On this day in 1997, Hercules put the glad in gladiator, when the film of mythological proportions was released in theatres… and that’s the gospel truth. Andreas Deja, who animated the adult Hercules, recalls some challenges in the design of the zero-to-hero character. “What was difficult about him is to set him graphically in that (artist) Gerald Scarfe-influenced world. Gerald Scarfe has a very aggressive graphic style that applied very well to characters like the Fates, to Hades… it’s an eccentric graphic style that he has. When it came to Hercules even Gerald was lost and he told me, “I don’t know how to draw a hero character like that.” His development art either showed him really realistic, almost like a live-action person, or cartoony, but crazy. So I had to find that, not even the middle ground, but how would I draw the character? I had one meeting with him where I voiced my frustration that I don’t have anything to go by with what he had done. So we both just kind of messed with one drawing right there on the spot in that meeting, and I said, “Why don’t we go back to the Greek ideal or some Greek clichés, like base him on a Greek statue,” and we did a somewhat stylized sketch and that became the character. I would say that the character of adult Hercules has the least Gerald Scarfe-isms because he had to be a hero, he’s a straight character and he had to convey subtle emotions, so I couldn’t go too broad with his design. There’s a little graphic playfulness in the way I drew his ears, there’s a little bit of a graphic twirl in the chin, and then in the anatomy of his arms and legs, but as a whole he wasn’t as pushed as even Meg or all the other characters were. There was a challenge to go that way but still make him fit into the world of Hercules and the graphic presentation of the movie.”
