Ice Age: The Great Egg-Scapade Page #4

each other to catch the nut.

And then, therefore by doing

that, they find love.

Then, the concept came up,

the love triangle,

Scrat, nut and girl, Scratte.

The Scrat sequences in

general are not scripted.

They are all invented in

story and with the director.

Carlos definitely had the idea of

the Scrat arc, meeting the girl

and a basic idea of

what would happen.

But as far as every individual

sequence, they leave it to us.

The first thing we do

is a first rough pass.

Rough, dirty

awful looking drawings,

and then you pitch them

in front of the whole room.

You act it out.

You do voices.

You're really trying

to get the room to laugh.

And then falls like a rock.

The Scrat tango sequence,

that was my assignment.

And I thought, "well, okay. They

need to be fighting over the nut.

"It's gotta be fun

and funny and..."

So, then, the next

part was me just trying

to sketch out the choreography,

seeing how it would

work with their tails,

and bringing squirrelness

into a human dance.

Just weeks of just doing gags.

And then Carlos basically

just picks his favorite,

and the tango was born.

The tango sequence took 33

days, about five weeks,

because there was a lot of play

between who is holding the nut,

where it's going, so it takes

a great deal of Polish time.

We looked up on YouTube

how to dance tango,

and I think one of

the coolest responses

was when the

storyboard artists noticed

I did a backwards ocho

in one of the shots I did.

So, actually, I have very

specific tango moves in this.

So, it's all

a collaborative effort

that made that sequence

extremely painful

but extremely rewarding

at the same time.

It's one of my favorite

sequences in the movie.

It just shows how fun and

painful love can be.

One thing about the original

scrat was thinking,

"what's gonna be

the voice for Scrat?"

So, we just put temporary

voices just to see.

We needed some sounds.

So, I connected

with my inner Scrat,

and the noises

just came voluntarily.

Mostly, it's effort sounds.

Scrat gets surprised by

something, it's kind of...

He's getting bopped on the head, it's

kind of the same sound, only just...

Things like that.

It matched so perfectly.

We said, "why look elsewhere?

We got the talent right here."

And Chris became the signature

voice of Scrat and was wonderful.

And then when we

defined the Scrat girl,

I decided,

"let's look inside again.

"Let's go through

the same process."

And Karen Disher, she'd been doing

a lot of voice temps for us.

I've been doing scratch

voices since I started out.

So, I think when

they needed a temp voice

for Scratte at

the beginning of production,

they were like,

"we'll just bring Karen in,"

which is, for me, a lot of fun,

when you can come into the

booth and they're like,

"okay, you're falling

down a cliff."

You know, "you're being

punched in the stomach."

You know, it's a funny

and weird thing.

In terms of vocalizing, it's

tricky because Scrat's so great.

Chris wedge does

such an amazing voice.

So, how do I keep this

animal in the same family,

but different at the same time?

So, for me, that was thinking

of little sexy things like,

little purrs she could do,

little come-hither squeaks,

which is difficult to do.

There's big, furry paws

to fill in a lot of ways.

Pretty clever. I don't

know where she gets it.

I just don't.

I was not expecting to end up being

the voice in a movie at all.

And then John came to me about a

year and a half ago now and said,

"guess what?

You're gonna be Scratte."

And I was just,

like, "shut up."

Like, I couldn't

even believe it, so...

It was really exciting.

Mmm!

The final ending where you kind

of, you keep the question,

"is he gonna be with the girl?

Or is he gonna get the nut?

"Or he's gonna get nothing?"

And we had, like, three different

ways of ending the movie.

And we chose one that we thought

was the best for Scrat.

The nut always comes first for Scrat.

Always, always, always.

He can't win at the end, never.

And that's the cardinal rule

'cause that's the Scrat.

We kind of leave Scrat where we

pick him up in the beginning.

He's always gonna have a certain

amount of struggle in his life

no matter what happens.

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