Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1175944
FROZEN 2 www.postmagazine.com 21 POST SEPT/OCT 2019 had to go back and rebuild the character rigs, be- cause if we put the old rig in this new topology, her face would just explode. Speed wise, our rigs got a lot faster, so better iteration time. But the way we animated the first Frozen is exactly the same way we animated this Frozen." According to Bresee, some of the bigger chal- lenges not just for animators, but for the whole cre- ative team, were in developing the new characters. "They were very heavy in effects and animation, but they involved all the departments," she says. "Steve Goldberg, our VFX super, was really great about getting all the players in a room weekly or bi-weekly, and all the departments, and have the visual development editor say, 'Oh my God, this is beautiful, but how do we do that?" And so it was this little playground that we had for all the ideas to come to the surface — the ideas would come from everywhere. It would kind of build and go back and forth between departments which really, makes for a more organic character. It can be very complicated and challenging, but ultimately, the end product is very cool." Relying on their own propriety tools as well as Autodesk Maya, which Smeed describes as "an industry standard," the team focused a bit more on the characters' breathing in this film. "That's some- thing we spent a little more time and effort on, this time around," says Smeed. "We had that in the first Frozen," adds Bresee, "but we just pushed it further here. They even brought in people to talk about singing and a singing coach. We were all learning and these are things we can take with us to the next film, too." BIG EFFECTS The visual effects team for Frozen 2 was headed up by Marlon West (head of effects animation), Dale Mayeda (head of effects animation) and Erin Ramos (effects supervisor), who stress that the success of Frozen 2 was much in the hands of all the departments working closely together. "There were so many parties that needed to come together to pull this off," says Mayeda. "A lot of the performances start in animation, but then it effects us in visual effects and being able to pull all the pieces together and tech animation is involved. We have so many meetings together to really tie all of this together. Figuring out this new workflow and style of collaborating was a whole other level from what we've done before. That was a lot of the big challenge, all of us working so tightly together so The mythical water horse is one of the film's new and unconventional characters. Autodesk Maya was paired with the studio's own proprietary tools.