I recently recieved an email from one Richard Bazley, who happens to be the lead CGI animator for everyone's favorite over-the-counter pill, Drix! In his email, he was kind enough to give me some interesting tidbits about Drix that I'll share with you guys!

Quotes Mr. Bazley,
"I very much wanted to keep the two colour theme of the pill throughout the design to make a bold statement that he is literally a floating pill! I was also very keen on keeping the head as a separate floating element so it looked like a pill with a mouth. The neck is implied but there is no physical connection....so if the character was walking and stopped there would be a little overlap in the head and then it would settle back almost as if there was a magnate at the centre.

"The character initial was going to be in 2D, but as I drew and designed the character with this perfect pill box shape and a cross on the front I realized that such a perfect symmetrical shape was going to be a nightmare to draw and keep consistent with so many artists on it. Therefore I suggested it be done in CGI. Once a model is built in 3 dimensions in a programme such as Maya, the model can stay consistent and the animators then just need to worry about the animation and performance. The rest of the characters were 2D so we had to make sure that it integrated into the 2D world. I also made sure that there was enough flexibility built into the design so we could squash and stretch the shape to so that it wasn't too rigid. In 2D it is quite common to draw in cheats to get the desired effect....and no one will notice. With 3D, unless you have built these cheats into the design some movements would be impossible. For example when Drix goes to open his chest to get out some pills (grenades). If this is drawn we can cheat the arms so that they can reach into his chest...whereas with a literal 3D model this would not work, so we built in a function where we could lengthen the arm a little in the 3D model for Drix to be able to do this and it works..and no one would no the wiser!"

Mr. Bazley has also done animation for many other films, including The Iron Giant and Disney's Hercules. His filmography is here. You can visit BazleyFilms.com for more about his films.