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e d i t i o n 2 , 2 0 2 0 c g w 4 5 Pre-production in Real Time PAINTING PRACTICE USES UNREAL ENGINE FOR DESIGN AND VISUALIZATION ON HIS DARK MATERIALS BY KAREN MOLTENBREY S ome might consider the pre-produc- tion work Dan May and his Painting Practice company do as "gameplay." And, in a sense, it is. Painting Practice, a West London design studio May founded more than a decade ago, can be described as a previsualization/ VFX facility, offering services such as previs, animation, VFX, production design, concept art, and digital matte painting. It has recently garnered attention for its design and visual- ization work for the large sets and complex action sequences on HBO's His Dark Mate- rials. And they did so using real-time tech- nology by implementing Unreal Technology's Unreal Engine. His Dark Materials is an HBO epic fantasy drama series produced by Bad Wolf Studios and based on the book series of the same name by Philip Pullman, the first of which, "Northern Lights," was the basis for the fea- ture film The Golden Compass (see "Animal Control," CGW, December 2007). The story introduces Lyra, an orphan, who lives in a parallel universe where science, theology, and magic are entwined, and where every- one has a personal daemon, a manifestation of his or her soul in the form of an animal. The feature film was ambitious, yet the television series is even more so in terms of its scope and scale, with a plethora of crea- tures from witches to armored polar bears, and mythical cities and vast landscapes created by CG artists at Framestore (see "Craing Daemons," at the end of this fea- ture). Before that happened, though, Paint- ing Practice provided real-time mock-ups of various sequences that enabled the director and producers to make decisions concern- ing the series' complicated sequences. "Unreal was a great way of getting people to physically be in a space that was not even conceived," says May, creative director at Painting Practice and one of the company's co-founders. As Joel Collins, executive producer and production designer on the show, notes, "These are very expensive sets, and on a show like His Dark Materials, where you're building an entire town for one episode, you've got to make really good decisions that are practical, financial, and creative. What Painting Practice's team created gave us an ability to make critical judgments that meant we could get it right on the edge of affordable and, absolutely, on the edge of shootable, in the sense there was no fat on what we built." Painting Practice originally was set up to facilitate production design, whether physical or digital, but as more greenscreen sets were being incorporated, the compa- ny's work on previs became more plentiful, though it still does quite a bit of animation as well. "Primarily we're first-in-the-door, working for producers, directors, or show- runners on the vision of the show," says May. "We oen help get them off the ground, and then we work through the traditional pre-production art department space, pre- vis, and then in the last few years, with Black Mirror and now with His Dark Materials, we're A look at scene lighting for Trollesund.