Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1100392
www.postmagazine.com 33 POST MAR/APR 2019 DUMBO n 1941, Disney introduced audiences to Dumbo, a baby elephant with quite the unusual fea- tures and, as it turns out, quite a unique ability — using his especially large ears to fly. The low-budget animated film was meant to boost the then-fledgling studio's bottom line. To that end, the animation was far less detailed than Disney's previous three features (Fantasia, Pinocchio and Snow White) in terms of character designs and environments. Nevertheless, the film did as intended, achieving financial success at the box office, even winning an Oscar for best scoring. Just recently, Disney released a remake of Dumbo, the latest of the studio's classical 2D animated productions to receive a live-action/ CGI re-imagining, only this time the effort taken to create the film is far from economical, with its incredible attention to detail as the hero animals are brought to life in a manner that the original artists never could have dreamed of almost 80 years ago! Directed by Tim Burton, the 2019 Dumbo explores a far more expanded story line loosely inspired by the 1941 version, doubling the length of the original 64-minute feature (one of Disney's shortest). It also introduces a number of new human characters played by well-known actors, including Colin Farrell, Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito. In addition, it features a number of stylis- tic-bordering-on-realistic CG animals, including the star: the semi-anthropomorphic young pachy- derm, Dumbo. Richard Stammers served as overall visu- al effects supervisor, with a number of studios providing the VFX, including MPC, Framestore, Rise Visual Effects Studios, Rising Sun Pictures and Rodeo FX. In fact, MPC, under the supervision of Patrick Ledda, delivered the lion's share of the shots — 1,150, from its team of more than 1,200 artists. This encompasses all the character work, including the creation of Dumbo — approximate- ly 800 of MPC's shots involved the character. In addition, the studio handled three environments: the Medici Circus, 1930s Manhattan and the jungle at the end of the film. INTRODUCING… DUMBO! According to Ledda, MPC had been working on the film for more than two years. An early concept initially called for a realistic-looking elephant with large ears, but when Burton signed on, he wanted an idealized version that referenced the cartoon. "Big, blue eyes and obviously big ears, but in general, a cute-looking elephant," says Ledda. "Not necessarily cartoony, but a little bit of a caricature only with realistic attributes, such as bone struc- ture, muscle movement and skin wrinkles." The hardest part, though, was finding the right balance between a physically-accurate elephant and one that is "quite adorable." "When you start analyzing their facial features, you see they have a lot of wrinkles. They look a bit like old men. What Tim wanted was almost a human baby version: round and chubby, not overly wrinkled. And, very clean, opposed to actual elephants, which tend to have lots of scars and stretch marks, and they're always covered in mud." Dumbo is quite the character, particularly given his unusual eyes and ears. Nevertheless, animators needed to find the right amount of expressiveness without making him over-emote. Like the original character, the modern-day Dumbo does not speak in the film, nor do any of the other animals in the remake, giving the world a more realistic feel. "We wanted to keep it more in the realm of real animals, which are not hugely expressive; a lot of their expression comes from their body language," Ledda points out. As a result, the animators toned down a lot of the animation, and Dumbo's facial expression is quite subtle. At the same time, how- ever, the audience had to identify and understand the character's feelings and emotions. The team at MPC's Character Lab spent a year developing Dumbo, starting from 3D scans of a sculpt that was then modified as needed in order to animate the digital character correctly. They also used the maquette — which Ledda estimates to be about a meter (3.2 feet) high — for light- ing reference and eye lines on set. "We kept the essence of it but had to change it to work in the movie — the trunk length, the knee joints… all the joints, really," Ledda adds. And then there were those signature ears. I MPC created the majority of the film's visual effects shots. Dumbo's eyes and skin got much attention.