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Rosendahl said his creative people literally got down on their hands and knees to get ideas for depicting the world from the perspective of the ants. The film, which grossed $160 million at the box office for PDI and its DreamWorks partner, which owns 40 percent of the Palo Alto firm under a 1996 deal, catapulted Rosendahl and his company into the front ranks of the digitalized filmmaking industry. With Woody Allen voicing the whiny, neurotic, nonconformist main character, Z, and the voices of Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone and Gene Hackman and other stars in supporting roles, 'Antz' appealed to a mature audience that could appreciate its intellectual humor and the political content of an ant colony's workforce rising up against a dictator general.

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Pacific Data, or PDI, as it's known, is a pioneer in computerized special effects in action films, compiling such credits in recent years as 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day,' 'Batman Forever' and 'Batman and Robin.' Special effects in the last included replacing human stunt performers entirely with their digitalized counterparts.īut with 'Antz,' Rosendahl's first venture into full-length animated feature film-making, PDI, in collaboration with Hollywood powerhouse DreamWorks SKG, computer-generated what one movie critic called a 'milestone of animation complexity.' It's for a mature 6-year-old.The boyish-looking co-founder, chief executive officer and president of Pacific Data Images has taken exponential strides in advancing the craft of animation since those doodling days. 'DreamWorks is focusing on making their animation features rich, challenging stories,' Johnson said. 'Antz' has a PG rating, and Darnell wanted parents to know that there is some violence and some darkness that may upset preschool-age children.

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'Nothing is free in animation,' Johnson said. In animation, however, you have to design the pile of rubble, get the design approved, make a model and then do it, which takes a few weeks and costs a lot of money. In a live action movie, if a director wanted to put a pile of rubble in the background of a scene, someone brings one in. 'We have to decide on color, texture and its response to light.' 'There are a ton of other decisions too,' Johnson added.

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'You do production design, casting, camera angles plus the story and script.' 'You do more than live action when you work on an animated film,' Darnell said. 'But he took the part.'Īllens' participation made it easier for them to get the voices of Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, Dan Aykroyd, Anne Bancroft, Jane Curtin, Danny Glover, Gene Hackman, Jennifer Lopez, John Mahoney, and Christopher Walken. 'He was bemused, horrified, excited,' recalled Darnell. Two years ago Darnell and Johnson created a presentation using lines from Allen's movie 'Bananas' and animated an ant to say the lines. Katzenberg talked to the actor, who was interested in the project. He was just what we wanted.'Īctually, both men agreed that they were really looking for a Woody Allen-type until they learned that one of DreamWorks' founders, Jeffrey Katzenberg, knew Allen personally. 'We leaped upon the idea of using Woody Allen. 'From the start, we knew the story would be about an ant who didn't fit in,' Johnson said. 'Antz' directors Johnson and Eric Darnell recently talked about their ambitious project in a phone interview.Īctor and director Allen isn't the first person most people think of doing an animated creature, but the two directors said he was their first choice. The movie tells the story of Z-4195, a worker ant (voice of Woody Allen) who really doesn't want to go along with the crowd.

The two groups joined forces and their finished project, 'Antz,' starts today.

In November 1995, PDI animator Tim Johnson took the idea to DreamWorks film studio and learned it too had plans for a film that would explore the insect world. In 1991, PDI Animation wanted to do a computer-animated film using insects in a miniature world. Sometimes fine minds do run in the same directions.

Antz director