Delgo (film) - Production

Production

Fathom Studios began development on Delgo in 1999; animation work began in 2001. The movie was produced by Fathom in conjunction with Electric Eye Entertainment Corporation.

In a 2001 interview, Marc Adler said that the film sets itself apart from other recent computer-animated films because it is not a comedy and also because it is "a very human story told in a non-human world". Maurer said that "the inspiration for the story really came from all of unrest we have in society today, prejudice, discrimination, hate crimes, violence - all of those terrible things. We wanted to tell a story where our heroes overcame these things personally and facilitated change among entire peoples."

Fathom launched a "Digital Dailies" feature on the movie's official website, allowing fans to follow the production as it happened. Animators would post their work daily on the message board system and fans could see the directors' and producers' input as well as subsequent changes to the scenes. According to Adler, although the original intent of the dailies was to allow the crew to "be able to offer commentary to other staff members who do not work the same hours", he also said that offering a learning experience to the public was an important reason for their creation. "By granting public access to our film as a work-in-process we are helping to educate students, burgeoning animators, and film enthusiasts about the procedures involved in the making of a computer animated movie." Adler said that the they were "contacted by professors from the many universities who use the Digital Dailies in their classrooms". The dailies "were receiving a half-million hits a month", and some of the crew members started to get offers from Hollywood studios (at one point Adler started hiding the identities of the crew with fancy aliases). Adler recruited main crew members locally from "Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia Tech and smaller digital outfits". Students from the drama department of North Atlanta High School acted out some of the scenes to create reference material for the animators.

Adler said that their team created eight main characters, at least twenty "secondary characters", "twenty-two creatures, thirty plants, and fifty-six sets", as well as numerous background characters. According to Warren Grubb, Fathom's head animation director, one of the challenges with modeling the background elements was that "We couldn't even use most of the off-the-shelf systems at the time in creating the background assets because they were based on Earthly vegetation."

The filmmakers put together kits with artwork and actual replicas of the stones used in the film to send to the actors, rather than just an offer letter. Once the cast had signed on, the filmmakers had to travel to where the actors were with all their equipment rather than have the actors come to them to record their voices. Anne Bancroft, the voice of villainess Sedessa, died in 2005, before production finished. On the film's end credits, the film is dedicated to her. Additionally, John Vernon, the voice of Judge Nohrin, died in 2005, making this his final film.

The directors acknowledge the influence of artist Roger Dean, specifically his album covers for Yes and Asia, on their backgrounds.