For generation after generation, the name Sinbad has evoked images of swashbuckling adventures on the high seas.  Born more than a thousand years ago in the ancient tales of The Arabian Nights, Sinbad has come to the big screen before, most notably in Ray Harryhausen's cult classic stop-motion animated films.  However, the state-of-the-art tools of today's traditional animation have allowed Sinbad to be brought to the screen as never before in "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas."

Producer Jeffrey Katzenberg offers, "Sinbad is one of those epic hero characters we all grew up with, but his story has never been told in animation, and the opportunity to do something fresh, with a contemporary sensibility, was very exciting.  Telling the Sinbad tale also allowed us to create an incredibly breathtaking world full of fantastic monsters.  That's the fun of animation--to take an audience to places unlike anything they've ever seen before."

To craft the script, the filmmakers turned to a writer who was no stranger to bringing epic heroes of the past to the screen: John Logan, the writer of the Oscar^®-winning Best Picture "Gladiator." After the phenomenal success of 'Gladiator,' we thought, who better to adapt the legend of Sinbad?," says Katzenberg.  "John set out to take this rich mythology and reinvent it in a way that would make it a compelling story for a 21^st-century audience, and I think he really accomplished that for us."

Having never worked on an animated film before, John Logan recalls that he was intrigued by the story possibilities, but at the same time admits, "I had no idea what to expect.  Jeffrey Katzenberg--who, by the way, is quite the con man--asked me if I would like to write an animated movie.  I said, 'Well, I really don't know much about it.'  He assured me, 'It's really fun; you'll have a great time doing this,' knowing full well the 'fun' would take four years of my life," Logan laughs.

"But I must say, it was incredible fun," the writer continues.  "I grew up on those classic Sinbad movies with Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animation monsters, and I have always loved pirate movies with all that swashbuckling action.  What guy doesn't?  So to get to play in that realm for a while was really exciting.  Animation is also incredibly liberating because it gives a writer absolute freedom to explore the most fantastical worlds.  In live action, there's always a nagging thought in the back of my mind that if I write that 10,000 soldiers come over the hill, somebody has to cast them, somebody has to wardrobe them, somebody has to shoot them, and there has to be a hill.  But in animation, if I write that a 100-foot sea monster rises from the waves and jumps over the ship, I know it can happen."

Logan also appreciated the level of teamwork that comes with working on an animated film, saying, "I was the beneficiary of some incredible talents because the act of writing 'Sinbad' was actually one of collaboration with the producers, directors, animators, story editors, artists, the voice talent…  It was like electricity in that room; wonderful things emerged as we all tried different takes on the material."

Producer Mireille Soria notes, "We started with the Sinbad legend and then brought in different elements of mythology that we felt worked with the story.  There is action and romance, but at its core is a tale of friendship based on the Greek fable of Damon and Pythius, about one friend who is willing to sacrifice his life for the other."

Director Patrick Gilmore expounds, "We cast a really wide net out to different mythologies to find what we thought were the greatest adventures and the coolest monsters to test our hero, but the thread that runs through the story is a test of friendship.  In our story, Sinbad is reunited with his friend Proteus after having been estranged for about 10 years.  Yet, when Sinbad gets into trouble, Proteus steps forward and puts his own life on the line for his old friend.  What will Sinbad--this thief who is used to having the freedom to do anything he wants in life--do?  Will he run for the horizon, or will he risk his life for his friend?"

Brad Pitt gives voice to the title character of Sinbad, or, the actor jokes, "as I like to call him, Sin-Brad."  Pitt goes on to describe his character as "a bit of a rogue.  He lives a life of adventure on the high seas.  He finds a little treasure, fights a few monsters…and he likes the girls." Director Tim Johnson states, "Casting Brad Pitt as Sinbad was a home run for us.  He's funny, he's charismatic, he's dashing, and with him at the helm of this character, we had a blast."

Jakob Hjort Jensen, who served as the lead supervising animator for the character of Sinbad, offers that Pitt gave him more than a vocal performance with which to work.  "Brad has specific body movements, and he talks a lot with his hands.  It was fun to watch him do lines and observe things he'd do with his hands that I could maybe use.  I did little thumbnail sketches so I could remember his gestures four or five months later when I was animating that particular scene."

Making his first foray into animation, Pitt surprised even himself with the physicality of recording the voice of Sinbad.  "I was blown away by the detail they can put into a facial expression and the dynamics of the movement.  What they can do with animation these days is pretty remarkable."

