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They're Playing His 'Toons

Rick Farmiloe spent one day at work riding camels around a parking lot. "I took videos of them, of how they get up and how they walk," he says. "I studied those videos like crazy. I drew camels for hours."

Farmiloe, 41, is a film animator at DreamWorks studios. He created a very graceful, lifelike camel that slinks across the desert in the animated film The Prince of Egypt, in theaters December 18.

For other films, Farmiloe has drawn goofy sidekick animals, which are his specialty. Remember Scuttle, the albatross from The Little Mermaid? Or Abu, Aladdin's monkey? Farmiloe created those, too. But for The Prince of Egypt, based on the Bible story of Moses, he had to get serious.

"I couldn't have the camel walking around smoking a cigar, tipping his hat," says Farmiloe. "We needed to treat him like a real camel."

Growing up in Santa Rosa, California, Farmiloe knew he had artistic flair. "I used to make little storybooks with drawings in them. I'd draw in the margins of my school papers," he recalls. "I couldn't help it."

He studied film, art and animation in college. His first job was at a company that made TV cartoons. "I learned the basics about animation," he says. After a year, he went to Disney studios, where he worked on Beauty and the Beast, The Rescuers Down Under and many other movies. When his boss at Disney started DreamWorks, he asked Farmiloe to come along.

Farmiloe's next challenge will be to create lifelike characters that are all horses. "They're tricky," he says. "The mouth is way down low, and it's really tiny. And the eyes are up on top of the head, on the side. It's hard to get an expression." Sounds as if the DreamWorks parking lot may soon be full of horses. And Rick Farmiloe will be there riding them, doodling their long faces and figuring out how to turn them into unforgettable characters.

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