Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1532337
FILMMAKING www.postmagazine.com 30 POST JAN/FEB 2025 then we're done. I'm not going to say, 'That's not how I saw it.' You did it. That allows people person- al freedom to be as creative as they can possibly be without interference. "I say all this because all things go back to story. Whether you are lighting something, if you're painting something, if you're designing something, think about the story. In a single image, you can have a lot of story. I would say, 'Look at a Norman Rockwell painting.' That's the thing I think that makes his art endure, is there's always a story with- in that painting. In one piece of art, you can have a story. And by putting story in things, it makes it relate to people, and people can relate to it. It'll make it work better." VISUAL EFFECTS & PRODUCTION DESIGN How did the film's new color space help tell the story? Jeff Budsberg: "Raymond (Zibach) and I had some conversations early on. I told him that I wanted to overhaul our entire color space because I thought that would enhance the painterly aspect of the film — offering more hues to the 3D artists, similar to more hues on an artist's palette for a painter. If you can give someone more pigments, I think that gives you a more visceral experience and it allows us to push into areas that are more saturated and more vivid. When I walk into a forest, there's something about the greens that are so rich, so vibrant in there. If we can give us a little bit of that, it can give the audience something that may be imperceptible, but they're going to feel it. "So I told Raymond I wanted to do this, and I ful- ly expected him to be like, 'You're insane,' because this affects every single department at the studio, from the art department, from computer hardware, to display hardware, to our theaters, to how the artists author textures and materials, to the render- er, to editorial. Raymond is as adventurous as I am and said, 'Let's try it!' "We moved from sRGB primaries and working display space into full ACES working space and then a P3 color space. Early on, we were going to do a couple of tests in the art department to see if we could get to a place that allows us to explore this space. When you change your color space, you have this mental mapping of color in your head that's really difficult to decouple. Now you can reach out even further into the gamut of perceiv- able hues, so I think that's one of the trickier things to overcome. We can solve the pipeline problems — how you deliver images and media from depart- ment to department. You can solve the hardware problems. But the really challenging thing is rewir- ing your mental mapping of color in your brain." Raymond Zibach: "For me, it was the potential to head off issues, because we always had issues when we would go to HDR grade. We're working in sRGB and you're opening it up to get these brighter highlight areas. The benefit (is) going to be holding on to more color as we get into that highlight range. "I have actually been through several changes of LUTs and color profiles because I've been at the studio for over 25 years. This isn't the first time, but this was the first time in a long time that we had done a big change, and I knew the potential was going to be great for us because the HDR grade is always challenging. Our palette has a lot of sub- tlety, and anything that gets a better range for us artistically, I was really into." The film's environments feel so full of life. Which tools did you develop to control the wind, water and foliage? Jeff Budsberg: "There are so many aspects that go into foliage. We want the modelers not to mod- el a plant traditionally — we want them to draw the plants, but in 3D. They're using a stroke tool called Doodle to be able to author bushes and shrubs with more of an illustrative fashion. Then we set dress with something called Sprinkles, which is our art-directed, paintable, set-dressing tool. "But the key innovation on Wild Robot is not just the developing of those tools, but coupling them so that the same artist set dressing can decide, 'I want to make a bespoke flower,' and you just draw it on the fly in 3D and you're working between this camera space and 3D space, and able to easily transition between the two. The same artist is the one thinking about the final image, not just, 'I'm going to dress the world,' but really thinking about, 'How is this image constructed? What are the as- sets that I need? How do I deconstruct them in the same asset...' So that's part of the toolset. "The really interesting thing about the Doodle toolset is it's actually building a 3D articulation rig as you're drawing. So all of these things can deform in the space, and those are the advantages that you get doing this in 3D versus something like 2D cards. In 3D, the character can interact with these assets. They can blow in the wind. They can deform. You have all of the artistic freedom to draw whatever you want…I think it gives the audi- ence a really rich experience because they're like, 'I've never seen anything like this.' It looks painted, but it's moving." Raymond Zibach: "I think we used to have a harder time because we were working in a lot of separate packages. Because most of this is Houdini workflows, you could develop these processes, and they will actually just keep building on each other Sanders describes the look as "painterly." DreamWorks ovrhauled its color pipeline to achieve the final results.