Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
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SPRING 2021 37 D E PA R T M E N T HOME IMPROVEMENT As many have learned first-hand during the pandemic, necessity is the mother of invention. When Lighting Artist Justine Codron started working from home on Raya and the Last Dragon, she quickly realized the drawbacks of the one-bedroom apartment she shares with her husband. "I was working on multiple night or dark sequences," Codron says, "so I needed … to be able to see all the details and variations in the dark areas or shadows." This included making sure colors, contrasts, values, and continuity were correct. "I needed as little light pollution as possible, [but] the only place for me and my husband to work is our very bright living room." To solve this problem Codron got resourceful. Like a kid building a fort out of sofa pillows, she constructed a " tent" ( above) out of two photo backdrop stands and an extra-large tablecloth. While this dealt with the technical challenges, Codron still missed working with her team. She says, "Even though video meetings have been of incredible help, it can't compare to working together in person." But she made the best of it and focused on the advantages of working from her tent studio: "Having my cat around and my coffee machine eight steps away from me!" All images courtesy of Walt Disney Animation Studios. SPRING 2021 37 and direction, the lighting artists would start experimenting, taking volumes from the library to see what could be achieved. Along with the library, effects and lighting also overlapped significantly on the Druun. Like a plague or a virus, these intangible spirit beings take life from people and turn them into stone. Lusinsky says, " What's cool about the Druun is, overall, they are these dark kind of organic things with this hot core inside of them. That tied in to the thematic really well, because it created a lot of contrast in dark and light areas." Effects provided locators and lights inside the effects-driven Druun, which the lighting artists would use to illuminate scenes. Because the Druun had this internal lighting component, Odermatt says, "All the collaboration between lighting and effects had to be very, very tight … If you're doing a dust cloud in the background, compositionally it's important, but it's not going to contribute to the lighting setup in a significant way. But when you're going to put a big Druun compositional element that has a strong lighting component to it, that is critical to the outcome of the scene when it comes to the overall lighting scheme." "If we hadn't had that atmospherics library, it would have been really challenging to get the Druun characters to read," Lusinsky adds. " We developed these different atmospherics, and you can just imagine a little menu that says rolling mist, and you choose it and the atmosphere would show up in your shot and you could move it, place it wherever you need it." This was important, Culp says, because you can easily get distracted by the Druun when your gaze should be on action that is going on elsewhere. "So it's all about looking at the image and trying to organize it in a way that's perceivable to the audience member so you're not distracted by five, ten Druun, when you're supposed to be noticing the character in the far foreground atmospheric." With each obstacle tackled and overcome, the production's epic journey neared its end, and the trust that had been tested from the top down paid off. When Hall and López Estrada finally saw the finished product, Hall says, "You're supposed to have your critical eye super sharp, but that was the hardest part to me. [Raya] looks like nothing else we've seen, and we're just so proud. … It's definitely the best-looking film we've ever done."