Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1257506
Hill also worried that, in transferring to CG, the characters would end up looking like what he describes as "bath toys—shiny, plastic characters." Even SpongeBob himself goes through what Hill explains as "a weird math" when he's turned into CG. If you're not paying attention, Hill says his lead "can get really weird looking, like his head looks like the top of the table. [So] I had to be careful with lenses because he can get distorted really fast." But, he says: "We had an advantage of having underwater animals" as opposed to humans. Plus, they wanted a chance to rethink the small amount of CG animation that was used in some live-action portions of the previous movies, 2004's The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and 2015's The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water. "I pushed pretty hard to get the surfacing right and the feeling right and it gives a lot of dimension to the image," Hill says, adding that some of the technical strategies used in lighting and modeling made the characters and backgrounds come alive onscreen. This is particularly handy, he says, when you're dealing with a world set on the Pacific Ocean floor. Hill and his team explored the use of caustics, or the optics of how light rays would appear on a surface or creature after they're projected through water. With respect to surfacing, he says improvements in technology have helped with issues like "how the characters look … is SpongeBob too shiny on the surface? Is it too, kind of, spongey or felty?" Tiep-Daniels says that she also worked closely with Sponge on the Run CG Animation Director and Head of Character Animation Andrew Overtoom on translating the characters to CG—and that they even went so far as to laminate creator Hillenburg's "guide of rules, shape language and proportions" for what she describes as their "bible." "After matching the proportions, we would take a step back and work with the artist to sculpt the extra details, making sure that the characters worked in all angles, in order to bring each character to life and make them believable," Tiep- Daniels says. She explains that since all the characters in the movie have some sort of asymmetrical look—be it ill-proportioned lips, eyes, clothing, or something else—it was essential that "the characters needed to be thoughtfully modeled to ensure that the iconic and extreme expressions would read and move correctly." Making these main characters stay consistent through various setups became a major lighting and compositing challenge. It was important to ensure that SpongeBob is still "yellow with large green pores, and a green shadow side" she says, and that his translated material looks "soft and spongey, with large and small secondary pores." While SpongeBob's unbeknownst- to-him sworn enemy, Squidward, is "a combination of a squid texture and his local color and pattern." Squidward's head, which Tiep-Daniels describes as shaped like a loaf of rye bread, and mouth were challenging in part because she says "he is three-and-a- half heads tall" in Hillenburg's notes. Greedy boss Mr. Krabs was "a hybrid of realism and brush stroke style and pattern" so as to keep him from looking at all realistic. This meant "reducing the amount of shell texture, creating color variation and a subtle shell feel." So are these artists prepared to show off their modern take on a beloved TV show's core design principles? It seems fitting that Tiep- Daniels says she's taken to saying SpongeBob's favorite catchphrase: "I'm ready." F E AT U R E this page: Gradient shading of the pineapple brought it to life without making it look hyper realistic. Images courtesy of Paramount 40 KEYFRAME