Working Hollywood: Josh West, ‘Shrek’ digital modeler, is an ogre specialist

Shrek would be far thinner — paper thin, in fact — if it weren’t for Josh West, head of the digital modeling department on the fourth installment of the blockbuster franchise. Early in the process, West and his team took 2-D drawings of the characters, props and sets and transformed them into 3-D computer models.

“What happens is we get a drawing or drawings from the character designers, and then we’ll pull those images into the software and start working from them and sculpting,” he said. “And we just start pushing and pulling and pushing and pulling like you would with clay. It’s pretty much like sculpting in the computer.”

Summer popcorn movies like “Shrek Forever After” have always held a special place in West’s heart. Growing up in Missouri, he was bowled over by big-screen creatures of fantasy.

“My birthday falls in the summer, and I was always taken to a film like ‘ Jurassic Park’ as a birthday gift from my aunt,” he said. “She was a movie buff, and it had a big impact on me. And I remember seeing ‘Terminator 2’ for the first time and just being amazed. But even as a little kid, ‘Roger Rabbit’ — it’s those things that hit my age group.”

In high school, West wrote a paper for English class on Pixar, and he went on to study computer animation at Ringling School of Art and Design in Florida. Blue Sky Studios in New York recruited him straight out of college to work in the animation department on 2002’s “Ice Age.” He then became a modeler at DreamWorks, where he’s worked on 2005’s “Madagascar,” 2006’s “Over the Hedge,” 2008’s “Kung Fu Panda” and plenty of big green ogre films.

“I always wanted to be a modeler,” he said. “I totally understand people who really get into the acting part of animation, but I’m a Lego kid.”

Round characters: West and his team don’t just add dimension, they also fill in the blanks. “Even in a 2-D drawing, a lot of things are not necessarily defined or maybe are inconsistent between drawings,” he said. “And there are a lot of cheats in 2-D that you can make that you can’t make in 3-D. For example, exact nostril shape has to be defined in the model, whereas in the drawings it may be just a dot. Or the finger wrinkles, palms, knuckles, feet, teeth, tongue shape, etcetera — sometimes it’s just that these details are overlooked in the drawings, and sometimes they’re intentionally left to figure out at the model stage.”

Seeking approval: The digital models in “Shrek Forever After” had to earn the director’s stamp of approval. “What we really have to sell is the look — the proportions, the scale, the details, the facial anatomy, the general anatomy of the whole character, the look of the clothing,” West said. “What does his nose look like in 3-D? What do his eyes look like in three dimensions? How big are his ears? What do they look like from the side, from the front, from every view? What does their clothing look like? We’re really shooting for approval for a character, the whole character.”

Pin the tail: “Shrek Forever After” had West and his team guessing the shape of a new villain, Rumpelstiltskin. “Rumpel himself was a lot of work between all of his wigs, his costume changes and just the character himself to get his design down,” he said. “There were, of course, multiple iterations until we got the look that we wanted for him. When I think back, he always had that little, creepy but nice-looking-guy look, but they were using different actors as points of reference. And technically, I guess, Rumpelstiltskin is an imp, and there was debate about whether he should have a tail or not. And I think it was a strange thing to throw on a character, but in a lot of the old drawings, he does have a nasty-looking rat tail. It went back and forth, and in the end, they decided that he wouldn’t have it. It just would have added complexity to his character that maybe wasn’t needed.”

Total ogre-load: “There were many, many ogres, and their armor and their clothing is somewhat detailed and very organic,” West said. “And very little of it is symmetrical. If we make something symmetrical, it’s easier for us. With the computer, we can just duplicate one side to another. If it’s asymmetrical, then we’re modeling everything in the round, and everything has to be touched. The ogre camp was also a lot of work for us, specifically because it’s so organic that almost everything had to be sculpted. When you have a very artificial environment like Rumpel’s palace where you have flat floors, you can put a chair or table anywhere. In the ogre camp, because it’s so organic, and the ground has so much topography and so much movement, everything has to be modeled into place and sculpted to fit right where it goes. You can’t really move it around in the set and have it still work. But it’s actually more interesting for us to do. It’s a lot of fun.”

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