Ben Stiller, who voices a lion in DreamWorks' upcoming computer-animated film Madagascar, told SCI FI Wire that animators are mixing 2-D and 3-D effects in the movie. They're giving ... a feel to the [character] animation that is sort of 2-D, even though [the background] is 3-D computer-generated, Stiller said in an interview. It's like a 2-D slip-'n'-slide in which the animals are a little more cartoon-like.
Madagascar features the voices of Stiller, David Schwimmer, Chris Rock and Jada Pinkett Smith in a story about New York zoo animals who suddenly find themselves in Africa. Stiller said that he has seen only one completed sequence since recording his voice tracks in September 2001. He added that he still cannot wrap his mind around the process of animating, revising and animating more.
It's like they've made the movie over and over again by the time they get to the final version, Stiller said. You talk to them, and they seem like normal people. And then they go off and create these things. It boggles your mind how much work they have to do with it. But I'm looking forward to it, because my daughter will be 3 by the time it comes out, and she was not even born before we started working on it. Madagascar is scheduled for a 2005 release.