Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1188718
D E PA R T M E N T 45 KEYFRAME WHAT'S NEXT AT DISNEY? Jennifer Lee may be the writer and director (with Chris Buck) of Frozen II but she's also the Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios and in a unique position to take her experiences on films and apply lessons learned more widely across the studio. So what's next? One of her biggest goals is developing new talent and creating new avenues in house for opportunities: "It was starting to be that unless you were on the story team, you didn't have as much access to the story and the work we do," she says. The Launchpad shorts program allows artists from all departments to submit stories: "We're going to put you in a leadership role and give you mentorship." The studio is also focused on supporting leadership roles for diversity inclusion, making sure they are not just open to the best talent in the world but actively seeking it. "Talent is universal but access isn't," she says. Another priority is a continued investment in technology and looking for efficiencies to be able to produce more content, specifically for Disney +. "The level of animation we do is intense and expensive," she says. "We can experiment a lot more [by] being more efficient in technology and in our processes." left: Illustrator Annette Marnat's initial paintings of the water Nokk. patterns or the mane might detract from the focus and lead the audience's gaze astray. At times, the result wasn't ideal: The mane might flip across the Nokk's head and obscure his face. The shot would be sent back to animation to reanimate the head and motivate the mane to flip to the other side of the head. "It's critical that all the effects support the storytelling," notes Tong. As the horse gallops underwater, the team worked on how the water breaks and how the bubbles emanate from the movement, but they had the added obstacle of a clear, liquid creature in the water. "You have to do a lot of steps to isolate the Nokk from all of the water but still have it read as made from water," says Tong. "If it's just a regular water surface you'll see a lot of reflection and refraction, so it's hard to read the shape. We have to use a volume to block out the light, so they're still see-through but not transparent." Moreover, every shot was scrutinized by the lighting department: "We're not just taking a setup and rendering it with different cameras, we're making artistic decisions per shot," says Lighting Supervisor Amy Pfaffinger. Working on darker scenes is challenging for the lighting department, also determining the motivations of the source of the light. "Sometimes you have to decide your strategy," says Pfaffinger. "The character might [realistically] be [in the dark] and nobody wants to see that in a movie." For the darker scenes, the team explored movies such as Star Wars for inspiration. Lights are placed to provide more than readability of the character; they direct the audience's gaze to the action. Something might catch the eye that is technically correct, for example, an interesting effect like a sparkle in the water, but takes attention off of the real focus of the scene. You might bring the intensity down in those areas while lifting the focus of other areas to align with the direction of the storytelling. "The work we're doing now is closer to the complexity of visual effects," adds Pfaffinger. Indeed, more than 75 percent of the film had effects in it, putting a bit of a strain on the budget but once again the filmmakers were able to come up with creative solutions: "If we say the scene is critical, then we find other ways," says Jennifer Lee. "Sometimes you have a shot where there are six people in it—if you limit it to two, you just saved three weeks in animation." She credits having artists coming on the project early to iterate a lot sooner with helping to improve the process and allow for time to explore the story, something she'd like to see implemented in future productions. "How do we open this up so creativity can be as free as it needs to be in the beginning?" she says. "There is no shortcut to what it takes to develop a strong film. WINTER 2019 45