The creatures in new CG animation Madagascar go on a strange trip from Central Park Zoo to the wilds of Africa, but that's nothing compared to the journey taken by one of the film's visual development artists. Scotsman James Wood Wilson grew up on a farm near Kilmarnock in the 60s and studied agricultural engineering at Reading University before deciding to become an artist. Stints as an indoor muralist in New York and student at San Francisco's Academy of Art eventually led, in the late-90s, to the doors of DreamWorks. He's subsequently worked on several of their key projects - The Road To El Dorado, the two Shrek movies, and 2005 release Madagascar - and is currently working on Shrek 3.

"I think when a lot of people hear the words computer animation, they tend to split it into technical and creative," Wilson says from DreamWorks' San Francisco offices. "In the past there has been a stigma attached from the art world about using computers to create art. Now people are trained on computers and have no real problem of being computer artists. People shouldn't be put off by the technical element either - you don't need to be a computer nerd to work in computer animation. When I look around it's surprising the types of people doing this."

Wilson acknowledges that computer animation is "fashionable" at the moment - The Incredibles and Shrek 2 were two of 2004's biggest hits - yet many people are unaware of the process behind the animation. What, for example, does a visual development artist actually do? "Basically, we create the forum and mood for the characters' performance," the 40-year-old explains. "It used to be that the visual developer would develop the look of the movie, but now it's been modified so that we take the story after it's been written, storyboard it, and develop all the visual ideas and design. It's sort of like in live action where you would find a location. We basically make it all happen. All the props, the characters, the environment, the surfaces, we have to do all of that within the art department. Then it goes down the production line to other people to put all these nuts and bolts together."

"IT WAS A HUGE MAZE OF VISUAL COMPONENTS"

If you're looking to see James' handiwork in Madagascar pay particular attention to the jungle sequences, which proved his biggest challenge. "If I was considering making a garden, I would arrange my plants in an organised pattern," he says, "but in a jungle you have to give the impression of it being wild with no definable patterns. When you look at jungles, though, you see patterns that emerge through nature. It was a huge maze of visual components, and I had to arrange them so that they worked."

The directors of Madagascar - Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath - were keen to give the film the feel of classic Tex Avery and Chuck Jones cartoons, but Wilson says his inspiration came from a slightly lesser known artist, Mary Blair. In particular, her work on the 1948 Disney short Johnny Appleseed. "People looked at Blair's work and thought that either she was a genius or a naive artist," Wilson states. "She was very advanced in doing stylised work that appealed to both children and people who had once been children. We took a lot from her - keeping things simple even though it was a complicated world."

Animation is recognised nowadays as a showcase for the improvisational skills of comedians - most famously Robin Williams in 1992's Aladdin and Eddie Murphy in the two Shrek movies. Similarly Madagascar features a virtuoso turn by Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Ali G) as the Peter Sellers-inspired lemur King Julian. That presents its own challenge to the animators.

"We always have to be trying to get ahead, but sometimes the voice talent comes up with either a new idea, or new dialogue which changes the props or something that happens, so we have to go back and revisit a lot of those things," Wilson says. "For example, there might be a friendly tree, but after the voice performance we might end up with a spikier, less friendly environment. But throughout the entire team there are going to be situations where somebody is funnier or more ingenious than expected. When storyboard artists are creating a sequence, they're performing and improvising in their own way, too."

Madagascar is out in UK cinemas from Friday 15th July 2005.

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