The Drac Pack is back with more zing and bleh-bleh-bleh in the animated movie Hotel Transylvania 3!
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, it's Jan here, and today I'm revealing 10 fiendishly freaky
and fun facts you need to know about the latest monster-filled sequel!
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my new videos.
Among the new characters in Hotel T3 is Chupacabra who's named after a mythical monster which
has its origins in Latin America.
In the movie, Chupacabra appears at the ship's bar where he has a drink made up of a goat
stuffed into a martini glass.
This is a freakily funny moment because in Spanish Chupacabra literally means "goat-sucker",
a name the creature got because of stories about it attacking goats and drinking their
blood like a vampire.
Curiously, the filmmakers were originally going to use a different bogeyman-type character
called "El Coco", however, it tested badly in an early screening so it was cut and Chupacabra
took its place.
The Drac Pack set off on their vacation on a plane that caters for monsters called Gremlin
Air.
The name of the airline and the fact it's run by ill-behaved beasts is a cool shout-out
to the origin of the word "gremlin".
The word was originally used by pilots in the Royal Air Force who blamed faults in their
planes on impish little creatures that they called gremlins who they said sabotaged their
aircraft.
The filmmakers really took this idea to heart so the Gremlin Air scenes feature an ancient
bomber plane which has been rebuilt and patched back together so many times that you can see
duct tape everywhere, different colour seats made from different materials, plywood on
the floor, and loose wires all over the place.
And the badly behaved gremlins working on the flight are green, like many of the monstrous
creatures in the classic 1980s horror comedy Gremlins.
If you think Dennis's dog Tinkles is big, just wait till you see the Kraken that protects
the lost city of Atlantis, a sort of monster version of Las Vegas!
Singer Joe Jonas voices the Kraken which is such an absolutely enormous character that
it almost broke the simulation software when the animators made it move and dance through
the water.
The reason for that is because the very cartoony style of the Hotel T movies doesn't lend itself
to the physics of real water that the software tries to emulate.
To solve the problem of how to animate the huge impact the Kraken has on the water, the
visual effects team looked at footage of large-scale water events to see how the water behaves,
for example, crashing waves, boats being launched, and giant ice structures falling into the
ocean.
They discovered that, during those events, there's a lot of water vapour generated and
the water tends to get very frothy and white, so, they emulated that vapour layer in the
film and they also slowed down the speed at which the Kraken's giant tentacles hit the
water so the splashes weren't so explosive.
Even freakier than a luxury cruise for monsters is the fact that the ship's crew is actually
made up of Fish-Men, which are kind of like reverse Mermen, with a fishy top-half and
a human bottom half!
You'll see these scaly creatures with human-looking feet and fins for hands working in a variety
of areas on board including as barmen, musicians, taking photos of guests, and even giving manicures
and massages!
And, if you look carefully, you'll notice the Fish-Men often only move a little, for
example, just their mouths or eyes, and when they do move, they don't bend forward.
That's because fish can only actually bend sideways, so the director made sure the animators
reflected that in the movie!
"Everybody, just please watch the hair.
Watch the hair!"
As you can tell, Eunice really isn't keen on getting her hair wet, which seems funny
when you find out that the animators actually based Eunice's hairstyle on a Brillo pad,
a type of scouring pad used for cleaning dishes!
Speaking of hair, when the character designers first created Mavis and Johnny's son, Dennis,
they drew him with a huge mane of red hair, like his father.
But when they animated that design on a computer, they found Dennis' hair looked too big for
his head to hold!
In fact, Dennis' hair took up so much room that Mavis and Johnny would have needed arms
twice the length in order to pick him up.
So, the designers gave him a haircut!
Originally, Dennis' giant dog Tinkles was only going to appear very briefly in Hotel
Transylvania 3.
However, after fans enjoyed his character so much when they met him for the first time
in the short film, Puppy!, the filmmakers decided to make Tinkles a much bigger part
of the new sequel.
To work out how to animate the scene where Drac gets champagne thrown at his face, one
of the animators had a champagne bottle popped open near his face a dozen times!
Obviously it hurt, so definitely do not try anything like that at home!
One of the biggest challenges of animating Drac is actually his cape, so because he wears
shorts and an Hawaiian shirt while on vacation in Hotel T3 that made life quite a bit easier
for the animators this time!
And talking of Drac's vacation clothes, did you notice his shoes?
Well, they're an easter egg to the 1980s comedy movie National Lampoon's Vacation which starred
Chevy Chase and was a big inspiration for Hotel T3.
Both movies feature a family going on vacation together and the various mishaps they have
along the way.
Now, who's your favourite character in the Hotel Transylvania movies?
And if you've seen Hotel T3, what did you think?
Let me know in the comments below!
Tap left to watch another cool Hotel Transylvania 3 video or tap right for more of my animation
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Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!