They’re creepy and they’re kooky ...
Cinesite Vancouver brings darkness and light to MGM’S The Addams Family
The Addams Family debuted in the pages of The New Yorker magazine in 1938. Created by cartoonist Charles Addams — who signed his work Chas Addams — the single-panel pieces pictured the gothic and macabre machinations of Gomez, Morticia, Wednesday and Pugsley Addams, along with close relatives Uncle Fester and Grandmama, the butler Lurch, the disembodied hand Thing and Gomez’s living hairball Cousin Itt.
Addams envisioned the strip as a satirical take on the not-yet-nuclear American family, and more than 150 Addams Family cartoons were drawn, running in various publications. The strip has been adapted into a popular TV series (1964-66), a few additional animated and live-action series, and the successful early 1990s feature-film franchise starring the late Raul Julia as Gomez and Anjelica Huston as Morticia.
The new 3D animated feature-length movie from MGM is the first completed feature to come from the Vancouver offices of London, England-headquartered Cinesite. The company also operates studios in Montreal and owns both the Image Engine and TRIXTER VFX brands.
It took two years for a 240-person crew to produce The Addams Family. A total of 1,173 shots were done across the 87-minute film. To put into perspective what was involved to create just one character’s look, a total of 85,000 hairs were required to generate Cousin Itt. Guided by director Greg Tiernan, the team brought the new look of the beloved family to the screen by examining to the original source material.
“My job was to come up with the overall look of the picture, to develop the shape language and the colour schemes of the other world that we venture into,” says art director Patricia Atchison. “The original characters were designed by an artist named Craig Kellman, who designed them from Chas Addams’ original artwork. It’s funny that a lot of people don’t recognize the characters and the character design, so to bring it back was a lot of fun.”
Laura Brousseau is head of lighting at Cinesite Vancouver. She said that researching the source material became the first step for the team in developing the dark-andlight contrast between the Addams and the rest of the world.
True to almost all contemporary big-studio, animated features, sharp eyes will pick up on the odes and homages to the original comics.
“A large part of the story is the contrast between the two worlds that exist, the darkness of the Addams’ property and (the town of ) Assimilation ... which is all bright, sunny and colourful,” said Brousseau. “It was definitely a challenge to have the Addams fit into that environment and vice versa, but I think we really got it to work.”
Naturally, all that computer animation meant CG supervisor Nate Barnard had his hands full. The Addams Family is his third feature and he says the learning process is ever changing in contemporary animation, often resetting mid-movie as technology improves.
Cinesite, the sole CGI vendor on the project, and MGM have a long-established working relationship as Cinesite has worked on every 007 feature since 1995’s Goldeneye.