Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/990677
Nickelodeon's 3D printer turned out to be the perfect solution. Segurson created sketches and sought Frank Rocco's help to interpret the designs into Maya, who sent the new files off to the printer. Other challenges presented, he needed to create a working doorknob that the 2D characters could interact with. "There's something really exciting about creating something from a bunch of cardboard and paint and then putting it on a set, lighting it and putting a lens in front of it," he adds. The entire production would be filmed in a small room, about 10 feet x 12 feet, on the 4th floor of the Nickelodeon building. "I built perspective into the design knowing that I would have a limited amount of space," he says. For example, he designed the floors skewed so they already had a push perspective and gave the spaces an air of palatial grandeur. The animatics became the basis of the timing determining how the characters would move across the set. For example, there are several scenes where lightening strikes as the characters move either across the Great Hall or up the stairs leading to it. In the scene with the Great Hall, Segurson wanted rain pelting outside the ornamental windows. Rocco, who had worked in special effects in the '80s and '90s, suggested scratching clear cels and lighting them to mimic a torrential rainstorm. In every frame, Segurson would swap out one of about a dozen scratched cells while Director of Photography Aaron Wise slid the camera 2mm per frame to keep the movement smooth. They outfitted the track with a little wire arrow and laid down a tape measure alongside it to create a homemade rig. It was an exercise in patience. "That five second shot took about two hours," says Segurson, "and we shot it three times." Another shot where the King opens the door to the music room and reveals his son playing the drums proved to be the most complicated in the short with three layers of action occurring simultaneously. The King turns the doorknob (interacting with a physical object), pulls the door open while the camera is still moving forward and reveals the action on the other side of the door. The knob, a bead less than a quarter inch in size, had to be moved incrementally by Segurson. He rigged the two beads with a wire taut enough to turn. They also had to determine exactly how many frames were needed to move the camera past the doorframe. On the other side, the Prince is playing wildly on a set of drums, that are a real prop, but the cymbals are animated in 2D. However, when the camera cuts to the close up the cymbals are physical objects. Each movement was mapped out on an x-sheet and the timing determined with the help of animation director Andrew Overtoom. "I needed the elasticity of 2D animation to keep up with the pace of the characters and the energy I wanted them to have," says Segurson. He also wanted the characters to squash and stretch like in the cartoons from the '30s and '40s. In some cases, Segurson storyboarded the action twice—once before and once after the shoot—to provide flexibility for on-set improvisation. Segurson would then import stills from the shoot and line up the new shot with the storyboard that served as a blueprint for the 2D animation, which was all hand drawn. In order to achieve an expansive shot towards the end of the film, the team had to shoot the model without a ceiling in order to light the space appropriately. Segurson chose to matte paint a ceiling —a trick from a bygone era of filmmaking— over a stop motion chandelier that swings to the beat of the music. Though the click track helped syncopate the actions to the story, the final music heard in the short will be recorded by a session of jazz musicians playing to the final picture, reminiscent of Carl Stalling in the old Warner Bros. days. "People will want to watch the short multiple times because of the amount of detail that we've put into it," says Segurson, who has devoted almost two years to the project. It's clear this 4½-minute short is a labor of love or perhaps more appropriately an ode to it. F E AT U R E 30 KEYFRAME