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THE WILLOUGHBYS www.postmagazine.com 21 POST MAY/JUNE 2020 "By controlling the movement as opposed to straight simulation, we could make the hair feel designed, and we could respond to what we were learning from the textures," explains Pearn. "Establishing this style of movement also gave us cost savings in various conditions, such as rain, snow and wind. The graphic quality of the yarn and the rich texture added to the handmade feeling by not overreacting to the FX elements, which we wanted to feel comp'd over the movement, rather than embedded." Unique Effects While the imagery in the movie's foreground is 3D, the backgrounds were matte paintings, again supporting that homemade feel. "I loved the idea that behind a certain layer of depth, there's a painting," says Pearn. "Also, we had to commit to the locked-camera idea so it felt like a sitcom. I found that soundstage feeling very attractive to the story." A good portion of the film takes place inside the house, where Pearn found the children's library to be an especially-difficult environment due to the extreme detail and the difficulty in lighting it so the viewers' eyes knew where to look. "I wanted the room to feel rich. It's sort of a metaphor; it's full of all the ideas bubbling in the twins' heads," he says. Grading was also a challenge in order to ensure the characters stood out among all the detail. The snow near the end of the film was a fur- ther challenge in terms of establishing the right combination of 2D and 3D. It took a lot of trial and error, Pearn says, to get the snow to feel like it was applied to the scene, but also gave the audience the sense that the world is very cold. "We had this amazing artist, Helén Ahlberg, who was our effects lead. She was a 2D animator by training, but had that superpower where she could step between the 2D and 3D worlds," Pearn adds. According to Ahlberg, effects are usually accurate calculations and simulations, but for this feature, the filmmakers wanted the effects to feel homemade to fit with the overall aesthetic. "That was definitely a big and extreme challenge for our team," she says. "We would use the 2D mind-set of building them by hand, but we would do it in the computer." The production designer wanted fire to look like cutout paper and snow to feel like 2D confetti flying around. To this end, Ahlberg and the effects artists drew inspiration from a number of places for their work — from stop-motion, to paper cutouts, to children's illustrations, focusing on the crafts- manship and then mimicking that in the computer using Maya and SideFX's Houdini. For rendering the FX, the group used Mantra within Houdini. (The lighting/comp team used RenderMan within Foundry's Katana for rendering and Foundry's Nuke for compositing.) Their approach varied somewhat depending on what was needed, but it all started by first sketch- ing out the effects by hand for timing. "We had to really think creatively and go outside the box a bit," says Ahlberg. "We didn't come up with any new groundbreaking technology. It was a matter of taking a unique approach that would give us very strong silhouettes and graphic shapes on all the effects." For instance, when crafting fire, Ahlberg wanted something iconic that felt like fire but didn't have big, fluid movement like the element usually does. "We played around with triangular shapes and would hand-sculpt them to look like they were made out of paper. And then we put a light that flickers inside to symbolize the chaos that comes from fire," she adds. "But when you look at it, you know it's fire. We'd even have some things that were on twos or threes or fours, instead of the normal ones for effects, so they wouldn't stand out too much." In addition to fire, the group tackled other elements. For smoke or dust or clouds, they tried to make them look like cotton or even spun cotton candy. And for water, Ahlberg didn't feel like fluids would really fit the style of this film. "So, we thought more about the material and played around with reflective Mylar strips, just de- forming them and breaking them apart," she says. "Splashes would break into little pieces of paper instead of droplets." There is a rainbow made out of cotton candy. The effects department also handled some of the cloth, such as a carpet or flag. And, the group was in charge of paper electricity, bubbling soda acid fields and lava. Unique Ending In most coming-of-age stories like this, there would be a fairy-tale ending. The parents would see the error of their ways, and the family would reunite and live happily ever after. Well, that was not the case here. Still, the kids do get a happy ending, but not the one the audience expects. And the parents, well, that's another story with an abrupt ending. Indeed, the ending was not as expected, but then again, neither was the film's aesthetic. "We really have tried to create a hybrid world that looks like a cross between CG and stop mo- tion. This is a movie that looks like nothing else out there," Natekar says. "So much love and care went into this film, and I really hope that audiences find it and love it as much as we do," adds McQueen. "It's such a weird, funny, emotional film, and I think it's very unique in the animation space." We couldn't agree more. Karen Moltenbrey is the chief editor of CGW, Post's sister publication. Bron Animation used ZBrush to model the film's characters and Maya to animate them.