ASIA-PACIFIC, MARCH 2, 2012: This March, one of Cartoon Network’s most iconic characters, alien-fighting Ben Tennyson “Ben 10”, is hitting the movie scenes with a full CG animation movie – Ben 10: Destroy All Aliens. The film was conceptualized and produced entirely in Asia.
“Real humans were used to simulate all the car-chase and alien-fight scenes to give the movie a realistic visualization of the action,” said Silas Hickey, the film’s executive producer and the creative director of Turner Broadcast Network Asia Pacific. The most challenging parts to shoot and animate, he said, were the “walking scenes” and rigging – a technique in 3D/CGI animation that involves the construction of a skeletal outline in order to make the animation process more intuitive. Rigging also allows the animators more room to focus on large scale motions, Hickey explained.
While fully produced in Asia, Hickey acknowledges the “cross-Atlantic effort” with Ben 10 director Victor Cook, the writers, and the animation studio to ensure that the film maintains and reflects the brand integrity of the brand franchise. “The endless phone calls to California… discussions with Victor Cook and overseeing Tiny Island, the animation studio in Singapore responsible for bringing the movie to life resulted in the most expensive phone bill anyone has ever seen in the history of Cartoon Network Asia,” exclaimed Hickey.
In Ben 10: Destroy All Aliens, Ben Tennyson comes back from summer vacation to find his life a mess: grounded by his parents, harassed by bullies, and humiliated by his teacher (not to mention getting stuck with a malfunctioning Omnitrix that keeps vaporizing his homework). When Ben jumps at the chance to get away from it all, he gets stuck in his own alien form and becomes the target of an all-new alien villain Mechamorph, bent on destroying all alien life forms.
Ben 10: Destroy All Aliens will premiere on March 11, 9:00am on Cartoon Network.