"Animators are a rare and talented breed," Johnson agrees.  "When an animator is watching a performance, he is not only listening to the voice; he is looking for those key gestures that an actor uses to sell a line and then takes them and makes them bigger.  It's a meticulous and magical process.  Jakob was able to incorporate 'Bradisms' that are central to who Brad is and make him so recognizable, so even though Sinbad doesn't look like Brad Pitt, boy does he move like him."

John Logan remarks, "Any writer worth their salt is going to tell you that the most fun character to write is always the villain.  Eris certainly was for me because you can never go over the top with a goddess or a great villain, and when the villain is a goddess, it's just endless fun."

Michelle Pfeiffer, who provides the voice of Eris, was eager to share in the fun.  "All they had to say was 'the goddess of chaos,' and I said 'yes,'" she laughs. "I wasn't trying to create a villain; I wanted her to be playful.  She just relishes stirring up trouble to make things interesting and amusing for herself…like her own reality TV.  If it's too peaceful, it's terribly boring to her.  The whole thing starts out as a game where she is pretty sure what the end result will be because she is convinced that man is weak.  She's just toying with Sinbad, like a cat batting around a mouse." Taking her cue--and adding a reference to one of the actress' most memorable roles--Gilmore states, "Eris is Catwoman with a god complex.  She is a combination of seduction and magic and fun and games, and Michelle put that all together beautifully."

In a remarkable showcase of what can be accomplished by traditional animators, Eris' constant shape-shifting was achieved entirely with the tools of 2D animation.  The supervising animator for Eris, Dan Wagner, says that, in spite of the challenges it posed, "The morphing was the most fun part of animating Eris.  This was pure animation.  Once I got into the morphing, there were no model sheets to follow and no boundaries.  It was just having fun."

Wagner's approach to animating Eris became the equivalent of animating two characters, as he treated her long, flowing hair as a separate entity.  "The hair was like a second character," Wagner attests.  "First I would animate Eris without her hair, and once that was going pretty well, I'd add the hair on top.  I wanted her hair to have a kind of underwater feel to it.  Her body would be zipping around, but her hair might be doing its own thing.  It showed another dimension to her character, though it had to be secondary because the focus should stay on her face." Eris not only represents the best of hand-drawn animation, but also how far animation has come in the seamless blending of 2D, or traditional, animation and 3D, or computer, animation.  The character is decidedly ethereal, constantly floating in space and never touching down on what mere mortals call legs. 

To help give Eris that otherworldly appearance, her face, body and hair were traditionally animated, while the end of her body materializes in wisps of smoke that were rendered in 3D animation. Effects supervisor Doug Ikeler explains, "Eris is a hand-drawn character, but we wanted to integrate her into her environment, so we used a package called Paint Effects to give her those 3D smoky trails.  It was difficult because 2D is flat--it's drawn on a piece of paper--while, by definition, 3D has depth, so the character and the wisps of smoke that follow her are residing in two different spaces.  We cheated it to make it look like they exist in the same realm, but as she touches down, the ensuing mist is able to spread out and go back in space, so that part is full-on 3D."

Eris has her own menagerie of creatures, although they are hardly what you would call tame.  The goddess often dispatches them to instigate the chaos she lives to create. The inspiration for Eris' monsters came from the night sky.  Many of the constellations were born of mythology, so in turn, the filmmakers made them part of the Sinbad mythology.  Johnson, a self-proclaimed "astronomy nut," remarks, "To bring these astronomical icons to life as creatures that a goddess could call her 'pets' was an exciting way to have some fun with the character while hinting at her power."

Gilmore illustrates: "The constellation Cetus became our sea monster; Aquila inspired our giant bird of prey called the Roc.  You see Scorpius, you see Draco…  They are all part of Eris' cosmic realm of chaos." The gigantic sea monster is the first of Eris' "pets" to confront Sinbad, and the computer-animated creature posed almost as big a challenge to the CGI animators who had to manipulate it.  The sea creature had a myriad of moving parts--a head, a tail, tentacles, ears, legs, a tongue, and more--all of which had independent controls, making it exceedingly complex. The computer-animated snowbird called the Roc presented a different set of challenges.  Not only does it appear the size of a commercial jetliner, the Roc also generates a perpetual snowstorm in its wake.  Doug Ikeler, the 3D effect supervisor, notes, "Wherever he flies, a snowstorm follows, but it couldn't look like falling snow; it's snow that's caught up in the vortex caused by his flapping wings.  It has a hand-drawn, swirly quality to it, so it was a very large effect for us." The Sirens, while hardly monstrous in appearance, were among the most dangerous creatures faced by Sinbad, Marina and the crew of The Chimera, and among the most complicated to animate.  Johnson offers, "Sirens are the mythological women who sing songs that entrance sailors and cause them to crash on the rocks and drown.  We wanted our Sirens to feel unearthly and derived purely from water.  We went through a lot of development to take animated female figures and turn them into essentially living fountains."

