00:16Scrat was an idea that Chris Wedge had.
00:19He wanted to find a character who could somehow symbolize and introduce us into the world
00:28of the film.
00:30And he worked with the animators and with Peter Deceve in creating this character.
00:36Hello everybody, my name is Peter Deceve and I'm the character designer on Ice Age and Ice
00:41Age 2 The Meltdown.
00:43I'm glad you came to the studio today because I'm going to teach you how to draw probably
00:48my favorite character in the Ice Age movies, the Scrat.
00:51I start with the eyes.
00:53The Scrat, he's always got his eyes wide open, usually in terror or surprise.
01:00And his nose is basically a tube, very simple shape, and at the end of that tube is a triangle.
01:09He's got those long saber teeth in the front.
01:13If you look at them, they are also triangles.
01:17His body, it's like a very big triangle.
01:21And connected to the triangle, for his legs, his haunches, his big circle, two big circles.
01:28One behind the triangle, one in front of it.
01:32Coming off the circle are his feet, and those are tubes.
01:37At the end of the tubes are little triangles, little pizza slices.
01:44And those are his toes.
01:46His arm is just, it's like the letter L, very basic.
01:51And at the end of that are more of these triangles, and those are his fingers.
01:57Here's an interesting fact about the Scrat.
01:59You may never have noticed this before, but he doesn't have a thumb.
02:02He has no thumbs, don't ask me why.
02:06His tail is a very long football shape.
02:10You know what a football looks like, very basic shape.
02:14Those hairs coming out of his cheeks, you could draw them like you did his fingers and
02:20his toes, like very little triangles.
02:24And for his ears, you can use a tiny football shape.
02:27Now, what's missing in this picture?
02:30I think it's pretty obvious.
02:31He has to be holding an acorn.
02:37Because what's the Scrat without his acorn?
02:41After I get the very basic shapes, I want to render it.
02:45And when I say render, I mean I'm adding a little bit of shadow, and it's making it feel
02:51a little bit more realistic, like a little fuller.
02:54So I pick one side of the shape, and I put a little tone, a little bit of a shadow.
03:00So it looks like there's a light coming from one side.
03:03You can see he's looking a little bit fuller, a little bit more like he's standing off the
03:09paper.
03:10And the main thing is have fun with it.
03:15I had stripes on his tail, and those, if you think of those as triangles too.
03:22Now, my friends, you have a drawing of a Scrat.
03:37After Pete has drawn the Scrat, his drawings are handed off to modeling where they'll sculpt
03:42him, scan that model, and bring him into the computer.
03:45And we get a 3D model.
03:47Of course, he's just naked.
03:48He doesn't have fur yet.
03:49It's our job to put the fur on him.
03:51We have this elaborate network, wires and arrows to describe which way the fur is going
03:56to grow.
03:57We have controls to make it wiggly and wavy.
04:00Once that's in place, we send it to the computers to cook overnight.
04:05It draws millions of hairs.
04:06The Scrat had 2 million hairs, and it draws each hair one at a time.
04:10Once we've got the fur on the Scrat, the animators will take a stab at describing how that fur is
04:17going to move.
04:18They have controls for how the wind can blow through the fur, how much the gravity affects
04:23the fur, how much the fur is going to wiggle and shake, and how long it takes to settle.
04:28With each abrupt motion of the Scrat, the fur sort of jiggles and shakes and then settles.
04:33Three years ago, we had, like, some limitations, like fur, you know.
04:37And this time around, we came through, and we managed to make it not only keeping the same style,
04:42but make it a little better.
04:43And the fur becomes a character.
04:44The fur became a character within a character.
04:46We can apply winds to it.
04:48If it goes underwater, it will flow a little bit with the water.
04:52So the fur will help put the characters in the environments that we create.
04:55After all, there are going to be a lot of elements that the fur has to interact with.
04:59We also went to the Central Park Zoo, where they have a great polar bear exhibit.
05:04We get to see the polar bear swimming underwater, so we can see how the fur behaves underwater,
05:08so that we can deal with all the underwater sequences in the meltdown.
05:12Okay, let's go.
05:14Let's go.
05:21Let's go.
05:26Let's go.
05:28Let's go.
05:28Let's go.
05:29Let's go.
05:29Let's go.
05:29Let's go.
05:29Let's go.
05:30Well, one afternoon, while we were making Ice Age, we just decided we needed a noise for
05:34the Scrat, so I got behind the mic, our cheap little, like, cassette recorder microphone,
05:39and I started making noises for it.
05:41And that afternoon session that lasted about 15 minutes
05:46ended up being the Scratts voice in Ice Age.
05:50It was so funny because we did that temporarily until we find the right voice.
05:54But we fell in love with it and said, why get another voice if this one is perfect?
05:59His instinct that he needed to use restraint
06:03in how much sound and how much of a voice he gave the character.
06:08And I thought it was a fascinating process.
06:11This is a secret, an inside secret, a showbiz secret.
06:16There are three sounds basically that the Scratts does anyway.
06:19Scream, whimper, pant.
06:26Whimper, pant.
06:28Basically you mix those babies up, put them where they come in the movie.
06:32You got a Scratts short.
06:34The Scratts sounds, I don't know, they just came out of me naturally that day.
06:38I think they just caught me on one of those days that I'm sure everybody has
06:42where, you know, you've been working really hard
06:45and maybe nothing's working out, you know?
06:53It's a little frustration sounds.
06:54And when I do the voice, I actually get all tense.
06:58I get home at night and I'm all, my chest muscles are all tense.
07:04That's good, that's good, that's good.
07:07I can do Scratts for about 20 minutes and then that's that.
07:11Then I lose interest, you know?
07:13Enough's enough, enough pain.
07:21I think the Scratts hits a chord in people
07:24because everyone knows what it's like to struggle at something
07:27and everyone knows what it's like to lose every once in a while.
07:31And that's one of the rules about Scratts.
07:33He can't get the acorn.
07:34He can have it for a minute, but he has to lose it.
07:37You know, what's the secret to comedy?
07:38It's, you know, if it happens to you, it's tragedy.
07:41If it happens to the other guy, it's comedy.
07:43That's part of what he's about.
07:45Scream, whimper, scream, scream, whimper.
07:48Exactly.
07:48After Ice Age, we made a short film with him
07:52and then we started working on Ice Age 2,
07:53so he's always, he's always alive someplace.
07:56You know, it's a challenge to come up with new ideas for the Scrat,
07:59but you know him at this point.
08:01You pretty much know, you know, what he's gonna do.
08:03You just put him in surprising situations if you can.
08:06The fun thing about the Scratts
08:08is that you don't have to think too hard about it.
08:10It's just fun.
08:11You know, if you have to work for a living,
08:12which I happen to have to do,
08:14it's just not a bad way to do it.
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