Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/110653
CG Animation ■ ■ ■ ■ Adventures in Zambezia, created by the South African studio Triggerfish, incorporates the look and feel of "home" in the production's visuals. A South African studio ventures into feature-film animation, bringing a taste of home to the big screen dio was still trying to figure out what it was really about as a company." On his journey, Kai learns about his family's history and the importance of community. His flying skills earn him a place on the Hurricanes, and he will have to use that experience when Zambezia is attacked by Marabou storks. Tired of scavenging off the scraps of Zambezia, the Marabou storks join forces with Budzo, a vicious egg-eating Leguaan (Dutch for iguana), to take control of the island city. To produce this film, Triggerfish grew to a "family" of 85 and was able to explore the rich tapestry of African culture and landscapes. The skills the team acquired has earned the studio a place among some of the finest animation companies in the world, such as Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Sony Imageworks, Blue Sky, and Illumination, by being one of the first South African animation studios to complete a featurelength animated movie. Originally conceived in 2005, the team developed a story that would center on birds because it wanted to show off the fictional world of Zambezia, which was inspired by the area surrounding the real-life Victoria Falls in southern Africa. (The real Zambezia is the second-most populous province of Mozambique, located in the central coastal region.) Admittedly, the group was unaware of the challenges ahead and the difficulty involved in animating birds. "Creating feathered CG characters was initially a daunting challenge, especially at that time," remembers Mike Buckland, head of production, "but, fortunately, by the time we went into production in Septem- ber 2009, the technology to achieve feather systems was more accessible, and we managed to create great-looking animated birds." Birds of a Feather As one would expect with a cast of 86 individual characters, the majority of which are avian, feathers play a substantial role in the film. All character modeling and rigging was completed in Autodesk's Softimage. The rigging posed the first challenge for the filmmakers due to the fact the wings needed to be used for flying and gesturing like hands, and also be able to fold and tuck into the body—all without feathers flipping or passing through one another. "Wing folding was a very tricky rigging challenge when combined with the specific needs of the other two functions," Buckland says. "We had to rebuild our wing rig and re-topologize the models many times as a result of the testing and interaction with the animators in order to get something that fulfilled all the requirements." Using a re-topology method allowed the modelers to concentrate purely on the form and shape of a model first without considering technical aspects, like the flow of polygon edges or the number of polygons used. Once the artist had a shape that he or she was happy with, then the person would think about re-working (re-topologizing) the edge loops and redefining the mesh for optimal polygon placement to enable good deformations for rigging and animating. This also helped keep the number of polygons at a reasonable level. January/February 2013 CGW0113-Zambezi2pfin.indd 23 23 1/31/13 5:07 PM