Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1544083
ues. "We thought that everything needed to be a 3D representation in our movie, so that's what we leaned into. Spider-Verse—which we are also very much inspired by—they go more of the 2D route, but they're a comic book and we are not. So we felt like doing a 3D style was more suitable to us. I'm also inspired by The Simpsons, Looney Tunes, so that kind of comedy and zaniness." The directing team looked to a multitude of specific influences and references throughout the visual development process. "On the lighting front, we both are huge fans of less conventional animation inspiration—so things like editorial photography, Vogue covers, music videos, concert lighting," Appelhans recalls. "We took a lot of inspi- ration from that, and we really pushed our art department and our lighting department to incorporate that stuff. That's not normally what they get to do. The best part of this movie was every time we brought that kind of new point of view to the crew, they were so up for it. They're like, 'Cool, I get to do a music video? I get to do a fash- ion cover?'" Drawing from these unconventional sources of inspiration led to a challenging animation workflow. "We had to develop new tools and some new ways of thinking about color and light and shaping of characters, but the movie really needed it," he continues. "We told everybody, this film lives in the K-pop world. It needs to hold its own when it gets there. So it can't look like the animation version of K-pop. It needs to be just as sleek and glamorous and stylish and high level." "this film lives in the K-pop world. It needs to hold its own when it gets there...It needs to be just as sleek and glamorous and stylish and high level..." Blending the dramatic realism of live-action dance and the fan- tastical exaggeration of anime was no easy feat. Beveridge and the Imageworks team developed a custom modular system known as the "Chibi Face," which embedded greater artistic control into the animation pipeline. This groundbreaking network of interchange- able facial features gave animators the freedom to overlay man- ga-style faces onto 3D animated characters, pushing them beyond the boundaries of realistic expression. Acting as a dynamic facial rig library, the system allowed animators to create 2D expressive lan- guage within a 3D pipeline. The animation team also engineered a new lighting system dubbed "Motion-Blur Spheres," a localized blur control system that gave animators the ability to keep characters sharply defined in the midst of ultra-so, dreamy lighting. The film is packed with brilliantly choreographed dancing and 8 cgw j u ly • a u g u s t • s e p t e m b e r 2 0 2 5