Computer Graphics World

House, a literary center and museum that had been the writer's former home. In all, the students animated six sequenc- es, based on urber's famous dog drawings and stories, that accompanied six musical movements from the suite. e animations, which are between two and five minutes in length, were projected onto a large screen above the orchestra. When the suite debuted in 1994, slides of the original dog drawings were used. But for the recent encore to cel- ebrate anniversaries of both ProMusica and urber House, the two groups were look- ing for more bite in the visual accompani- ment, so they approached ACCAD. "ey asked if we would be interested in coming up with animations and stories based on urber's drawings and the musi- cal piece, to bring urber's drawings to life," recalls ACCAD director Maria Palazzi. "It seemed like a perfect collaboration for our research center." ACCAD, which focuses on the study of CG across multiple disciplines, offers hands-on collaborative opportunities for scientists and artists to work on various projects such as this (see "Extracurricular Activities," pg. 45). "Our goal was to create an aesthetically interesting experi- ence for traditional classical mu- sic lovers," says ACCAD animation spe- cialist Vita Berezina-Blackburn. Animal Research Setting up this project as it would any real- life production, ACCAD selected a team based on the students' individual expertise. "It was a great project for art and design students," Palazzi says. A lot of the initial work occurred during independent stud- ies classes, where the students had the op- portunity to incorporate personal research into the production. In the quarter prior to the show, the students worked together as a group, during class hours and beyond. Under the direction of Berezina-Black- burn, the students sunk their teeth into the work, starting with research, as many of the students were unfamiliar with urber's work. e group formed last spring and spent numerous hours reviewing urber's drawings and talking to the folks who run urber House, getting their take on the in- tention and meaning behind the humorist's cartoons. "ey were committed to creat- ing a 3D animation that reflected the spirit of urber's drawings and the techniques he used," says Palazzi. One student, Beth Albright, who now works at Pixar, says everyone in the group looked at all the urber dog drawings they could get their hands on, and read the re- lated stories, too. "Although the music was inspired by specific drawings and not spe- cific writings, the writings did give us story ideas that we could weave in," she says. For the most part, though, the research focused on different ways and angles to draw the dogs, "and we found out very quickly that if you line [the dogs] up, they weren't the same," says Albright. "A urber dog has a specific look. It has specific charac- teristics but many other features, as well. So we designed our urber dogs to be true to all the references but to fit within our speci- fications, so they could be animated in the way we wanted to animate them." Of the eight grad students who worked on the project, two of the students did the storyboarding and concept development. e others chose specific roles, as well, such as rigger, animator, or VFX artist, thereby assuring continuity in the style of move- ment throughout the segments. Animal Development Although the six movements of the suite would run approximately 20 minutes, the group initially planned to complete just one minute of animation for each move- ment—essentially adding visual paws and then pause. However, as these art- ists became engrossed in their work, they produced more and more CG to where animation played throughout most of the musical piece. "Some segments at the be- ginning of each music movement are left blank, and then the animation starts about 15 to 20 seconds into the movement," de- scribes Berezina-Blackburn. Albright, along with another student, storyboarded each of the six segments; later, each assumed responsibility for three of the boards and created animatics using Adobe's Photoshop and After Effects, and Apple's Final Cut Pro. Next came the modeling and rigging, which was done in Autodesk's Maya. e crew then used After Effects for the final rigging and postprocessing. e team was already on the production for nearly two quarters when grad student April 2009 43 Education n n n n Graduate students at Ohio State University's ACCAD re-created writer/cartoonist James Thurber's line drawings using 3D tools, and then animated the imagery as a visual accompaniment during a special orchestra performance of a suite composed in honor of Thurber.

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