Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1313527
F E AT U R E 34 KEYFRAME "You could feel the tactility of the world... It was stylized first rather than photorealistic in the details." – nate wragg, production designer had been redesigned to enhance real-time collaboration, with many departments—lighting, VFX, effects, and surfacing—all on the same platform, which increased efficiency by allowing different departments to add to a scene contemporaneously all through the process. Complexity management was reduced so that environments heavy with tangible organic material—plants on plants, small pebbles, fog—could be built with more contact and creativity. Every image got richer, and animated previews with a cheated lighting render were available much sooner. "I was blown away by the state- of-the-art cinematic tools," says Mercado, whose team had come up with odd bits such as Eep's "peanut toe" and a visual gag involving Grug's first uncomfortable sauna experience. "We would come up with silly ideas, and they would be shot beautifully through real lenses and lit with atmospheric perspective and beautiful sunlight and fog." THE SCATTERED PACK When the production finally abandoned the studio for remote work in late March, the crew faced a slew of logistical hurdles to keep the pipeline intact. About 20 percent of lighting, 50 percent of lighting set-up, and 60 percent of the animation was already complete, and the final look of several sequences had been established, so they had enough of a collective understanding of the project to continue. But with everyone scattered, the feedback and review processes were harder, and the lack of physical proximity meant close creative collaboration was no longer possible. It was a tough transition, but the technology operations group was able to create remote logins quickly enough that the production was approving scenes within a week or two. Department heads, many of whom were in leadership roles for the first time, were in a Google Hangout brainstorming solutions not just with other departments but with other DWA productions, crowdsourcing ways to do remote dailies and other workarounds. The visual effects department had to figure out how to factor for the way color showed up differently on individual monitors, eventually developing a key set they were comfortable using to compare light images and make color calls. Many animators and designers had kids at home—and a few gave birth during lockdown—so the crew developed a new understanding of work-life balance. "We all had to have a crash course in being flexible and accommodating and trusting that our professional coworkers are going to deliver," says Nofsinger. The situation did have its positive aspects beyond more schedule flexibility and a lack of commute. Using remote meeting tools allowed them to look in on multiple meetings at the same time, so they could monitor dailies, notes, and discussions from other departments via captioning while participating in their own meeting (or record them for later). This improved