AW, SNAP The Addams Family: The Art of the Animated Movie

The creative team behind the new CG Addams Family film share how they brought the creepy, kooky family to life

This animated version had the ability to echo Charles’ illustrations more faithfully

Author Ramin Zahed Publisher Titan Books Price £30 Web www.titanbooks.com Available Now

Depending on your age, you’ll likely have a mental picture of what the Addams Family looks like. Perhaps you remember the television series from the 1960s, or maybe you caught the big screen adaptations in the early 1990s. This familiarity was a challenge for the creative team behind the new CG Addams Family film, as they had to find a new take on the iconic characters.

Their solution, as is made clear in this art book for the new animated movie, was to go back to the original Addams Family cartoons, which first appeared in The New Yorker in the 1930s. Drawn by Charles Addams, these cartoons provided a jumping-off point in terms of the story, character design and art style.

Unlike the live action adaptations, this animated version had the ability to echo Charles’ illustrations more faithfully. In the handful of original Addams cartoons contained in this book, it’s clear to see how character elements such as Pugley’s eyes and Uncle Fester’s physique have been carried over and made to work in 3D. There’s also room for variation though, and we particularly like the way Wednesday’s hair is plaited into a pair of hangman’s knots. Considering that so much is made of this reliance on the cartoon source material though, it’s disappointing that only a few of them appear in these pages. In his foreword, co-director and producer Conrad Vernon points out how they delved into Charles’ work to find new family members, storylines and character designs, but again these barely get a look, apart from a few family portraits.

Similarly, concept art for Auntie Sloom, octopus Socrates and Kitty the lion are presented without any explanation. There’s also talk throughout about how this film wants to use the Addams Family to tell an immigrant story and celebrate the diversity of ‘the other’; however, this is never elaborated on, either.

Areas that do get covered in detail include the design of the central family members, the Addams’ mansion, and new characters Parker and Margaux Needler, who represent the buttoneddown antithesis of the Addams clan. And from the concept art, moody atmosphere and film stills, it’s obvious that a lot of passion has been poured into making these elements stand apart from other animated films, even if it doesn’t always come across here.

RATING ★★★

A caricature of Hollywood actor Michael Shannon was the basis for Lurch’s face.

The creative team treated the Addams mansion as a character rather than simply an unusual location.

“Too cool for school” was the inspiration behind designer Craig Kellman’s work on Parker Needler, one of the new characters who appear in the film.

Home makeover show host Margaux Needler corners Gomez Addams in this storyboard sketch.