Nolan North is known for portraying Nathan Drake in the Uncharted video games. Thanks to his performance and the work by Naughty Dog, the protagonist has become one of the most popular characters in video game history. This week, North can be heard as Jasper T. Jowls in A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas. This marks the first animated Chuck E. Cheese film since the first Christmas special back in the 1980s.
Uncharted Evolution
North has portrayed Nathan Drake from the first Uncharted game to Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. The actor has seen how the game has evolved with updates in technology.
“It was technically the first fully motion capture game with actors, speaking to each other, no scripts,” North tells Nerd Reactor. “We shot it just like an on-camera job. It’s the same technology that Avatar does; the same type of cameras, everything. So I think the biggest thing for me, technology-wise, was that the first three games were all created for the PS3. So, what you see if you go back and look at those, in terms of graphics and gameplay and what you can do as a player, it’s pretty remarkable what Sony and Naughty Dog, the developer, were able to learn. I mean, they sucked the marrow out of that CPU.”
From Real Jeep to PVC Pipes
The first game had Elena and Nate jump into a Jeep, and Naughty Dog actually rented a Jeep onto the stage, with the actors jumping into that. In Uncharted 2, the Jeep was made of wood blocks that the team had put together, and then the actors jumped into that.
“By the third and fourth game, it was two chairs with a PVC pipe with a tennis ball on the end,” he explained. “That was the stick shift. They were like, ‘We don’t need the actual physical prop when we can do everything else. We’re gonna generate that around you sitting.’”
Another big difference in how the game was made was that Naughty Dog used key-frame facial animation for the first three games, with the fourth one capturing North’s performance.
“They had reference cameras, video cameras that would, from every angle, when Nate squints, they can hand-animate that,” the actor said. “In the fourth game, we did wear the helmets with the cameras. So, the facial recognition. I remember doing a three-hour facial scan at Sony, which was just bizarre. I mean, in the fourth game, every pore, every hair, every wrinkle on his face is actually one that was on my face. I probably have a few extra in the last 10 years, but yeah, it was pretty remarkable.”
A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas
There have been two specials for Chuck E. Cheese previously. One was a 1983 animated Christmas special, The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t, that had a low framerate with around 1 frame per 4 seconds. The other was a live-action direct-to-video film, Chuck E. Cheese in the Galaxy 5000, where Chuck E. Cheese and friends worked together to help Charlie Rockit’s aunt and uncle.
On November 27th, A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas released on Prime Video and Check E. Cheese’s YouTube channel. North voices Jasper T. Jowls, the hound dog and bass player.
“It’s got everything,” North said of the animated special. “It’s heartfelt. It’s funny. It’s smart. Funny is what I like to call it. You know, it’s not just silly humor. And I like animation that I can watch with my kids growing up. There were certain shows and certain things that are typically geared toward kids. But the writing is usually so good, like it is in this one, that there’s humor in there for the parents to enjoy. So I think we should be able to see that. We struck a really good balance.”
