Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1062194
www.postmagazine.com 7 POST DECEMBER 2018 BITS & PIECES MPC CREATES AN ENCHANTING WORLD FOR THE NUTCRACKER AND THE FOUR REALMS MONTREAL — When Clara finds herself in a strange and mysterious parallel world that's home to Land of Snowflakes, Land of Flowers and Land of Sweets, she must brave the ominous Fourth Realm and its ruling tyrant, Mother Ginger, to return harmony to the unstable world. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is inspired by the story we all know and love, but at the same time, it's an all-new adventure that is compelling, excit- ing and full of equal parts action and heart. Lead by overall VFX supervisor Max Wood and MPC VFX supervisor Richard Clegg, MPC's artists crafted more than 1,000 shots for Disney's The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. The scope of the work was wide-ranging, from CG environments — including palaces, forests and rivers — to large- scale FX work and extensive digital character builds and animation. Creating the Four Realms of the Nutcracker was a huge visual effects task. MPC created 101 CG assets in total, broken down into several distinct areas: the beautiful, majestic Russian-influenced Palace, realms of snow, flowers and sweets. For the Fourth Realm, MPC's team built polichinelle clowns, an army of tin soldiers, a giant Mother Ginger mechanical puppet, the mice, the Mouse King, nu- merous environments and other animals. Production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas and the production art department produced stunning con- cept art for The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. While the designs were fantastical, there was a strong focus on realism by ensuring real world scale to the environments. For example, the waterfalls had a realistic drop and the mountains were an appropriate height. The world, which needed to be visible from different angles and distances through- out the film, was fully built in CG and rendered, rather than relying on digital matte paintings. The Mouse King character is one of the most unique characters in the film, and was the most complex in terms of development. To create this nine-foot creature, formed from thousands of mice, MPC's team had to find the right balance between creating believable physical crowd simulations of the vast quantity of mice, and allowing the base shape and structure of the Mouse King to be directable. The Mother Ginger marionette is a giant puppet, designed by the art department to be a menacing 40 feet tall and 30 feet wide, with a circus tent for a skirt. In several shots there is a huge practical Mother Ginger puppet skirt, torso and head, but for most scenes she is a full-CG character, built to perfectly emulate the practical build used while shooting. For shots where the puppet is practical, she was enhanced with CG steam, arms and mouth. The most complex challenge was designing her mechanics to work for a battle scene where she is attacked by an enormous army of seven-foot-tall tin soldiers that swarm around her. In this scene, she uproots trees and uses them as clubs to beat down the soldiers in an attempt to escape. MPC's artists animated the army of tin soldiers to climb on top of each other to form a pyramid that raises them up to her height. The complexity of making the climbing and interact- ing soldiers was made more difficult by the cloth simulations that needed to be crafted, as they push against the canvas of her tent lower body. Finally, one of the stand out characters in The Nutcracker is Mouserinks, the small, furry, hero mouse of the story. Mouserinks is the leader of the Mouse King's army, but also Mother Ginger's trust- ed sidekick. MPC's character lab artists had to find the right balance between anthropomorphism and natural mouse behaviours in his performance to maintain his cute appearance for the duration of the film. MPC created 101 CG assets for scenes like this, before (here) and aer (below). Multiple environments were among MPC's work for the film, before (here) and aer (below).