“Kung Fu Panda 4” director Mike Mitchell gravitates towards villains that may “mirror the hero.” And that’s one thing that he leaned into with the Chameleon, a threatening two-and-a half foot form shifter voiced by Oscar winner Viola Davis, who’s the nemesis of Jack Black’s titular panda Po within the newest installment of the DreamWorks Animation franchise.

Within the film, which Common opens in theaters this weekend, “Dragon Warrior” Po is instructed to discover a successor as he strikes to a brand new position as non secular chief within the Valley of Peace when a formidable foe seems, threatening the village. “The Chameleon is somewhat character who has been underestimated and that’s just like Po, who has been underestimated,” says Mitchell, whose directing credit embrace DWA’s “Trolls” and “Shrek Endlessly After.” “Who would suppose {that a} roly poly panda may ever turn out to be a Kung Fu grasp?”

The petite Chameleon involves life with Davis’ efficiency. Mitchell notes that she gave the character a commanding presence in addition to an magnificence, wearing a gown which took some inspiration from Taotie.

For head of character animation Sean Sexton, the villain was among the many studio’s most complicated from a technical standpoint. “It’s actually tough for the rigging division and for the animation group to maneuver round as a result of there’s a lot element,” he explains. “We had 8,130 particular person controls. Each little spike on her hand , the flaps on her gown, all the things, was fully animatable.”

Her motion was complicated, as all through the story she would form shift into greater than 10 completely different characters together with villains. Animation take a look at helped to find out how she would transfer whereas in her chameleon type. That included how her costume would transfer and the way a lot kung fu could be required.

And there have been the intricacies of the shape-shifting motion — together with dimension — because the tiny Chameleon transforms at one level into 7-foot tall snow leopard Tai Lung, the antagonist from the primary “Kung Fu Panda” movie. “We might take the character rigs (a form of computerized puppet) of Tai Lung and the Chameleon, and we might animate them each concurrently,” Sexton explains, including that the Chameleon wanted not simply Tai Lung’s look, but in addition his Kung Fu prowess.

“We might have two character rigs on prime of one another,” he continues. “We’d have to maneuver them concurrently in order that the results division may meld these two character rigs and the fashions would principally be copied on prime of one another.

“We’d have let’s say 8000 controls for the Chameleon. After which we’d have one other 5000 controls for Tai Lung,” he continues. We must transfer all of them as a way to make the chameleon rework into Taiwan. It was difficult and really time consuming.”