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www.postmagazine.com 27 POST OCTOBER 2018 very culture has its own myths and legends, ancient stories, often unproven, about some supernatural being or phenomena. In the Himalayan region of Nepal and Tibet, for instance, the yeti, or abomi- nable snowman, is part of the region's folklore — large-footed, ferocious, ape-like creatures with long, white hair and a booming roar who inhabit the rugged, mountainous terrain. Similarly, in a region near but far, another culture tells the tale of mythical creatures just as frighten- ing, with peculiarly tiny feet, misshapen, hairless bodies and small, squeaky voices — enough to send shivers down your spine. That is, if you are a yeti and talking about (gulp!)… humans! The CG animated feature film Smallfoot, from Warner Bros. Pictures and Warner Animation Group, turns a particular myth on its head, one in which hu- mans are thought to be imaginary, mythical creatures — at least in the land of the yeti. But legend turns to reality for both when the young yeti Migo briefly encounters a human who accidentally parachutes into the yeti world before disappearing over a cliff, through the clouds and into the human realm below. When Migo tells the elder yetis of his discovery, they do not believe him, so he sets off on an adventure below the clouds to locate a smallfoot and prove their existence once and for all. The film was animated at Sony Pictures Image- works' Vancouver facility, assisted by its LA cam- pus. Karey Kirkpatrick directed and co-wrote the movie, while Karl Herbst served as visual effects supervisor. Production got off to a quick start in January 2016 but soon slowed while the film underwent revisions. During this time, the team at Sony Pictures Animation continued its work on snow and hair development, two of the film's larger technical challenges. Production again geared up last October and wrapped this past August, with production spanning a total of 13 months. The film hit theaters in late September. Character Development The film's characters come from two very different worlds — one hidden above the clouds (home of the yeti) and one below (inhabited by humans). Outwardly, Smallfoot's two species are about as different as you can get. Inwardly, they are scarily similar. Migo (Channing Tatum) is a young, happy- go-lucky yeti who, despite everything he has been told, still believes in the existence of the smallfoot, even before he discovers the human Percy (James Corden) on his scouting adventure. He is joined by other yetis in the clandestine organization SES (Smallfoot Evidentiary Society), including Meechee (Zendaya), who hopes the legend is true; Gwangi (LeBron James), a burly, wild-haired yeti who loves conspiracies of all kind; the science nerd Kolka (Gina Rodriguez) and the annoying Fleem (Ely Henry). Among the adult yetis are Meechee's dad, the Stonekeeper (Common), who is dedicated to maintaining the status quo of the land and squash- es any talk of smallfoot's existence, lest the laws of their society, which are literally written in stone, are suddenly questioned; and Migo's very non-curious dad, Dorgle (Danny DeVito). On the human side, there is Percy, a former TV personality hoping to get back into the spotlight with his new "discovery," and his non-believer assistant, Brenda (Yara Shahidi), as well as animals such as yaks, bears, goats and even bioluminescent furry snails with fiber-optic hairs that light up. "The aesthetic we wanted was something slightly right of center, if you had Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which is more stylized, on the left, and The Good Dinosaur, more realistic, on the right. Meaning, a little more 'cartoony realistic,'" explains Herbst. Make no mistake, though, the film bears threads of Looney Tunes inspiration throughout — from the shape of the characters' eyes and simplified shape language of their bodies to their wild, physical, comedic action. Imageworks has a history of this type of anima- tion — squashing and stretching characters and pushing them to the extreme — as evidenced in Cloudy, the Hotel Transylvania franchise and other films. "That's something we've developed and im- proved over the last eight to 10 years," says Herbst. "Our rigging team knows how to create rigs that can support these types of performances." As Herbst points out, the scale between the char- acter types is exaggerated, which made it difficult at times to frame shots containing humans next to yetis. "Part of our rigging system for this squash and stretch allows us to change the proportions and scale of the characters on the fly, so the animators had a lot of freedom to change that relationship in scenes," he explains. The front end of the film's animation pipeline is based on Autodesk's Maya, which was used for modeling and animation, in addition to a range of custom tools, solvers and deformers that were developed in-house. The hair simulation was done within Maya Nucleus, with custom tools built over top of it, as it was for the grooming. On the back end, the effects were all driven through SideFX's Houdini, while the artists used its own in-house version of Arnold for rendering. For lighting, they used Foundry's Katana, while shaders were devel- oped using the OSL open-shading language. And, E