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28 - The Oakville Beaver, Wednesday November 7, 2007 www.oakvillebeaver.com Artscene Oakville Beaver · WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2007 Oakville native's buzz on The Bee Movie By Krissie Rutherford OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF T hey visited bee keepers. They listened to lectures from bug scientists ­ entomologists, if you want to get scientific. They combed through books to learn everything about the world of the black and yellow bugs. But while research led to much of the digital world you see in The Bee Movie, DreamWorks Animation's Michael Isaak says the work had to pass an important test. "We found that ultimately, what drove the design process was trying to make Jerry Seinfeld laugh," he said. "Believe it or not, that really turned out to be what my job was." And while it was fun, the Oakville native says it wasn't easy. "That's the hardest job in the world," Isaak said in a phone interview from Los Angeles, where he now lives. "Make the top comedian on the planet laugh at your dopey, silly drawings. That sort of ended up being the challenge." Written by Jerry Seinfeld, The Bee Movie is about Barry B. Benson ­ voiced by Seinfeld ­ who graduates from college and is unhappy about the life of honeymaking he sees before him. "Although life in a bee hive is very utopian, he becomes disenchanted with his role as a bee ­ the idea that you will be kind of given a job for life," said Isaak, a graduate of Sheridan College's animation program who also holds a degree in architecture. "He flies outside the bee hive and discovers that human beings have been stealing honey from bees, so he decides he is going to sue the human race for stealing bees' honey. "And then hilarity ensues." Those familiar with Seinfeld's comedy, Isaak says, will know to expect some quirky, hilarious moments. Isaak worked on the film for two and a half years, one of three artists first assigned to work from the script. When he got on board as a visual development artist, the project had no visual components. It was Isaak's job to bring Seinfeld's script to life. "What do the characters look like, what is their environment like, what is their world like, what are bee inventions, what do bee houses look like? My job was to look at how this world is going to be invented and how it's going to be seen," he said. Added Isaak, who has worked on other major pictures including Ice Age and Anastasia, "It's insanely fun." When he was first handed The Bee Movie script, the author's name wasn't on it. "It was so funny, this script. I was laughing out loud reading it in a coffee shop," Isaak said. "I came back and I asked them who wrote it, and they said Jerry Seinfeld, and I just about hit the floor. I said I get to work with Jerry Seinfeld? Are you kidding?" A fan of both his show and comedy, Isaak said working with Seinfeld was unlike any past animation projects. The emphasis for the comedy king was to ensure the movie was fun. "We found that when we got too technical and scientific, when we were too bee-logical about it, we were finding that although it might be more accurate, it wasn't necessarily more fun," Isaak said. "Fun kind of became the driving design force for this movie." The part he's most proud of designing is the honey factory ­ Honex, which is inside the bee hive. Isaak designed all the Michael Isaak machines, the factory, the labs, the administration offices and more. Now, it's all on the big screen. "It's incredibly kind of humbling and exciting, because you kind of realize what a shared experience it is," he said. "You hope that it's received well and people like it. There's this incredible sense of anticipation." Isaak admits when he was growing up in Oakville, he never dreamed the doodling he did in class would become his full-time job. "As a little boy, going to E.J. James or OT, I was probably supposed to be concentrating more on school. Actually what I was doing was drawing monsters and aliens. That's what I did ­ I loved it," he said. The project he's working on now for DreamWorks: a film called Monsters versus Aliens. "I loved drawing these silly monsters and aliens as a kid, and now I'm working on a huge, big budget film where I get to do that all day," said Isaac. "It's amazing."