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www.postmagazine.com 22 POST APRIL 2018 Nick Sax (played by Christopher Meloni), an alcohol- ic ex-cop turned hitman, gets the full Roger Rabbit treatment in the Syfy series Happy! When Nick is re- vived, after being shot and left for dead, he can see a small, blue cartoon donkey-unicorn named Happy (voiced by Patton Oswalt). The goofy creature is the imaginary friend of Hailey, Nick's estranged daughter who has been kidnapped by a deranged man dressed as Santa Claus. Happy escapes from captivity to seek Nick's help in saving Hailey. One of four vendors working on the series, UK- based AxisVFX (www.axis-vfx.com) is responsible for the personification of Happy and his friends, transforming the blue donkey-unicorn from the pag- es of the cult graphic novel into a CGI character who is required to have "as much presence and person- ality as our protagonist, Nick," says Grant Hewlett, co-founder and VFX supervisor at AxisVFX. Close to 700 shots of Happy, the villainous three-headed patchwork dog Raspberry and a gang of other imaginary friends were spread across AxisVFX studios in London, Bristol and Glasgow. "New workflows were developed to increase cross-site efficiency across all depart- ments," Hewlett says. "In the comic and the script, Happy has a huge range of abilities and emotions. This meant he had to be designed very thoughtfully, considering his anatomy and characteristic features," he explains. Hewlett remembers the "exciting moment when the rig approached final and all of [Happy's] fur and shaders were applied. "We had our stretchy, crazy, lovable blue flying donkey-unicorn!" Since a flying donkey-unicorn isn't constrained by the laws of nature, the animators had some latitude in determining his movement. But, as Hewlett notes, "Happy is a busy shape with the four limbs, wings, horn, tail and big head, so when animating him, we had to pay close attention to getting his silhouette as clean as possible for clear lines of actions. "Before the project started, we did a lot of tests regarding how cartoony he would have to be; we had to balance photorealism against his crazy squash-and-stretch nature. When Happy was on screen with Nick, we made sure that he shined when it was his time to shine, but when Nick was the focus, we made sure Happy would not distract from him." Animators were given "a lot of freedom" to bring emotion to Happy's performance. "Since he mainly flew, when he was sad we could pose his limbs to be drooping down, even his nose would be slightly more down turned and his movements would be slower, more lethargic. When he was…happy…then he would be more perked up, front legs tucked up, hips pushed up so his body formed his classic bean shape, and his movements would be more energet- ic," Hewlett explains. Artists at AxisVFX primarily used Autodesk Maya for modeling and animation with in- house tools for fur dynamics and caching. "Our texturing workflow was completed mostly in [Allegorithmic's] Substance Painter, but our artists are free to use whichever package they prefer," says Hewlett. "Scene assembly and rendering is always done using [SideFX's] Houdini, and we have a proprietary lighting and shading pipeline utilizing [SideFX's] Mantra as our renderer. The power of Houdini's digital assets really helped us meet our very tight deadlines on the show." The Foundry's Nuke was the studio's compositing tool; Axis cre- ated tools for loading characters and picking up other 3D outputs such as cameras and geometry. Happy! is shot on-location in New York City, and AxisVFX worked with the show's VFX senior produc- ing supervisor, Ajoy Mani, who coordinated the inter- action among the director, editorial and Axis. "Ajoy's team provided us with all the reference photos for photogrammetry, HDRs and other lighting refer- ence plates, including Macbeth [ColorChecker Color Rendition] charts, diffuse lighting ref and a blue unicorn plush toy roughly representing Happy's col- or and form. These were very helpful for getting an idea of how Happy would actually look." Most of the time Christopher Meloni visualized Happy without a prop stand-in. "This allowed for a very organic and spontaneous per- formance," according to Hewlett, but "one of the biggest challenges was getting the focal planes to gel. As stand-ins were not shot, there were many situations where, for instance, the focus remained on Nick, but Happy needed to be sharp in the foreground. There were a lot of clever solutions per shot from our comp team, and they were always able to get a good integration." Hewlett adds, "but there was a lot more contact with Nick than we had anticipated, so we often had to go back to 3D for an additional shadow pass or object track. "We also did any of the effects needed in shots with Happy — water, blood, glass, deflations, transformations. There were a lot of ex- tra effects called for by the edit, so we would often have to produce simulations with a fast turnaround across our sites." A support group segment featuring Happy, Raspberry and a host of friends — including a very profane Little Bo Peep — perched on fold- ing chairs was a standout animated sequence. Challenges largely had to do with rigging "very unusually shaped bodies, such as Goose the Toad, whose tiny arms and bloated torso con- stantly wanted to intersect with his clothes," says Hewlett. Or take Raspberry, a hero character who underwent as much development, if not more, as Happy with his three facial rigs and extended moustache/eyebrow hairs. Although Season 2 of Happy! has yet to get un- derway, AxisVFX is ready to go with "a sharpened set of tools" should the company get the call. "Quite a lot of further improvement on our hair/fur system has already been taking place, as well as the infra- structure for working across our three sites," says Hewlett. "Networks and storage are freshly upgrad- ed which can only increase efficiency. Looking back we now know what we didn't before, therefore we can only get better at providing even more awe- some animation and VFX for Happy!." HAPPY! Syfy's Happy! and VFX super Hewlett (right).