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ANIMATION www.postmagazine.com 12 POST SEPT/OCT 2019 technical balance for the artists, enabling them to build their materials in surfacing and lighting, and then focusing more on the creative side as they lit their shots. Their house is a museum… There are two major types of sets in the film: those where it's always bright, colorful and sunny, and those at the Addams' house, which is very dark, lit mainly by candlelight and diffused exterior lights. Lighting darker characters against darker environments was not always easy, and the team had to remain constantly vigilant when it came to collaborating with other departments to create light sources that also helped estab- lish the appropriate mood and achieve the right color temperature. "Usually the good guys are bright and colorful, bad guys are dark and scary, but we are flipping that notion in this film to further emphasize the story point that it doesn't really matter what your family is like, they're still family, and families come in all different types and sizes," says Brousseau. The Addams' "haunted" house is the main environment, and within it are multiple interior and exterior locales on the property and within the mansion itself. The exterior was especially difficult because it was so expansive and required very distinctive art-directed trees that lined the entire property as well as a layer of surrounding fog, according to Eskuri. "We have these very distinct, slightly red hedges everywhere and a grouping that forms a little skull shape," he adds. There's also a "brownhouse," the Addams' version of a greenhouse, plus gardens, a pond and even a cemetery. And all of the environments were dressed to reflect the family's unique style. This re- quired the artists to "Addams-fy" the ob- jects, tailoring them to match the family's "interesting" personality as opposed to a normal-world assimilation. "There were a lot of ideas coming from many different places on what we could add that would be visually interesting or would further the story, or even be a homage to the original franchise," says Brousseau. She credits production designer Patricia Atchison and the art and design department for their research and understanding of the fran- chise, and then building great packages of color palettes and shapes, and coming up with unique designs for the film. "The Addams house definitely has a lot of really cool touches, and you'd prob- ably have to watch the film a few times to catch them all," Brousseau says. The style is "creepy chic," with a dilapidated elegance; this contrasts with Margaux's technicolor antiseptic design choice. With an expansive set and plethora of objects, rendering was expensive, taking eight to 12 hours a frame, if not longer. Neat. Sweet. Petite. To complement the environments, there are a wide range of effects, including dust, smoke, rain and so forth. "We had a library of elements that lighting could use and drop into the shots as needed," says Brousseau. As would be expected of such an old house, there is dust — in one scene, Lurch is "dusting," which for this family means spreading dirt rather than getting rid of it. However, the particulates are lim- ited. "We had a fairly extensive setup for our dust motes. It's quite a subtle effect that we really only pushed up in a few select shots, mainly because we made the choice not to have it in every shot as to not be distracting," she adds. In addition, artists created a swamp with a looping, continual roiling and rippling effect, and lots of custom fog — mostly art-direct VFX. Because effects mainly are generated with software that works on a real-world scale and with real- world forces and simulations, it was not easy putting an artistic spin on them for the film. "For instance, we gave a swamp spirit personality with the way the simula- tion was done," explains Brousseau. We're going to pay a call on… The Addams Family The Addams Family is the first project for Cinesite's Vancouver Feature Animation Studio. For Brousseau, it is the first time she has tackled a franchise for feature film that is so beloved, making the project both daunting yet fun. "Anytime you're taking on an existing franchise, you want to make sure you're true to the core heart of the characters and their stories, yet you also want to put your own spin and twist on it with- out losing that," says Brousseau. "That's something that stayed with us all the way from the beginning to the end. We'd al- ways ask ourselves, Does this prop fit into the Addams' world? Is this how Morticia would say this or how she would respond to a certain event?" While The Addams Family is timeless with its ghastly, endearing characters, this film's story lines are reflective of today's era in many ways (there's even a reference to It, as Wednesday appears with a red balloon "without a killer clown attached to the end of it." And while there are plenty of new songs in the movie, filmmakers played homage to the family's past by referencing that song we all know so well. (Double snap) Karen Moltenbrey (Karen@cgw.com) is the chief editor of CGW, Post's sister publication. Exterior sets maintain the "Addams" look, including scary trees and fog.