KEY POINTS:
Anyone would think Nick Craven's job was simple.
"I'm an animator," says the New Zealander, who works for US film studio Dreamworks. "I animate the characters who are running around, talking and tripping on banana skins," he laughs.
His latest project involved bringing everyone's favourite ogre to life on the big screen for Shrek the Third, and along the way he created scenes featuring smooth-talking Puss and cheeky Donkey.
He also "touched" many of the new characters including Merlin the Wizard, voiced by Eric Idle from Monty Python.
But, on the phone from San Francisco, Craven sounds a little bemused about what part he actually did play in the third instalment of Shrek, which is from a story by fellow Kiwi Andrew Adamson, who directed the first two Shrek flicks but bowed out for the third.
"Right now, at the end of production, I'm trying to think back on who I did work on. It was a lot though.
"But I guess most of my shots would've been Shrek, Donkey, Puss - the three leads, I guess - and Charming."
Although there's a big sense of satisfaction seeing characters come to life, Craven says he doesn't feel an emotional attachment to them. "No, not like if they're happy, I'm happy."
But the creative process is definitely a labour of love. During Shrek he worked as part of a 200-strong team - 35 of whom were animators - and his goal was to produce five seconds of animation per week. That doesn't sound like a lot, but in the world of animated feature films, that's like working in a sweatshop.
"So at the end of the whole movie I would've contributed about five minutes - max," he laughs. "I know that sounds crazy but that's a lot of work to come up with.
"It's like moving little guys frame by frame at 24 frames per second. So your emotional investment is the time getting the work done and getting it so it's hitting the right emotional beat for the dialogue, or making it really funny. That's your goal. So yes, you get emotionally involved in it but it's more about, 'how am I going to get this right?' "
He says while directors Chris Miller and Raman Hui dictated character development and the "grand scheme of things", the animators also got a certain amount of creative freedom.
"In the same way as an actor has a particular role to play, where they go off and think about it and then bring their interpretation of the scene, we do the same sort of thing when we animate a shot. So yeah, we bring a lot to it."
Craven grew up in Hamilton and in the mid-90s he studied at the Vancouver Film School, in Canada.
He went on to work in gaming, then movies, and he's been overseas ever since. However, he's back in New Zealand soon to work for Weta Workshop on Avatar, the latest movie project by Titanic director James Cameron.
He says the animation industry is hard to break into, and once you get in it's a battle to stay on top.
"There are many many people wanting to do it, a lot of them are skilled, and they might be prepared to work for less money than you are.
"So yeah, you've got the pressure of a lot of hungry guys coming up behind you but the good part of that is that it makes for a lot of great animation."
He worked on Madagascar and Ice Age, which had a "zippy and poppy" type of animation, whereas the Shrek movies are more ambiguous.
"It's not realistic, but it doesn't have that cartoony energy and snap to the movement.
"So, and I don't want to say it's in between both, because that would be doing the movie a disservice, but it's not as extreme in its style," he says.
For Craven, who worked on the previous Shrek film, the humour is a constant in the successful movie franchise but audiences will notice one major difference in Shrek the Third.
"Yes, they're both funny but as you would hope in the third of a series of movies, the characters get a little deeper, they change, and grow up a little.
"It's a comedy, it's light and for the kids, but things have a little more depth to them in this one, I think."
Lowdown
Who: Nick Craven
Born: Hamilton, New Zealand
Job: Animator
Previous work: Ice Age (2002); Madagascar (2005); Over the Hedge (2006); Shrek 2 (2004)
Latest: Shrek the Third, in cinemas June 7.
