Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/426326
www.postmagazine.com 15 POST NOVEMBER 2014 very closely at the movie to be true to the intention of the art direction and design. It's really important to us that we are truly bringing Frozen to Storybrooke and I think it shows in the success in the ratings and the viewers responding very favorably. "One of the questions we had to ask ourselves, for instance, was, what would Grandpappy look like if he were really here? He has to look like grandpappy and be instantly recognizable to people who have seen Frozen, but if we made him look exactly like how he was in the movie, he would look like a CG animated version in a real space. So the big challenge for us is to stay true to it and create that sense of magical realism that we feel like the live-action characters are integrated with." Were there other VFX that were more challenging that you thought would be tough to pull off? "Yes, one of the biggest challenges was the opener of Season 4. The beginning, those first minutes where you grab viewers is often the most important part of any TV show. The first scene in the premiere starts off with Anna and Elsa's parents on the stormy sea. And we had to make sure our ocean was realistic, our boat was realistic. We had people on a boat set on green screen, with tons of water being dumped. "Water is especially challenging for CG, the dynamics of the water, it always has been. It's something that's been relegat- ed to features mostly because it takes so much time to get it right. For us to do it on a television budget and schedule, is something that we're really proud of. It's one thing when you're doing a virtual environment inside a castle, where the walls are stationary, and a much bigger bulls eye when your virtual environment is a ship on the ocean during a storm. "We partnered with a company called Fusion IO that specifically does water effects for film and television shows, and they helped us with the simulations. It was rewarding to see it all together and peo- ple responding so well to the premiere." What are some other tools you use? "We're using fairly standard tools for the visual effects industry. For our models, characters, and sets we're using [Au- todesk] Maya and rendering in [Chaos Group's] V-Ray, and for compositing we're using [The Foundry's] Nuke exclusively. We do a lot of our own water and smoke simulations using a variety of software like [Thinkbox Software's] Krakatoa and RealFlow, and we're using Zbrush [from Pixelogic] for our character modeling, so it's a good suite of tools. I think the most exciting thing we do here relates to our proprietary virtual set system, Zeus. We have an iPad application that allows our clients to take a virtual tour through the sets, and to create cameras and save cameras and save animation, put charac- ters down in the sets and do storyboards so it takes the place of a tech scout for the virtual set process. It's a great previs and visualization tool." Does the show have any signature VFX? "Yes, there are a few. For example, the main favored form of transportation in fairy-tale land is what we lovingly refer to as the 'smoke poof.' And the smoke poof is when one of the characters needs to get somewhere quickly, they wave their hand, smoke wraps around them, and they disappear. We've seen it in every Disney movie (laughs). That was some- thing we really had to develop specifically for the show because in our world it has to look like real smoke. So we have been working on that effect and evolving that effect. We started out with Maya Fluids, then we went to software called Phoenix and now we're finally using Krakatoa, but we're constantly evolving that effect." How important are the VFX to the storytelling and storylines of the show? "More than any other show I've worked on. We are completely integrated with the production cycle. Visual effects is not an afterthought. The design and the implementation of the visual effects have implications on story lines, budgetary concerns, so we're right there. We take the challenge very seriously. If the visual effects don't work, the show doesn't work." PRIMETIME With tools like Maya and Zbrush, Zoic was able to create a believable look for Grandpappy.