Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
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FALL 2021 21 This continual growth allowed for significant improvements in the third series, including pushing camera setup shots, color correction and color processing, and more sophisticated lighting to enhance cinematic effects. The latter was also aided by advancements in technology. "In 2014 [when Trollhunters was in production], it was hard to find cinematic lighting for TV," says Blaas. "It was incredibly insane because you needed to design lighting for each of the scenarios." Fortunately, del Toro encouraged creative freedom to find solutions. "We just designed with no limitations," says Chen, "and then tried to make smart decisions on how to keep the massive feeling of the world, the massive feeling of the lore behind the show." CROSSING OVER "We always had high ambitions for the series," says Chen, "but I do feel like with the movie we were able to realize more of those ambitions." With the constraints of creating for a TV series lifted, it was possible to make huge improvements to aspects like texturing and surfacing. "We could have sub-surface scattering on skin, for example," says Chen, and Ruiz-Velasco adds, "the render technology was becoming so great that we could render stuff in real time and it looks top-notch." Then there was the lighting. Along with Global Illumination when lighting scenes, "Alfonso was always an amazing painter," says Chen, "but I think he pushed himself and really got into what lighting can do for the emotional beats of a movie." Another exciting opportunity was to see crucial scenes in real life. The team was able to utilize motion capture technology in the early phases of the production. This allowed them to play around with the movie's monsters—Fire Titan, Ice Titan, and Earth Titan—in various settings and aided in the scenes where the main characters go up against the Arcane Order. Chen says that del Toro loves to play with scale, and this process gave visual development a deeper sense of the massive scale the battle scenes required. "They fight and we see movement," says Blaas. "We see the cameras and how much set extension we need." At the same time, says Chen, "Because we had to use the Titans for so many shots … we built several different versions for the mid-shot, for the far shot, and for really close-up because, if you take the high-res one and you try to do wide shots with it … we're not going to see the detail." That detail was important for enabling contrasts that emphasized the colossal scale. As for the movie's plot, it's equally ambitious, bringing together disparate characters from all three series' worlds to prevent the Arcane Order from ending humanity. Fortunately, production had already tested the concept in a crossover episode in 3 Below. "It felt good. It felt right," says Chen. Then came the movie, and "we had made these characters, and we loved them and believed in them. We didn't agonize over how to bring them together. We just did it. And I felt like all of our knowledge, and especially working together and improving our own art, it shows in the final product … Experience really does count." — Kim Fay this page: The use of motion capture technology during visual development allowed production to envision the scope and scale of the Titans in various environments such as Hong Kong Harbor (above) and Arcadia National Park (opposite page, bottom). opposite page: Blaas used lighting keyframes (top left) to push the dramatic use of lighting in final shots. S T O R Y & V I S I O N