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THE MAN BEHIND THE MONSTERS

When Shrek, the famous green ogre, pulls wax out of his ear and turns it into a candle in his first major motion picture, it isn’t magic or happenstance or even the work of the animation department.

Computer-animated films require behind-the-scenes computer programmers called character technical directors – character TDs for short – to allow the characters to come to life.

At DreamWorks Animation in Glendale, Calif., ISU grad Terran Boylan (’87 computer engineering, MA ’90 art
and design) has given life to characters in “Shrek,” “Shrek 2,” “Shrek the Third,” “Madagascar,” “Bee Movie,” “Over the Hedge,” “Monsters vs. Aliens,” and in upcoming films “Kung Fu Panda 2: The Kaboom of Doom” and “The Croods.”

Here’s how it works: “There is a department called modeling, which creates static computer models of all the characters. And there is a department called character animation, which is responsible for
creating the illusion of life. We’re the department that fits in between those two,” says Boylan. “So when the animators want a character to make a fist, we’re the ones who allow that to happen. If the animators want a character to smile on one side of his face and frown on the other, we’re the department that makes that possible.”

A quick study
As a boy in Omaha, Neb., Terran Boylan was reading at age 3 and drawing comics at age 4. In high school, he was equally interested in art, math, and physics.
At Iowa State, he majored in computer engineering but added undergraduate minors in design studies and telecommunicative arts.

“I was interested in television and film as well as drawing,” he said.

He was a computer graphics consultant (a “glorified lab monitor”) at the graphics lab in Coover Hall.

“We were responsible for babysitting some of the coolest and newest computer graphics equipment on the Iowa State campus,” he says. “In the mid-’80s, getting a chance to work on a $125,000 Silicon Graphics Iris (SGI) computer was probably as valuable an experience as any of the engineering classes I took.”

His graduate work focused on computer animation and experimental video in the College of Design.

By the time he graduated with his master’s, Boylan was already working full-time for Engineering Animation, Inc., a start-up software company in Ames.
He worked for EAI for 10 years, first as an animator/programmer, then as a project manager, and finally as director of animation technology before moving to DreamWorks in 2000. While at EAI, he was the principal author of commercial VisLab animation software for SGI computers.

Breathing life into characters
Boylan’s background makes him a perfect fit at DreamWorks Animation.

“In my department, we have to be able to execute things on a technical level. But we also have to be able to communicate with artists, and we have to think in artistic terms.”

His first film was “Shrek,” for which he was an FX developer and worked on fire, dust, and the aforementioned earwax.

Boylan’s expertise in character movement has earned him a patent on an interactive method for posing 3-D characters based on gesture drawing techniques. DreamWorks gave him a technical achievement award for that patent and for another software application he designed to animate hair movement.

Some of his work can be seen in the motion of the lion’s mane and giraffe’s neck in “Madagascar” and the bees’ wings in “Bee Movie.”

His favorite character so far is B.O.B. from “Monsters vs. Aliens,” whom Boylan describes straight-faced as an “amorphous gelatinous mass.”

Voiced by Seth Rogen, B.O.B. looks like blue Jell-O with one roving eyeball. His squishy, goofy, relentlessly optimistic, not-so-bright character posed a challenge for the TDs.

“B.O.B. was transparent and highly reflective,” Boylan said. “It was tricky to pull off all his gelatinous gags.”

In the middle of the production process, Boylan met with the story department to show them all the
things B.O.B. could do.

“That actually influenced some of the things that B.O.B. did in the movie,” Boylan said. “That’s a rare occurrence for a character TD. I thought B.O.B. was the funniest thing in the movie.”

Getting animated
Boylan is soft-spoken as he gives a tour of the animation studio in Glendale. The culture there is collaborative, casual, and very California. On a steamy Southern California day, Boylan is wearing a Hawaiian-print shirt and jeans.

He comes to life in front of an oversized “Monsters vs. Aliens” movie theater display borrowed from the consumer products and marketing department, theatrically posing as one of the monsters. (Boylan’s wife, Belinda Arge, works nearby in the marketing office.) He is clearly in his element.

Boylan’s name isn’t above the title of the movies on which he works. In fact, you have to be patient and wait for the end credits to roll. But it’s all about being part of a team.

“All of us working on a film are working to serve as someone’s vision of the film. We’re all contributing to seeing that vision through to the end,” he says.
“Everyone wants to make a classic.”

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About the Writer | Carole Gieseke is the editor of VISIONS.