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Your Dragon raked in both the critical plaudits and the cash (with over a billion worldwide, Toy Story 3 was the highest-grossing animated film ever — and the biggest film in the world last year), 2011 has turned out to be another strong year for animated features, both cre- atively and at the box office. The biggest disappointment? Cars 2 failed to live up to (maybe too high) expec- tations, and while in previous years Pixar seems to have had a lock on the award (every Pixar film has been nominated since the category was introduced), this year may offer competitors a real chance to knock Pixar off its perch. Paramount's Rango showcased state-of- the-art animation and visual effects by ILM, and was the first animated film for both ILM and Pirates of the Caribbean veteran Gore Verbinski (see Post's exclusive interview with the director in the March 2011 issue). Apply- ing all the post lessons he and VFX supervisor John Knoll had learned on the Pirates mega- franchise, Verbinski and his team built a hybrid digital pipeline that was both animation and visual effects. Verbinski describes the result as like one big post process. "It's really open- format, and I think this collision of gaming and live action and animation is changing the way films are made. Often now, before I have a screenplay for a movie, I'll have story room, or location photos and bits of character design, and pin it all up. The idea of narrative being informed by visuals and storyboards and text is exciting, and there are a lot of thumbprints on the sculpture by the time you're done with it." The Adventures of Tintin has all the right ingredients — superstar director Steven Spielberg finally making his first ever ani- mated film, ground-breaking 3D motion capture (based on Jim Cameron's dazzling animation process developed for Avatar), The Lord of the Rings' Peter Jackson produc- ing, and Daniel Craig, Jaimie Bell and Andy Serkis doing voiceovers. Universally glowing reviews and huge box office overseas — where it was strategically released first — only increase its chances. The irresistible Carnival vibe of Rio, the 3D CG extravaganza from director Carlos Saldanha (the Ice Age franchise) and Blue Sky, was a $484 million global hit and capitalized both on native son Saldanha's familiarity with the city and the filmmakers' drive "to explore a world and place that hadn't been done yet," he explains. "As I was writing, I was thinking about how Ratatouille used Paris so well, so why not Rio? It's so photogenic and exotic. And then everything — the anima- tion palette, the design, the music — all just flowed naturally from that." But with tropical birds — and their colorful plumage — front and center, Rio's first big challenge was creat- ing realistic feathers. Saldanha and his team developed a lot of proprietary technology, including a special tool called Voxel. "Instead of just having one hair follicle, we had one that sprouts out to many, creating the impression of a feather," he reports. And for the bodies, "we did a lot of controls to simu- late the wind and all the elements." Saldanha and his team also had to animate a lot of costumes with feathers, as well as scenes with huge crowds. "The Carnival parade has over 40,000 characters, so there was a lot of technical work to make sure it all rendered and looked right," he says. "It's a constant evolution of tools, some of which we built for the Ice Age films." Then there's Happy Feet 2, George Mill- er's 3D sequel to '06's Oscar-winning $385 million grossing Happy Feet. The popular penguin dance party teams Robin Williams with Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, throws in newcomers Sofia Vergara, Pink and rapper Common, and again showcases an eco-sensi- tive plot. The animation was created by Dr. D Studios, and Oscar-nomi- nated animation director Rob Cole- man (Star Wars: Attack of the Clones) reports that the film used a special review tool, "that allows me to see my team's animation cut in with the lensing, the lighting and effects work. That was a great piece of integration technology put together specifically for this film." Coleman speaks for all the animation projects when he says, "The software has gotten better, but also the smarts. With things like the rendering, the feathers, fur, eyes and snow — all is a marked improve- ment, thanks to the many people in R&D, IT and software departments." Another hit sequel, DreamWorks' Kung Fu Panda 2, is also in the race. Following the '08 $631 million global smash Kung Fu Panda, and starring an Oscar-friendly cast that includes Angelina Jolie and Dustin Hoffman, the well-received sequel earned $653 million worldwide — making it the highest-grossing film ever directed by a woman, Jennifer Yuh — who won an Annie for her work on the first film. Another DreamWorks film, Puss in Boots, was beautifully animated in 3D. This hit prequel to the Shrek films stars Antonio Ban- deras as the title character in full Zorro/Latin lover mode, and was directed by Shrek 3's Chris Miller. The $130 million production features the vocal talents of Salma Hayek as Kitty Softpaws and Zach Galifianakis as Humpty Dumpty. VISUAL EFFECTS Oscar has usually gone for the truly spec- tacular in this category, and movies such as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Hugo, Cow- boys & Aliens, Captain America, Mission: Impos- sible — Ghost Protocol, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Super 8, Sucker Punch, Thor, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, The Adven- tures of Tintin, X-Men: First Class, Real Steel and The Tree of Life are all spectacular, albeit in very different ways. The wonder and origin of life as opposed to the destruction of the apocalypse informs the ambitious, enigmatic The Tree of Life, directed by the equally enigmatic and ambi- tious Terrence Malick, and shot by his New World DP Emmanuel Lubezki, a four-time Oscar nominee (including for New World). Scenes depict the Big Bang and the first single-celled life forms on Earth as well as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo DP Jeff Cronenweth. dinosaurs, and were overseen by senior visual effects supervisor Dan Glass (Batman Begins, the Matrix franchise). "We never used other films as references — it was photos, art pieces, and discussing our trav- els," the DP says, "and Terry wanted it all to look as real as possible, so the dinosaur scenes are only 15 to 20 percent CGI — the rest is real." The DP, who shot Tree on Arri cameras and master primes ("for that crisp, clean look"), says the biggest challenge was dealing with the DI and all the complex visual effects, "especially for the natural history part of the film. The DI took many months, because Terry had shot some of the visual effects plates 20 years ago, such as the fetus sequence, and some of the negative hadn't been preserved very well, and matching the lighting for the dinosaurs and the plates was very difficult. So we had Dan Glass and all the continued on page 47 www.postmagazine.com Post • January 2012 25 Can editor Kirk Baxter, who won for last year's Social Network, repeat this year for Dragon Tattoo?