Re-entering the Dragon's Lair: animator Don Bluth is taking his Dragon's Lair franchise to new levels - Animation - new film and corresponding video games are planned - Brief Article

Post, July, 2002 by John Gaudiosi

PHOENIX --Twenty years ago, animator Don Bluth -- known for creating animated features like The Secret of HIMH, An American Tail, The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go to Heaven and Anastasia -- took time out of his schedule to work on three laserdisc videogames: two Dragon's Lair games and Space Ace. The games blended Bluth's feature animation with a simple directional control that rewarded quick reflexes and the ability to memorize. Although these were well received at arcades, the videogame market crashed in 1983. Bluth exited the business and went back to working on animation for film and television. In the ensuing years though, Dragon's Lair, which starred Dirk the Daring on a quest to rescue Princess Daphne from a castle, took on a life of its own. Since its debut at arcades in 1982, the game has generated over $130 million in revenue through its translation to I 6 different gaming platforms. The game has a third installment in full 3D heading to every videogame system this summer.

Now, Phoenix-based Bluth is preparing to push the Dragon's Tail franchise further with an animated feature based on the game as well as a game to be released along with the film. Rick Dyer, who co-created the original games with Bluth, has been developing the new game for the past three years at their DragonStone Software (www.dragonstone.com) facility in Diamond Bar, CA.

DEEPER GAMPLAY

"One of the things that made Dragon's Lair successful was that it was like watching a feature animated film," says Bluth. "With the new game, we're giving players a completely new 3D gaming experience, over 225 new rooms to explore and much more control."

Though the tools have radically changed over the last 20 years, Bluth says painstaking efforts were made to make the new version similar to the one created in the '80s.

"The cool thing about the new game is that it retains the look of the original's hand-painted cel animation, but with 3D polygons," explains Bluth. "The game even offers 3D versions of many of the original game's levels, but the key element that this game offers is the ability to explore the virtual universe freely. The original games were great to look at, but not deep in gameplay. This installment remedies that problem for a well-rounded entertainment experience."

DragonStone's project director/art director; Thomas Konkol, explains that retaining the look of the old game in the new version required "lots of trial and error."

"Our toon shading uses a proprietary edge-detection system," notes Konkol. "Designed to re-create the feeling of hand-inked cells, it renders fully anti-aliased outlines around our models. Anti-aliasing is crucial to good toon shading, because otherwise apparent motion in the outline will distract the user."

THE TOOLS

DragonStone used Discreet 3D Studio Max 3.1 and Character Studio for all of its character modeling and animations.

"Model sheets of the characters from the original Dragon's Lair were used to get the look and proportions for the 3D character model meshes," says Konkol. Original cells and the DVD version of the game were also used in getting correct coloring for the textures. The meshes were then rigged to the Character Studio biped and the Max bones system using the physique mode. All of the cloth animations were done by hooking bones to the biped and then assigning the vertices to the bones. The characters were then hand animated (no motion capture was used) using the biped and were all done at 30 fps.

Adobe Photoshop was used to create all textures in the environments and on the models, as well as for menus and onscreen art.

"The backgrounds from the original Dragon's Lair were used as reference for modeling the levels and for creating the watercolor look textures," says Konkol. "Fortunately for us, we had the actual backgrounds from the original game to use, and even one of the original artists."

French videogame publisher Ubi Soft Entertainment will release the new PC and Mac games, and LA-based Encore will publish the PlayStation 2 and GameCube games. Both companies are also negotiating for the rights for the XBox and Game Boy Advance platforms. After three years of development by DragonStone Software, all versions are slated to ship this month.

GAMING TO FILM

While the game takes the adventure to the next level with more difficult tasks and multi-faceted goals, Bluth realized that what initially hooked game players was the adventure itself. After recently working with Fox on the big-budget Titan A.E., he is now turning his attention to the feature film of Dragon's Lair, which he's developing at Phoenix-based Don Bluth Films (www.donbluth.com). His hope is that Dragon's Lair will become a feature film franchise and in turn reinvigorate the game franchise with additional adventures.

The film is a prequel to the first game that will follow Dirk from his birth through his early adventures. Bluth and screenwriter Rob McFarlane completed the script with help from John Hoffman and John Lakey.

"We think we can get this movie done for $30 million," says Bluth. "We're currently researching whether to make the film full 3D CGI or traditional 2D with some CGI. When we were at Fox, we were overstaffed. We had over 320 people and there was a lot of waste going on. We think you can do an animated feature with 160 people, and that's what we have slated."