Here they are--the questions we here at Character Builders get asked most often whenever Space Jam comes up in a conversation. It's a short list, though. If you have a question that's not answered here, please send us e-mail and ask it--we'll do our best to supply you with an answer.

Don't they do it all with computers nowadays?

 This is the big one. We get asked this question three times for every other question we hear. Die-hard animation fans, skip this question.

 Although computers are used in many different ways throughout the animation process, all of the character animation you see in Space Jam was drawn by an artist using a pencil. Every Bugs, every Monstar, every Lola. All drawn by hand, by a live human. There isn't a computer in the world that can do traditional (sometimes known as "two-dimensional") animation--making the real world look like a flat drawing is a level of abstraction that a computer can't achieve yet.

 That being said, computers were used all over the place. Cinesite digitally created a three-dimensional gym that 2-D animation was composited into (also using computers, of course). All of the animation was digitized and colored using a computer. We used Amiga computers to do rough tests of our animation. And these are just a few examples.

 Computers are essential to animation, just as they are essential to accounting, journalism, and rocket science. But computers don't do animation. Artists do animation. Even "computer" animation requires a talented artist sitting at the monitor figuring out how to make a scene funny, or dramatic, or frightening.

What parts of Space Jam did you work on?

 Primarily, three sequences of the movie: Bugs meeting the aliens, the "Union Meeting" where Bugs challenges the aliens to a basketball game, and the Monstars' transformation scene. Character Builders artists, under the supervision of sequence director Jim Kammerud, storyboarded and animated almost all of those sections through finished clean-up. We also boarded and animated other portions of the film, for a total of about ten minutes.

Character Builders contributed to other areas of the film as well, including early conceptual art, character design, and scene planning.

 Did you get to meet Michael Jordan?

 Most of the thousand-plus of the animation staff of Space Jam didn't. Some of the story artists were on the live-action set with him, as were the animation producers and directors. Sequence director Jim Kammerud met him. "He's not as tall as you'd think," he says. "But his hands are huge, and really... rough."

 Did Mel Blanc's son do the voices?

 Noel Blanc does not provide voices for any of his father's characters in Space Jam.

 Bugs Bunny is voiced by Billy West, the actor who played Ren and Stimpy. Dee Bradley Baker plays Daffy Duck and the Tazmanian Devil. Bill Farmer is the voice of Sylvester, Yosemite Sam and Foghorn Leghorn. Porky, Tweety, and several others are the work of Bob Bergen; and Kath Soucie provides the voice of Lola Bunny.

Is my favorite character, Speedy Gonzales [or Sylvester, Jr. or Hippety Hopper or whoever] in it?

Well... you might be surprised who you'll find if you look close enough. The artists had fun sticking in lots of very minor characters from the old cartoons. There wasn't enough screen time, though, to use characters such as the Three Bears or Eggbert as anything more than extras.

 How many drawings does it take to make a movie like this?

 Nobody really keeps track. If you count all of the storyboard drawings, design sketches, layouts, animation roughs and cleanups, and effects drawings, it's got to be over a million.

To give you an idea, though, one second of animation will be 24 frames of film. Typically, somewhere between twelve and eighteen drawings will be drawn, although when a scene is being synchronized to a live action camera move, all 24 frames have to be drawn. An animator will do maybe half of these before passing his or her work on to assistants, who clean the drawings up and do the inbetweens. After this, shadow, highlight, and special effects drawings are done for each character drawing. So for one second of film with, say, three characters, it wouldn't be unusual to have two hundred animation drawings. And these are the final ones you see on screen--not including storyboards, layouts, roughs, ideas that were tried and didn't work, ideas that worked but the director didn't like, and drawings that were eaten by the dog.

 How long does it take to animate a scene/animate the movie?

 An animator on Space Jam was expected to animate around five feet (about three and one-third seconds) per week. The movie itself was in production for about a year and a half (an incredibly short time to make an animated feature). The bulk of the actual animation was done over a period of about eight months.

How does everybody know how to draw Bugs the same way?

 Huge packets of drawings called model sheets are sent out to everybody who animates on the picture. They consist of pictures of all of the characters in dozens of poses. Looking at these, an artist can figure out what a character looks like from any angle and draw the character properly.

 In addition, assistant animators specialize in analyzing animators' drawings, making sure that they are "on model," and fixing them if necessary.

 How does a studio in the middle of Ohio get involved in a Hollywood movie like Space Jam?

 We've actually worked on many feature films prior to Space Jam, including The Swan Princess, Bebe's Kids, and We're Back (see our credits page for more details). We got our first feature gig when the producers of Rover Dangerfield, whe were desperate for assist help, saw our ad in Animation Magazine and gave us a call. We worked out so well on Rover that we were called back when they made their next movie. And the next... We've been doing entertainment work ever since.

Did you get to keep any cels from the movie?

 There were no cels in the movie. Space Jam used a digital ink and paint process in which black and white pencil drawings are digitized and painted using a computer. The computer images are then transferred directly onto film. Traditional hand-painted cels, as pretty as they are, aren't used at any point during the production (except for the occasional background overlay). Any cels you might see in the store are specially-created limited editions (or fakes).

 How come you call the Monstars by the wrong names?

 Throughout the production, the Monstars were called by the names they had in the original script: Zilch, Null, Nada, Void, and Bupkus. The names as you see them in magazines, on toys, and in in the credits were changed by Warners' marketing division, probably due to trademark issues. The Monstars (who are never called by name in the film) became, respectively, Pound, Bang, Nawt, Blanko, and--Bupkus.
 

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