To choreograph the graceful movements of the Sirens, the 3D animators, led by Michelle Cowart, studied the moves of rhythmic gymnastics, ballet and modern dance.  They also looked at underwater photography to depict the fluidity of the seductresses.  The initial 3D characters looked more like naked silver plastic women until the effects department took over.  The effects team used particle systems to create flowing drapes of water that gave the Sirens their liquid appearance. The Sirens' hair, which enhances their ethereal quality, took the longest to animate.  Every Siren had 16 strands of hair, each of which had a minimum of seven separate controls to manipulate its shape.  The problem was that even when the animators got the individual strands moving beautifully, they didn't always move beautifully together, resulting in the character looking more like Medusa than a Siren.  In addition, the animators didn't know exactly what the end result would be after the effects department completed the look, so there was a lot of going back and forth between the departments and starting over again to get it right.

After eluding the Sirens, Sinbad and Marina find no respite even on what appears to be a small tropical island.  The small island is actually a big fish that would dwarf even the largest whale.  During an exciting escape sequence, Fish Island ends up with The Chimera in tow, taking the crew on a wild ride that tests the fortitude of even the most experienced seafarer. Doug Ikeler describes, "This relatively tiny boat is being dragged behind a fish that's thousands of feet long, which generates this gigantic wake behind it.  The boat is caught in the wake, making it do these wave-boarding moves.  We had to render huge splashes and the white water that you would associate with those enormous wakes, as well as the mist to give it scale.  It was probably a 50-layer scene for us, because we had to create all the things that make water look like water."

The advancements in animation notwithstanding, animating water still poses tremendous challenges.  True to its title, "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas" is set on the ocean, and when a story takes place almost entirely on the water, the demands increase exponentially.

Patrick Gilmore notes that, with the help of DreamWorks' preferred technology provider Hewlett-Packard, the effects department developed an ingenious way to expedite the process.  "Rather than compose the ocean per shot, what they decided to do was build an entire ocean and have it run procedurally.  It was our ability to have this entire rolling ocean at our disposal that made it possible to do as many water shots as we needed in the film." Ikeler explains, "We needed a way to put the ocean in almost every scene of the movie, so we devoted a lot of time to coming up with software that would give us a kind of plug-'n'-play ocean library.

Once we had our ocean simulation, we just let it play for about 1,000 frames, which gave us our ocean on a grand scale.  We then told everyone, 'It's done; it's baked.  Your ocean is playing.  Go put a camera on it and shoot it from whatever angle you need to.'  The layout department could then take the base shape of the water, fly a camera around it, and compose their shot with an already produced ocean.  Once they had their basic composition, we came back in and laid in all the elements that went with that particular location."

The layout department also benefited from the unprecedented use of computer models of scene elements, called animatics, to camera block the entire movie in 3D. Layout supervisor Damon O'Beirne offers, "Animatics basically allowed us to build a scene in the computer in 3D.  What's great about them is you can play back a scene in real time, which provided us a great template for the action. With animatics, we can even shoot coverage, which enabled us to give extra scenes to the editor, who can then pick and choose." Editor Tom Finan adds, "It helped a great deal.  In the past, we cut from storyboard sketches.  But now, with animatics, you can see camera moves in advance and even how the characters move within a shot, which you couldn't get with storyboards. 

Innovations in animation have been coming so rapidly that filmmakers have been able, in essence, to "put the cart before the horse" with regard to technology.  Jeffrey Katzenberg attests, "Unlike any movie I've worked on before, on 'Sinbad' the technology had to catch up with our ambition for the film, as opposed to the other way around." Johnson agrees, "'Sinbad' was more than three years in the making, and when you're planning something that far ahead of its release, you have to take a leap of faith that, with moviemaking advances, we would be able to do what we had only imagined.  We didn't know how we were going to do it, but we knew we had the time and some incredibly talented people to figure out how to pull it off."

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