Animating Zebras for "Racing Stripes"

 

Way back in 2004 I got my first job as animation supervisor, on Frederic Du Chau's live action VFX movie "Racing Stripes", about a zebra that wants to be a racehorse.  It was filmed mainly in South Africa - where zebras are plentiful; while the VFX work was done at Digiscope in Santa Monica, with other studios such as Hybride in Montreal animating the two horseflies "Buzz and Scuzz". About 30 VFX shots were completed in London at the Peerless Camera Co.  Part of the animation process was to create expression sheets for the characters in the film, to inform the CG modelling process and to make sure the animation would be as realistic and expressive as possible. 

Buzz and Scuzz

You can see a short clip from the film here, starring the two horseflies: Buzz and Scuzz

Racing Stripes Expression Sheets & Style Guide

In "Racing Stripes", Stripes is a real zebra - in fact a number of zebras - who needed to be able to talk, using digital effects.  Like all VFX work, the digital effects needed to be invisible. 

Expressive and Appealing

The expression sheets were done to guide the animation style, which needed to be as realistic as possible, but also expressive and appealing.  

The voice talent for Stripes was Frankie Muniz. 

The Brief - If Animals Could Talk

The brief for the animals in the film was they should talk just like the real animals would talk, if only animals could talk.  So, they should be realistic and believable.

Eyes

The animal's eyes were very important. As the saying goes: "Eyes are the window to the Soul".  Eyes are what the audience will looks at; get the eyes right, and you are half way there.

Especially in a close-up, the eye expressions will sell the shot. 

Noses

Animals noses are very expressive too.  Horses and zebras have a keen sense of smell.

Nostrils

Nostrils can flare and inflate, helping to punctuate accents in the dialogue. 

Lipsync

At Digiscope we did hundreds of talking animals shots.  Our pipeline got very efficient (as you might imagine), with each animator getting very good at lipsync. 

Mouth Shapes

The trick with the dialogue was to get lots of flexibility into the mouth to avoid the "clapper" look - lots of forward ("ooh") and back ("ee") shapes to add texture. 

Lipsync & Dialogue Resources
We have many resources on animating dialogue and lipsync at Animation Apprentice. To find out more, follow the links below:

• Why Animators Should Hold "M"s "B"s and "P"s for two frames
• Why Lipsync Should be "Two Frames Ahead"
• Why Lipsync Needs Wide and Narrow Mouth Shapes
• The Secret to Animating Dialogue and Lipsync
• Speed Lipsync - How to Animate Dialogue Fast
• Why Animators Should Open Wide on the Big Vowels
• Dialogue and Lipsync Tutorial
• Animating Lipsync - Avoid Famous Lines of Dialogue
• How to Block Out and Animate a Dialogue Shot
• Why Animators Leave Lipsync Until Last
• Lipsync Resource - The Sesame St Sound Archive
• Why Animators Need to "Hit The Accent"
• Animate Monty saying "Oh Yeah!"
• Animate Monty saying "Smokin'!"
• Animate a Sneeze with Monty
• Why Animators Need "Head Muppeting"
• Animating Lipsync for "Underdog"

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