The Making of "Beverly Hills Chihuahua"

In the short video above (just 5 minutes long) I describe my experience working on the Disney live action feature film "Beverly Hills Chihuahua", animated at Cinesite in London back in 2007 and early 2008.  As part of the development process I did a large number of expression sheets, a few of which I have uploaded below.  

Beverly Hills Chihuahua

Character Expression Sheets

"Chloe"

The purpose of the expression sheets was to help the modelling department create blend shapes for the character rigs, showing a range of expressions and moods, which could then be captured in the animation.  This was my third "talking animals" live action movie, following Racing Stripes and Underdog. 

The Brief - If Dogs Could Talk

The brief for Chloe (and the other dogs in the film) was they should talk just like a real dog would talk, if only dogs could talk.  So, the animation style was to be realistic and believable.

Eyes

The eyes of the characters were very important - especially our heroine, Chloe. 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

"Papi"

Dog noses are very expressive too.  Dogs have a keen sense of smell, and their noses are constantly at work, sniffing out their surroundings.

Nostrils

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

Blinks

In real life dogs mostly only half-blink, but on Beverly Hills Chihuahua we animated full blinks, usually including the brows to get extra flexibility in the face. 

Lipsync

"Delta"

At Cinesite we did over 600 talking dog shots.  Our pipeline got very efficient (as you might imagine), with each animator getting very good at animal 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. 

Live Action Reference

Before animation began, the CG Team at Cinesite spent many hours filming different dog breeds and gathering as much reference as we could get. This reference was crucial for creating the right mouth shapes and expressions. 

Blend Shapes

This reference was hugely valuable later on when it came to creating realistic blend shapes.  The blend shapes mimicked the real-life muscle system of the dog's faces, so that we could make the lip-sync as believable as possible. 

Lipsync & Dialogue Resources

Racoon Dialogue Short - Animated by Mark Masters

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

Lipsync - General Principles

• 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
• Animating Lipsync - Why Animators Should Avoid Famous Lines of Dialogue
• How to Block Out and Animate a Dialogue Shot
• Why Animators (Usually) Leave Lipsync Until Last
• Lipsync Resource - The Sesame St Sound Archive
• Why Animators Need to "Hit The Accent"
• Why Animators Need "Head Muppeting"

Lipsync Tutorials

• Animate Monty saying "Oh Yeah!"
• Animate Monty saying "Smokin'!"
• Animate a Sneeze with Monty: "Achoo!"
• Dialogue and Lipsync Tutorial

To find out more about Animation Apprentice, click here for a link to Frequently Asked Questions. To sign up for our next classroom at Animation Apprentice, follow this link.