Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1030364
BITS & PIECES www.postmagazine.com 5 POST SEPTEMBER 2018 DID YOU DO MORE TRADITIONAL STORYBOARDING OR DID YOU DO ANY PREVIS? "We started doing storyboards, like how we normally would on our feature films, but then we realized that creating an animatic or kind of a previs how we normal- ly do didn't make sense here. We brought in our house model, using one of the tools we had written in-house and we brought in these 2D drawings, on just flat cards, and we started to try previs that way. But again, we felt like it wasn't giving us the proximity and the feel and characters we were hoping for. "One of our animators here is an amazing Quill painter — which is a VR painting tool — and he asked if he could take a stab at doing some storyboards. What he did was awesome. He posed a couple of different drawings and we were able to bring these drawings — 3D models really — into the house and start timing them and create an animatic that way. It was great because we were able to start getting a sense of volume about the characters, a sense of proximity, a sense of appeal and that was a nice way for us early on to start seeing our story come to life. We also used some performance capture just to previs what type of movement is too close, what type is too far. Is some of the action too jarring? So that was a another method to get some feedback on what was working and what wasn't. "It was exciting because along the way, we were pushing new things that we here at the studio had never done before, like using Quill for an animatic, and I think there was a lot of excitement from the artists involved. Even though we had a short time span, everyone was so excited and curious that they would go above and beyond to figure out whatever we needed to do to make the short happen." WHAT KIND OF TECHNOLOGY DID YOU USE FOR THIS FILM? "We used the Unity realtime engine to make this. We tried to use as much of our existing pipeline as we could — some of our animation tools, simulation tools — so our artists didn't have to relearn a toolset in order to create what we wanted for the short. We did our modeling, rigging, animation the way we normally do, but our texturing was a different process from what we normally do on our other films, our lighting was a different process, how we bring in all those assets was a different process. And so, we did a lot of custom scripts and custom changes to the software in order to make things work, in a way that we really wanted. "So, Unity was the main tool, the engine that it runs on, but we also used Maya for a lot of our modeling." HOW IMPORTANT IS MUSIC AND SOUND TO YOU? "The music was composed and performed by my mother, she's a professional musician. It was an amazing experience working with her to have her compose and perform a song on a film that is loosely based on her own mom and dad. I'm so happy I got to work with her. "In terms of sound design, we needed to ask, 'What do memories sound like?' Gabe Guy, one of our amazing sound mixers here, did several passes on what those timelapses really sound like and how to make that audio really special." WILL THE STUDIO BE DOING MORE PROJECTS IN VR? "It was amazing to have the support of the studio when we were making this. And it allowed us to approach it like, "Let's go for it, let's figure it out." So I defi- nitely feel like the studio thinks there's potential and I wouldn't be surprised if there are more VR projects to come." While Cycles made its worldwide premiere at SIGGRAPH, anyone interested in seeing the film can do so next month at the New York Film Festival in the Convergence Portion (at Lincoln Center). WHAT'S NEXT FOR YOU? DO YOU WANT TO WORK ON MORE PROJECTS IN VR? "Yes, definitely. I have more ideas about stories and worlds and characters I want to explore. Whether it's AR or VR I'm not sure, but even thinking about the realtime engines or how that might affect content, whether it's short films, TV episodes, feature film, I think there's a way of making content that's kind of interesting to me." — BY LINDA ROMANELLO The finished product, through VR eyes.