‘Dog Man’: DreamWorks Pushes a ‘High-End Handmade’ Look for Wacky Canine Crusader Adaptation
With “Dog Man,” the wacky canine crusader comedy/adventure adapted from Dav Pilkey’s popular children’s graphic novel series (a spinoff of his “Captain Underpants” books), DreamWorks Animation continues its experiments in graphical 2D stylization. Not surprisingly, the trend began with “Captain: Underpants: The First Epic Movie” and carried over to “The Bad Guys,” “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” and “The Wild Robot.”
But the irreverent “Dog Man” is the weirdest and wildest of the bunch. It’s about a superhero cop with a dog’s head (after reconstructive surgery), who fights arch enemy Petey, the “world’s most evilest cat.” It pushes the use of 2D-like graphics even further than “Captain Underpants,” with titles popping up mid-air, a la “Yellow Submarine,” which Petey often interacts with.
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In keeping with Pilkey’s style, though, the movie doesn’t talk down to kids or adults and takes all sorts of quirky chances, including the casting of Pete Davidson as the sarcastic Petey, Lil Rel Howery as the quick-tempered police chief, and Ricky Gervais as Flippy, the fish with telekinesis.
Writer/director Peter Hastings (“Animaniacs”) was immediately drawn to “Dog Man,” having previously collaborated with Pilkey on “The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants” series. But he wanted to amp up Pilkey’s offbeat humor, sincere emotion, and graphic stylization. He even did the vocal effects of Dog Man, coming up with his own canine language.
“Dave and I grew up in the ’70s on cartoons and all the sort of pop culture of the time,” Hastings told IndieWire, “and you can really see it in his books. It’s really simple: You only see Dog Man from profile and the buildings are crooked with no windows. I wanted to expand on that.”
Hastings also wanted to expand on the theme of childhood trauma, which surfaces with the unexpected arrival of Li’l Petey (Lucas Hopkins Calderon), the child clone of Petey, whose innocence impacts both Dog Man and Petey. “I posed this question about Dogman and Petey at the beginning: ‘Will they have a family?'” said Hastings. “Dogman has this situation where he loses his family and Petey kind of gets one. Dogman wants one and Petey doesn’t, but the solution to both of their problems ends up the same.”
In terms of animation, while the front and back end were handled by DreamWorks, the majority of the CG animation was done by U.K.-based Jellyfish Pictures (Netflix’s “The Twits”). ”Because of the way that the books are so tactile, the way they’re drawn, we really wanted to preserve that but bring our skill level to it at the same time. We called it ‘high-end handmade,'” added Hastings.
To translate Pilkey’s particular style, they brought in production designer Nate Wragg (“Puss in Boots: The Last Wish”) and art director Chris Zibac (Captain: Underpants: The First Epic Movie”). The characters became instantly recognizable, and every frame was crammed with visual details and jokes, especially graphic titles.
The challenge was keeping it simple but on a large scale. Characters had globe heads with minimal facial expressions, consisting of 2D line drawings on top of the 3D models. The tactile quality of the characters was modeled after stop-motion, including animating mostly on twos (one image for every two frames) for rough movement.
Dog Man’s head was first tested in 2D so they could understand how to translate it into a workable 3D model while retaining the handmade look of the books. However, the ears and arms are detached from his body, so they could become movable parts in the style of Pilkey.
Ohkay City, meanwhile, evokes a retro urban environment, which comes alive at the end when the buildings turn into lumbering mecha robots for a maximalist battle. “Nate and Chris went crazy on the city,” said Hastings. “We ended up going in a different path. I made a much longer sequence out of it, and then gave some of them attitude and points of view.
“We also loaded the city with all kinds of hidden things,” he added. “Easter eggs and signage and characters. I will say there’s a cameo of George and Harold [from ‘Captain Underpants’] that’s pretty obvious.”
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