Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/47583
higher learning Hero animation By BARBARA ROBERTSON BarbaraRR@comcast.net ANCOUVER —Thor, Norse God of Thunder, has a problem. Just before his father, Odin, planned to crown him king, Frost Giants from the ice planet Jotunheim disrupted the corona- tion. So, an angry Thor sped through a por- tal to Jotunheim, where he led an unautho- rized attack on the inhabitants.This did not please Odin, and he banished his son to live among humans on Earth. That is the story behind the recent sci-fi film Thor, di- rected by Kenneth Branagh. In post, the story centers on Digital animators make sure the tools they wield are strong. Domain, the studio responsible for cre- ating visual effects for the film, along with Buf, Fuel VFX, Luma Pictures,The Base Studio, CEG Media and Evil Eye Pictures also contributing. Kelly Port led the work at Digital Domain, where Eric Petey, working out of Digital Domain's Vancouver studio, supervised the animation team. "The bulk of the animation on the show took place on the ice planet," Petey says."We created most of the creatures and characters in that location." When Thor shows up on Jotunheim with his posse of gods and demigods, they find enormous,muscular bad guys."The Frost Gi- ants are slightly exaggerated humans, mon- ster-y types, large creepy men. Kenneth [Branagh] always talked about how they needed to be vicious and menacing." Some shots have more than 200 of these Frost Giants."We can manage the crowds with in-house tools, but the shots were mostly done by animators, to be honest, using generic motion cycles," Petey says. Animators keyframed Frost Giants in the foreground, and started with motion capture data for background characters. The animated warriors don't have dialogue; if they spoke in close-up shots, they were actors in make-up. A team of 16 animators, four of whom were interns, performed the background and foreground giants.Among the anima- tors in Petey's group were two Anima- tion Mentor graduates, Agata Matuszak, who keyframed foreground characters, and Magnolia Ku Lea, initially an intern but ultimately credited as an animator, who worked on shots with back- ground characters. THEIR STORIES Matuszak graduated from Animation Men- 16 Post • September 2011 tor in July 2010 and started at Digital Domain in Vancouver in December 2010.The Polish- born Canadian hadn't considered animation as a career possibility until a friend told her about the Vancouver Institute of Media Arts. "I was studying pre-med," she says."A friend told me about this local art school, so I thought this was my chance to follow my in- terests. I completely fell in love with anima- rience for me, and I am glad I took time off from work to focus 100 percent on school." Also working on the Frost Giants was Ku Lea, who began her internship in October 2010. "Digital Domain first familiarized me with the tools, then how they used motion captured data, and then how to approach that within a shot," she explains. "By the time my internship ended, they had as- Animation Mentor grads Agata Matuszak (inset) and Magnolia Ku Lea (below, left) both worked on tion, and I can't see myself doing anything other than character animation and being a part of the filmmaking process." Even before she graduated, Matuszak had received two job offers: one from Rainmaker VFX to work on the film Garfield, and another to work for Veda Games, an animation studio in India. She went to India. "A lot of people thought I was crazy, but the head of the studio at Rainmaker understood and said to call when I was done there." And, she did. Matuszak joined Vancouver's Rainmaker VFX, where she worked on Night at the Mu- seum, Case 39 and Blades of Glory.Then, the company transferred her to another divi- sion."I was feeling like I needed something more; that there were holes in my animation knowledge," she says. I wasn't fulfilled, and I wanted to do more." That's when she discovered Animation Mentor. "I wanted to take every opportunity to strengthen my skills and learn from ani- mators who are working in studios that I dream of working at," Matuszak says."Going back to school was such a wonderful expe- www.postmagazine.com . signed me a few shots from start to finish, which was a thrill." Ku Lea had studied traditional animation at Concordia University in Montreal, but after working as a traditional animator for a short time, became a character designer."When I saw there was a program where I could draw and make a film, I thought,'I want to try this.' So I decided to marry my love of drawing and art with film and storytelling. I didn't really think about animation as a career." After several years as a character de- signer for television series and games, Ku Lea decided to return to her roots. "I wanted to bring things to life," she says. "When Animation Mentor started, I jumped on the opportunity to focus on character animation and to learn from the best." In the middle of Class Four, she was pre- sented with an offer to work on a visual ef- fects broadcast movie.A game cinematic fol- lowed. And then, Digital Domain offered an internship."I had touched motion capture when I was doing the cinematic, but this was continued on page 46 V Thor Thor