Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/612975
n o v e m b e r . d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 c g w 1 1 moss" technology from Brave (see "The Royal Treatment," June/July 2012). And, we re-did our approach to volumetric clouds. We wanted procedural clouds in every shot." Arlo's journey takes him from the Snake River Canyon on the border of Wyoming and Idaho north to Montana – a big-sky area centered in the Rocky Mountains that includes Jackson Hole (Wyoming), Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone Na- tional Park, and multiple national forests and wilderness areas. "Pete [Sohn] wanted Arlo al- ways moving into new territory we hadn't seen before," Jessup says. With an elevation of 13,770 feet, Grand Teton Mountain, the highest point in the Teton Range, became the model for the film's Clawtooth Mountains. Arlo's family homestead is set at the base of the Teton Range, with the stylized Clawtooth Mountains in the distance. F I F T Y M I L E S O F E L B O W R O O M "Before this film, I explored kitchens in Paris and the racing world of Europe, and that was fun, but this was fantastic." Jessup says. "It was exciting to wrap our heads around the project of building sets that were 50 or 60 or 100 miles in diameter, and then detailing them in a way that made it possible to stylize, control, and exaggerate the environment to capture the awesomeness of nature, the power of it. We were always stylizing, simplifying in a way that a landscape painter might simplify." They call the style "painterly realism." It owes much to Cala- han's artistic vision. "This is my third film with Sharon [Calahan]," Jessup says. "The collaboration with Sharon and the lighting department was extraordinary, but because of her experience in the area, she was also a great guide." Calahan, who had spent holidays painting landscapes in the area Arlo would journey, provided those paintings as well as new ones for the film. "I'm happiest when I'm out- doors painting," Calahan says. "I'd do paintings showing the color and beauty for inspiration. Some for time of day. Some for a setting, for mood, for moments when the characters interact – rain, sunset. Some for scope, for the big-sky feeling, the see-forever clear area. I wasn't trying to create finished paintings, just observations of light and color, memories of sound, cold, heat. Sometimes I would paint single ideas – flowers floating on a river. We call them haiku shots – brief moments of visual poetry." As production neared and final decisions about the look of the film needed to be nailed down, Calahan created a style guide to give the artists in the sets department rules for how to create environments that were believable, dangerous, visceral, but not photoreal. "I wanted to reduce the chaos of realism into something that captures light and color the way the eye sees," Calahan says. "We spent a lot of time creating a set-dressing structure. If the set looks painterly, I'm thrilled." Rather than individual trees, Calahan wanted only enough detail to give the impression of a forest, for example. She wanted the set dressers to mass together values and colors to create a flow without the chaos of true reality. "I tried to find ways to use colors and determine what to emphasize," Calahan says. "We had five different species of trees. If we mixed them together, all the scenes would look the same." There are no matte paintings in the film, but many of Cala- han's paintings are translated literally into scenes. In fact, the sets team used one of Calahan's paintings for an early test that helped sell the idea of using the USGS terrain data. "Sharon had done a painting of Red Canyon," says David Munier, sets supervisor. "I found where it was located in the USGS terrain, extracted that data into Maya, put the camera in place to match her painting, and from there, a set artist put in textures on the ground and procedural vegetation." To add the vegetation, the set dressers would paint areas that told Pixar's Renderman where THE SURPRISING, PET-COLLECTING STEGOSAURUS CAMOUFLAGES ITSELF WITH AN ASPEN TREE PATTERN.