From TechRepublic:
The new film “Madagascar,” DreamWorks Animation’s animated follow-on to the smash hit “Shrek 2,” could be described as a hairy technology challenge played out onscreen.
With a cast of zoo animals and hundreds of furry lemurs on the film’s namesake island, the animators had to push the limits of technology to render an eye-catching yet believable effect. Every hair on every animal represented a line of computer code, for a countless number of algorithms that had to be compressed and rendered overnight to create the images in just one scene.
Alex the Lion, for example, the motion picture’s animated star played by Ben Stiller, had 1.7 million hairs on his head and each one represented a series of 1s and 0s. Just a few years ago, depicting only five furry beasts in one scene would have been nearly impossible–the computer hourglass icon would likely turn for months–but “Madagascar” shows almost 1,000 at once in one primate dance scene.