By Michael Martin
The Story Behind Isle of Dogs (2018)
It’s a simple story. A deadly dog flu breaks out in a near-future Japan. All of Man’s Best Friends are banished to Trash Island. A little boy named Atari decides to go in search of his beloved pet Spots and get him back. And off we go.
(Atari and his crew. Image courtesy Fox Searchlight.)
Written, produced, and directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Grand Budapest Hotel,Fantastic Mr. Fox), Isle of Dogs would provide the quirky visionary with a broad canvas on which to paint a visual tone poem inspired by such disparate works as Akira Kurosawa films and the Rankin-Bass animated holiday specials.
Jump To Section
- The Film’s Talking Dogs
- Building the Isle of Dogs Puppets
- Bringing the Puppets to Life
- The Magic of Isle of Dogs
The Film’s Talking Dogs
And like with Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson would turn to stop-motion animation to tell his story. In this animated world, dogs can speak. But we always knew they could, didn’t we? Isle of Dogs has an A-list voice cast that’s a who’s who of Wes Anderson regulars and beloved character actors. Bill Murray voices Boss, Scarlett Johansson is Nutmeg, Edward Norton Rex, Bryan Cranston Chief, and Jeff Goldblum speaks for Duke.
(Behind the scenes with Atari and several of the dogs that help him in his quest for Spots. Image courtesy Fox Searchlight.)
The journey to Trash Island would lead our protagonist, Atari, through a widescreen dystopian wasteland that is strangely beautiful. With the help of a pack of dogs and his exchange student friend Tracy, Atari would fly a plane to the island, hunt for his pet Spots, and, finally, no big spoiler here, find his friend. But it’s the journey that’s important, isn’t it?
Building the Isle of Dogs Puppets
In a series of interviews, the artists behind the making of Isle of Dogs would reflect on their time spent inside Wes Anderson’s head. And that would start with building the puppets.
(Inside the puppet workshop. Please note the requisite dogs snoozing on the shop floor. Image courtesy Fox Searchlight.)
Before you can animate a character, you need a puppet. According to Wes Anderson, “Andy Gent is the boss of everything to do with puppets.” That would be Andy Gent, the head of puppets for Isle of Dogs. Andy says, “We’re responsible for delivery of puppets, making them, and we’ve got 900 characters.” That’s a lot of puppets. The largest number ever created by hand (instead of being 3d printed) for a stop-motion film. He continues, “Several thousand faces that have to be sculpted, molded, painted, all of them done by hand.”
(Puppet heads. Always more puppet heads. Image courtesy Fox Searchlight.)
The concepts will start with plasticine sculptures and then once approved, the character is cast in silicone.
(Sculpting and casting dog and human puppets. Images courtesy Fox Searchlight.)
Inside each puppet is an armature, a metal skeleton that will allow an animator to precisely position the character for each action it needs to make before a frame is shot. Machined ball and socket joints are used where a normal joint would be (i.e. an elbow or knee joint). It is a technique that goes all the way back to the original King Kong and Willis O’Brien’s master puppet builder, Marcel Delgado.
(Adjusting the wire ears for one of the dog puppets and one of the dog armatures during a walk test. Images courtesy Fox Searchlight.)
Josie Corben, the lead armature maker for Isle of Dogs, notes, “Some animators like the tension to be fluid and loose, and some animators like the tension to be really quite hard. It’s specific to each animator.” Silicone is then cast over the armatures, giving form to the character. Andy Gent says, “Once you’ve got silicone on top of it you can paint it with all of the little bruises and flecks and shrapnel scars on them.”
(Painting details on the ‘bunny suit’ dog puppet and one of the human replacement faces. Images courtesy Fox Searchlight.)
“Everything we do in here is the stuff that gets seen on the screen,” says Angela Kiely, head of the painting department. One of the toughest parts of the job was painting the foreign exchange student Tracy’s face. “Painting the Tracy freckles, copying by eye, just with a little paintbrush, 297 freckles on each face.” Angela says she painted over 22,000 freckles on Tracy alone.
(Freckles, freckles, and more freckles! Angela Kiely would paint over 22,000 freckles on the Tracy puppet’s replacement faces alone. Images courtesy Fox Searchlight.)
Multiple copies of each puppet would be built so that shooting could take place on several sets at the same time. Once the puppets are painted, hair and costumes are applied. The hair is hand-punched alpaca, along with other shaved hairs. The costumes have wires run inside them so that the fabric can also be animated.
Bringing the Puppets to Life
It’s time to take the puppets to the set. There, they will be supported by either tie downs in their feet or with supports that will be digitally removed later. But it’s up to the animators to bring the magic.
Jeremy Dawson, Isle of Dogs’ producer warns, “Even if you have the best sets and the best puppets and you’re all ready to go, the animator is really the one who has to go behind the black curtain and turn the scene into something that has life, and has emotion, and has vitality.”
(Some of the many puppets and replacement faces built for Atari. Images courtesy Fox Searchlight.)
More than three dozen animators and their assistants would work on Isle of Dogs. Just like actors, animators will be cast to their strengths. Some will be better at the comedic moments, some the action beats, and some the more subtle scenes. Animation director Mark Waring says, “We try and get performances out of these lumps of metal and rubber and silicone, and they’re inanimate objects, but we have to bring life to them.”
(Animating the “I bite!” scene with Atari and Rex – voiced by Edward Norton. Images courtesy Fox Searchlight.)
The human characters in Isle of Dogs would use a replacement piece system for their mouths to capture the lip movements of the dialogue. The character’s voices are recorded ahead of time and broken down phonetically. It is up to the animators to make the puppets' lip motions match the voice track.
(A series of replacement mouths for Atari’s lip sync positions. Images courtesy Fox Searchlight.)
For some of the animators, it’s almost like working in clay. And for some, it takes them back to their youth. “I feel like I’m sculpting the performance. It’s what kids do when they’re playing. I do think of it like moving sculpture, you know,” Jason Stalman, lead animator shares. “We’ve got an amazing cast on this production. The animation comes out of that. You get their personality coming out in the style of the dog.”
(Jason Stalman animating Nutmeg – voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Image courtesy Fox Searchlight.)
The dog puppets, on the other hand, were capable of lip sync. Instead of a replacement system, the dog’s mouths could be opened and closed and their lips animated to match the dialogue.
(Run cycle tests with one of the dog puppets. Images courtesy Fox Searchlight.)
A database of dog movements was recorded for the animators to reference. Some of the artists even began filming themselves. The director, Wes Anderson, would even get into the process, suggesting movements and gestures for a character’s emotional state.
(The animators at work on various scenes from Isle of Dogs. Images courtesy of Fox Searchlight.)
The Magic of Isle of Dogs
In the end, we come back to the story. The simple story about a boy searching for his dog. Wes Anderson and his team of artists would create a wonderful, visually exciting world with puppets and sets so beautiful they’ve even been the subject of an exhibition curated by Anderson himself.
Wes would say, “Really, you’re trying to figure out what is gonna make the whole world of the movie right. What is right for the story. What is working with the voices, and also what fun can you have with it.” Isle of Dogs is a lot of fun, Wes.
