Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1300552
www.postmagazine.com 18 POST SEPT/OCT 2020 use an actor's performance for animation refer- ence, the animators themselves acted out the motions, enabling them "to get into the skin of the character and have a true sense of what the char- acter is feeling at that moment." "Kapijimpanga suggested this, saying we would get a performance that is so much deeper and heartfelt, and he was right," says Keane. "Rather than avoid those really subtle moments, we zeroed in on those and took the time to focus on Fei Fei's eyes, for instance. If you're going to focus on any- thing, let it be the eyes of the character." Take Me to the Moon When Fei Fei first arrives on the moon, she lands on the bright side, which has a fairly realistic aes- thetic in terms of design and animation, informed by reference from NASA. On the dark side of the moon is the world of Lunaria, a floating galaxy that rotates around Chang'e and her palace. "I remember when Glen first gave me a brief for Lunaria; he told me to reference the cover of 'The Dark Side of the Moon' by Pink Floyd — a simple prism of white light and refracted colors. He said he had no idea what Lunaria looks like, but it needs to be as strong as that cover," Desrumaux recalls. On Lunaria, the moon goddess is the city's primary light source, and everything is illuminat- ed from within — as opposed to Earth, where the light is reflected. "There were a couple of things that I knew right away. I knew that I wanted a black sky in the space and that I wanted colors," she says. Another goal was to avoid creating anything that looks like it had been constructed by hu - mans. Further inspiration for Lunaria and its res- ident Lunarians came from Catalan artist Joan Miro, whose work is often described as abstract, combined with Surrealist fantasy. "He had a way of designing objects that looked like they were floating geometric shapes," says Keane. So, little by little, the filmmakers came up with the idea of a floating city comprising shapes and colors. But, there were inherent issues when it came to animating and lighting the 3D Lunarians. "How do you animate characters with [prac - tically] no bones? How do you light a shot when they are standing on a building that has a light source that's shaped like a balloon and is always floating, and they themselves have a light sourc- es that's coming from inside? How do you see their eyes? Where do you put them?" Keane says of the questions that had to be considered. The Lunarians are floating, amorphous- shaped, brightly-colored gummy bear-like ancient characters formed many years ago from tears that are continually shed by Chang'e — the most recent ones being the least evolved in terms of structure. There is no comparable real-world material for the translucent, watery/ gaseous Lunarians, so it was up to the VFX team to come up with a digital material befit - ting that description. "Lunaria is this crazy land with lots of colors and these characters that are sort of mid-form — soft and blobby — and that carried out to the buildings as well, and is persistent throughout Lunaria," says Smith. As Kapijimpanga points out, these characters share a common rig that is particularly flexible, "because we weren't exactly sure what the de - sign would evolve into." As a further complication, little pieces of material would often break off as the Lunarians moved. So, to enable animation to more easily handle these gelatinous-like creatures, a rig was devised that integrated Houdini's engine into Maya and used Houdini's powerful particle system to create a unified mesh that gave animators freedom to create unique shapes and performances. Animated Print Over the Moon contains a variety of animation aesthetics, but one of the more surprising in this 3D film came from director Glen Keane himself: a traditional 2D hand-drawn animated sequence that depicts the story of Chang'e. It appears early in the film on an undulating silk scarf worn by Fei Fei's mother, as the camera position moves from the real world to the scarf and then back into the real world. The purpose of the hand animation was to tell the story of Chang'e, her backstory, quickly and in an engaging way, especially to those unfamiliar with this tale. "That was my fun. It was the very last shot approved," says Keane. As Clara Chan, a CG supervisor, notes, incorporating that 2D animation onto a moving scarf animated in 3D presented some difficulty. "Glen did not want it to be a flat 2D ani- mation. He wanted it mapped onto the scarf," Chan explains. The challenge was to simulate the scarf so that it did not move too much as to distort the animation. "We had to strike a balance between being able to read the animation clearly but still feel that it is flowing on the scarf with a little wavy pattern to it," says Sebastian "Sacha" Kapijimpanga, head of character animation. Lunaria comprises a floating galaxy of colorful geometric shapes. Gobi acts as Fei Fei's unofficial guide on Lunaria, whose resident characters are self-illuminating.