Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1495163
geometry. They created a first pass blocking animation as the rough environments were modeled in order to obtain a camera lock. Locking the camera in the layout stage was key to the success of this workflow. Nodal pans were used as much as possible to reduce parallax and help the projection process. From there, all departments could work on the shots simultaneously. Animators had the interac- tion planes they needed, and they printed renders of the rough lay- out for the 2D artists (mainly Daxiong himself) to ink onto. In the end, they obtained a level of detail and authenticity that wouldn't have been achievable otherwise. This approach was heavily relied on for the opening sequence – a five-minute-long shot in which the camera traverses the city of Changchun and the viewer is immediately immersed in the wide- spread security crackdown. This method also allowed the team to convey the sense described by the artist and film subject: danger at every turn. All characters were animated 'on twos' — the equivalent to animat- ing half the frames. This allowed the team to animate faster and also blend with the 2D animated style. All camera motions were animat- ed on 'ones,' which allowed for the addition of more texture to the animation in general. A handheld camera technique was used in an- imated scenes to make it feel more grounded and connected to the live-action footage. Combining different frame rates between the camera and charac- ters created technical hurdles. For example, a character walking with a moving camera tracking him would result in a strobing character. The solution was to have the global motion of the character on 'ones' and the rest of his motion on 'twos.' There are a handful of scenarios where visual issues like that can happen and the team made sure the animators understood the issues when converting their scenes back to 24fps. Animation work for Eternal Spring dates back to as far as 2017. Visually, realistic visual effects would not blend with the film's 2D style. The team experimented with Blender's grease pencil feature, despite not having experience with the program. The results spoke for themselves. Ultimately, they were glad they took this approach, as it sped up the workflow and integrated into the 3D work seamlessly. Only four animators (including animation director David St- Amant) animated the entire feature, while one person was responsi- ble for all lighting and rendering. The flexibility of the pipeline at Loy Sky proved extremely valuable, allowing the team to use a combi- nation of Zbrush, Maya 2018, and Soimage. Texturing was accom- plished using Photoshop and Mari, while rigging was achieved using Maya 2018 and mGear. Maya and Animbot were used for animation. Rendering was performed using Arnold and Redshi. Both Fusion 9 and Aer Effects were used for compositing, and the edit took place in Adobe Premiere. ¢ Rendering was performed using Arnold and Redshi. Fusion 9 and Aer Effects were used for compositing.