Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1062194
www.postmagazine.com 22 POST DECEMBER 2018 THE GRINCH Illumination's films are stylized but grounded in reality, enabling a full range of emotion for the characters. "Our goal isn't to simulate real life; it is to make things feel real while also supporting the stylization and performance aspects in the scenes," explains Cheney. "We try to capture emotion and subtlety when the scene calls for it, but we don't hold back when there is opportunity for fun and humor. When the Grinch tries to steal Christmas, the team went more broad, a bit more cartoony with his motions and physics." Then he slid down the chimney. A rather tight pinch. But, if Santa could do it, then so could the Grinch. The characters have rather basic shapes, but their rigs are more complex to achieve a wide range of emotion through an entire physical performance, not just with facial expressions. According to Bruno Chauffard, CG supervisor, the animators started with a generic rig that is already fairly extensive, then pushed it rather strongly in terms of elasticity to meet the animation director's requests. "[The characters] should be able to emote and sup- port an emotional idea from any pose we put them in," adds Cheney. "At the same time, we are doing a Seuss film with a very elegant, stylized feel that per- meates everything. To do that, you cannot take con- trol away from the animator. You actually have to give them more control over the silhouette. Sometimes you need to bend things that don't naturally bend in order to have a line on a silhouette be elegant." The silhouette of Grinch in the movie is the same as it is in the book and the TV special. In traditional animation, this is easy to do by drawing lines and poses that aren't necessarily realistic in order to convey a certain attitude or emotion. But in 3D, that's more difficult, since CGI follows certain rules. "For this film, more than others, we need the artistry that goes into the poses," adds Cheney. The Grinch got a wonderful, awful idea! "I know just what to do!" The Grinch laughed in his throat. And he made a quick Santa Claus hat and a coat. In Cheney's opinion, Grinch was the most tech- nically challenging character in the film. Also, he has a number of costumes, but the Santa-disguised Grinch required some complex simulations to make sure his beard behaved realistically through extreme deformations. Also, his telescopic shoes had to ex- pand to huge proportions, deform extensively, and fit back into his shoes within a single shot. Moreover, Grinch has the biggest role, experiences just about every emotion, and is covered head to toe in fur that had to feel like a Dr. Seuss drawing. "There's a style Dr. Seuss used in his illustrations that we tried to incorporate into the shapes of the fur as well as his overall design and his face," Cheney says. "The artists had to make the fur on his face fall downward to look natural, but the tuft at the top of his head… it has a very iconic shape; it points up and out. And, it had to look and react naturally in the wind and snow." Once they captured the silhouette for Grinch and the other characters, it was a matter of defining the details, which are a bit different in CGI, especially the fur, says Mosier. According to Chauffard, the group used numerous texture maps to precisely drive every attribute of the studio's hair systems (length, density, clumping, noise, curliness). For Grinch, they mixed as many as a dozen types of hair for the final result. To make it Seuss-like, the artists formed the hair to accentuate the lines and poses used in the draw- ings, and that had to be incorporated into the char- acter rigs. A studio-developed system enabled the animators to preview the hair behavior interactively when manipulating Grinch so they could anticipate The characters have basic shapes, but complex rigs to allow for a wide range of emotion. Numerous texture maps were used to drive the hair and fur of the characters.