez) upped its character animation, with emphasis on the lions, of course, in accordance with actual animal behavior. This included the rigs and simulation of skin, fur, muscle, joints, and the rest of the anatomy. Everything had to be lifelike and believable.
However, the move to complete photorealism imposed limits on the animation, which MPC did its best to turn into advantages, dialing down movement, gesture, and lip sync. Emotional nuance was the goal, anything cartoony was avoided. The result was a unique experiment in creating a live-action ethos.
“Mufasa: The Lion King”
MPC (once again led by VFX supervisor Valdez) delivered a more robust virtual production workflow for Barry Jenkins’ origin story about the teenage Mufasa (Aaron Pierre) and Taka/Scar (Kelvin Harrison Jr.). They used VR with Unreal for location scouting and camera layout, covering the breadth and beauty of African landscapes. Jenkins wanted to create a sense of spectacle as though we were on a rollercoaster ride with Mufasa.
Additionally, MPC pushed the intricate subtleties and emotional expressiveness of the lions. They created new tools for animal fur, achieving a more natural look and enabling the adventurous sequences where lions swim and interact with snow.
The the biggest innovation was called Quad Cap, in which MPC animators wearing dots walked in bipedal human fashion in a circle, reciting lines the actors had already recorded, but on the surrounding computer screens, they saw lions strolling the Savannah in a straight line. While the voice actors provided the basis of the lions’ expressions and emotions, Quad Cap added more anthropomorphic qualities.
“Pete’s Dragon”
Lowery made an arthouse movie out of his live-action update of the 1977 Disney animated cult classic, centered on 10-year-old orphan (Oakes Fegley) and a friendly dragon named Elliott. The director wanted the dragon to be distinct: cuddly, furry, and green. He was impressed with Weta’s work with fur on the “Apes” films. But, of course, Weta also had a history with dragons on “The Lord of the Rings,” “The Hobbit,” and “Game of Thrones.”
Elliott was totally keyframe animated yet had a stop-motion vibe in accordance with the director’s desire to embrace a certain artifice that was somewhat surreal. But the CG had to be very realistic in its physicality so that it was believable that it could live in the woods and go undetected.
“Alice in Wonderland”
We have the success of Tim Burton’s $1 billion-grossing “Alice” to thank (or blame) for this remake trend. Technically, though, it was a milestone, thanks to Imageworks’ synthesis of shooting live actors on a green screen stage with virtual sets and CG animation, creating coherent characters that were part-animated and part-human.
One standout was Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen running around the palace like a childish tyrant. With a head three times normal size and a pinched body (thanks to Burton’s caricature), the VFX team scaled down everything and then re-attached the non-scaled version back onto the scaled-down version.
Another was the Tweedles (portrayed by Matt Lucas). The twins were a true hybrid utilizing the actor’s eyes, nose, and mouth, but then keyframe-animated for everything else (using mo-cap as reference), including the caricatured movement desired by Burton.
