Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1203639
"For me, that was the first opportunity to expand that fiber universe," says Cronkhite Shaindlin, of the initial idea to incorporate a diverse range of fabrics and crafting techniques to create unique landscapes for each of the six musical tribes. Fortunately, the production designer grew up around fabric stores (her parents owned them) and felt at home collecting hundreds of reference photos and swatches to begin infusing each tribe with its own distinctive qualities. From Lonesome Flats, the land of the country western trolls, to the underwater reef of the techno trolls to the subterranean lava-flowing world of the hard rockers, each tribe lives in natural environments infused with macramé coral, quilted cactus or silk-flowing lava. "It gives it an incredible warmth," says Cronkhite Shaindlin. "It takes off that CG edge and adds charm." The variety of assets, the need to see a great amount of detail close-up to distinguish between the fibers and render them efficiently were the obstacles for the production team, especially the surfacing department. "On many other films, you get certain things down and carry that across multiple sequences and multiple environments," says Head of Character Look Andy Harbeck. "Once we figured out one location, we needed to redo [the process] for another location." However, limiting the world to natural materials also gave the filmmakers an opportunity to be inventive and fresh. "We set up a library where you had a specific list of fiber and materials per land, it started becoming a vehicle for how we design the world," says Art Director Timothy Lamb. "For Hard Rock, for example, we had leather, stitching and fishnets, and we started looking at those materials in almost a stop motion way. We used the fishnets for the bars on a window [and] cut holes out of jeans for the actual window openings. We used the materials and the fiber to get us to a unique place visually, so we were inventing the world coming from the perspective of the fiber instead of designing something and then applying a texture to it." "I didn't want to go in from a kind of computer aesthetic, where we build a gray model and then we wrap it in fabric," says Cronkhite Shaindlin. This notion was particularly true for the coral reef that doubles as an EDM dance club. The imaginative location kicks off the story that sends the main characters on a journey to stop Queen Barb and King Thrash from destroying all the other musical tribes. For this Techno world, Cronkhite Shaindlin was inspired by nautical knots, macramé and other weaving techniques. She reached out to Australian textile artist Natalie Miller to interpret the setting and craft 3D models. Miller "used wire, foam and balsa wood as a substrate and either wove, knotted or wrapped the fibers around the substrates to create many different techniques…including Japanese Saori weaving, tapestry and heddle loom weaving, square knots, half hitch knots, sinnets of half hitch knots and coiling," to evoke a multi-colored reef. The physical models, along with detailed vis-dev paintings, fiber samples and photographs gave the production pipeline a blueprint to start creating the world. This process was repeated for each of the varied natural environments. IN THE ORIGINAL TROLLS MOVIE, PRODUCTION DESIGNER KENDAL CRONKHITE SHAINDLIN WAS INSPIRED TO DESIGN A FIBER-FELTED WORLD, CREATING A SOFT, FUZZY ENVIRONMENT THAT REFLECTED THE TROLLS' COMMUNAL LIFESTYLE AND OPTIMISTIC SPIRIT. BUT, IN THE SEQUEL, TROLLS WORLD TOUR, POPPY AND HER COMPANIONS LEAVE THEIR HOME TO MEET TRIBES FROM DIFFERENT REGIONS OF THE TROLL KINGDOM. Courtesy of NBCUniversal/DreamWorks Animation F E AT U R E 22 KEYFRAME