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www.postmagazine.com 20 POST NOVEMBER 2014 eel FX continues to build upon its original, CG-animated film credits, this time with the new feature The Book of Life, which hit theaters nationwide on October 17th. Last year at this time, the studio released Free Birds, its first entirely-CG-animated, stereo 3D feature. The Dallas studio used its experience to fine-tune its workflow, making it even more efficient for the latest project, which stars Zoe Saldana (Maria), Chan- ning Tatum (Joaquin) and Ron Perlman (Xibalba), along with Christina Apple- gate, Diego Luna and Ice Cube. The Book of Life was produced by Guillermo Del Toro and directed by Jorge Gutierrez. It centers around Manolo, a boy who tries to follow his heart while fulfilling the expectations of his fami- ly. Just prior to its release, Post had a chance to catch up with VFX supervisor Augusto Schollaci, who was in Mexico, participating in an educational confer- ence for students looking to enter the world of computer animation. He took some time to detail Reel FX's workflow and some of the challenges the studio faced while creating this colorful theatri- cal feature. The Book of Life is 3D in terms of animation and its presentation? Can you talk about your involvement? "It's all 3D and stereo 3D, so it's 3D on both sides. It's a very nice overall movie. My involvement — I know the director has been doing it longer than I — but for me it was two- to two-and-a-half years in production. We have three different worlds and every one has unique charac- ters and unique architecture." How many characters had to be created? "I think, if I had to estimate, more than 120, for sure. There are a lot of charac- ters in the movie. You have all of your main characters, and then the incidental characters, but there are a lot of them. When you have to create three differ- ent worlds, you have to populate them. That takes quite a bit. They are all based on the main characters. You create the base and from there create the different ones. You get the sense you are in a big, populated world, especially when you go to the Land of the Remembered. People are walking and having fun all around, so that was a challenge." What type of pipeline do you have set up? "On Free Birds we did Maya/Renderman. We always use Houdini for effects, and we use Nuke for compositing. The anima- tion was done with Maya. When it came to texturing, that was done with Maya. Modeling was done with Modo. When BY MARC LOFTUS R THE BOOK OF LIFE REEL FX REFINES ITS PIPELINE FOR THIS NEW 3D FEATURE ANIMATION In addition to the principal characters, Reel FX also had to populate the film's different worlds.