Queen + Adam Lambert

An illustration of a child-like robot with murderous tendencies from the 1970s has been super-sized for the live stage. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Queen’s News of the World album, the 3D animation is joining Queen and Adam Lambert on tour.

With piercing red eyes, a long angular nose, overly-plumped lips and a rounded torso, the giant Metropolis-esque robotic animation will appear on LED screens to entertain Queen fans throughout the show. The metal robot lived solely on the album covers of the 1977 album, which included We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions. Now, Frank, named after his illustrator, will loom above Brian May, Roger Taylor (two of the remaining living members of the band) and Adam Lambert (who replaces Freddie Mercury). He will also be revamped in a special box set of Queen's landmark album.


Converting a static, 40-year-old illustration into a 3D animation requires lots of work - and imagination Queen + Adam Lambert

To build a 3D model from nothing more than a sketch, artist Mark Hough began with a low-poly face model. “I had to find a model that looked like a face but with low enough detail so I could pull him around like clay,” Hough explains. He pulled, stretched and morphed the face through nine different revisions, until it was perfect.

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Mark tweaked Frank's face nine times until he was happy with it Queen + Adam Lambert

But there was a fair amount of guesswork involved in the rest of the design. “We had to guess how the side of his head and feet looked,” says Hough. “We cheated. We oversized the hands because they were such a key moment when the show kicks off; we needed to make it look like it was floating over the audience.”


A bit of guesswork went into making the feet, and Frank was made bigger, with oversized hands for the live show Queen + Adam Lambert

Once they got a feel for how light hit the face and body, they added texture, scratches and a weathered look. Then it was time for rigging. 3D rigging is the process of creating a skeleton for a model so it can move. A simple human biped preset rig was used as a starting point. Next came the bones, muscles and weight maps to control the bones.

Weight maps are an essential part of the rigging, it helps control how the body moves before animation Queen + Adam Lambert

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The weight maps control which parts of the rigging are allowed to move. “For example, when you have a bone rig running through an arm it can take the hands and the face with it - you have to tell that bone it can only affect these objects,” Hough says.


Next, Frank was crash tested; put into different positions to see if the model deformed. Hough had some trouble with the little finger. “I rigged every bone up perfectly apart from the smallest bone on his left hand. That took a little bit of time to bring back in line!” Hough says. "Rigging is like a one way street; as soon as you do something wrong at the start you have to reverse up the road.”

Crash testing revealed that Frank worked perfectly. He just had a dodgy finger Queen + Adam Lambert

It was time to bring Frank to life. “I was nervous about animation,” says Hough, who modelled Frank’s movements on his own recordings. "I wanted him to look real and move in a very human way but he was heavy, metal, and couldn’t move quickly.” It was important that he looked motor driven rather than muscle driven.

Much like a human has a skeleton, a model needs some rigging to help it move properly Queen + Adam Lambert

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Hough then set about placing him in the key positions, such as when Frank smashes through the front screen.

Frank's animated movements Screen tap Frank leans down, stares at the audience, taps the screen the pulls it close from the top down Lift up Zoom out over head to Frank who then lifts up Brian May (hand on the front screen, Frank rear wall) Radio Gaga claps Timed to the song, loopable End of show farewell Frank waves goodbye at the audience, gives a wink then pulls the door closed from top

Frank's animations were made to fit in with the show and certain songs, such as clapping along to Radio Gaga Queen + Adam Lambert

Animating Frank also worked on a practical level. “The opener pose was used to hide the band’s movement onto stage,” Pattinson says. “The robot lifted up the downstage screen to reveal the band in position."

Frank clapping along to the beat of Radio Gaga also helped get the audience clapping. “On top of being an aesthetically and nostalgic thing, Frank was a really useful tool to help us craft the show,” Pattinson says.

Animator Mark Hough was tasked with animating Frank to life Mark Hough

It wasn’t enough to just give Frank a face, body and movement. Hough had to attribute a personality to his creation. “This made Brian and Roger really think about who the robot was,” Pattinson says.


Frank isn’t a friendly robot. On the album covers, he is reaching towards terrified masses of people, on another he clutches his victims, bloody and lifeless, in his metal hand. From this, Pattinson and Hough decided the robot is fundamentally a child. A child who likes breaking walls down.

A 3D stage was mocked up to see how the movements actually worked with a band and a prototype Queen + Adam Lambert

This child-like monster robot felt like the perfect way to celebrate Queen’s anniversary. "It was such an intriguing character, this child-like monster robot that was smashing and grabbing the band," Pattinson says. For Hough, being involved in the project was a truly special opportunity. “It was an honour to be trusted by a band of Queen's stature with something so precious to them," he says.