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n n n n CGI gymnastics. “The Beijing Olympics happened when we were developing the movie, and I saw these rhythmic gymnastic girls throwing ribbons, doing these weird moves with incred- ible flexibility. So that became an inspiration. Through the movie, the peacock is almost creepy in his flexibility and movement. He has a twisted way of handling his sword—but still with pure grace. Until he actually loses his mind and gets frantic.” As always, Guendoen choreographed Lord The villain, Lord Shen, can fan his tail out and use it as a visual shield or fold it under his robe, creating interesting challenges for animators, riggers, and simulation artists. horns to fight. “For every character, we try to look at their physical attributes and play with that to create their own style on top of the ba- sic academic training,” Guendoen says. In addition, for Po, Guendoen needed to consider his level of training. “He had to be more accomplished than in the first film, but he’s still in training,” he says. “He’s not as ac- complished as Tigress, he doesn’t have the same level of confidence, so we show that in his breathing and rhythm. It takes a lot of energy for Po to fight.” To create Po’s style, Guendoen referenced baby pandas. “When we went to China, we saw baby pandas bumping each other, being super cute. There was a lot of rolling into giant fur balls, and we thought it would be fun to include that. So in Po’s panda style of kung fu, we have a lot of rolling, tumbling, and a lot of comedic improvisation.” Creating a style for Lord Shen was more dif- ficult. “His appearance isn’t threatening,” Gu- endoen says. “He’s a big bird. But, we had to make him menacing. So, we did that with his posture, his intensity, and his fighting.” Because Lord Shen is a sword master, Gu- endoen started with a traditional sword-fight- ing style, and then he discovered rhythmic Deep Emotion DreamWorks Animation initially tested stereo 3D with a shot from the Tai Lung fight sequence in the original . That test helped persuade the studio to design all future features with stereo 3D in mind. DreamWorks’ first stereo 3D film, stereoscopic supervisor Phil McNally had developed a tool called “Happy Ratio” that, based on the distance of objects and the camera lens in a shot, set default interaxial and conver- gence; that is, the roundness of objects (the volume) and how far away or close they would appear (depth). That tool and others gave the artists more time to experiment with the stereo design for each film’s unique story. For example, McNally and head of layout, Yong Duk Jhun, began playing with depth of field in , us- ing a blending technique that moved characters subtly in depth through a shot to intensify an emotional story point. In , McNally and Kent Seki discovered new ways to compose spatially interesting shots using, for example, a clothesline with bits of paper hanging in space and, most no- tably, deep reflections. 10 May 2011 gags—elements exploding out from the screen. By the time work began on , released in 2009, lent itself to stereo , released in 2010, With , layout supervisor Damon O’Beirne pushed the artistry of stereo design further. “We tried a very dif- ferent approach to stereo,” he says. “Before, we concentrated on getting volume into our stereo. This time, we concentrated on keeping the point of interest ‘on screen.’ ” “On screen” is the point at which the left and right images sit on top of each other. This technique is not a new concept in stereoscopic de- sign—James Cameron employed it for , and Bob White- hill often sets stereo depth based on point of interest for Pixar’s films—yet O’Beirne found it particularly useful for this film. “Keeping the point of interest on screen really helped us because one of our big challenges was that the camera and the character are super dynamic,” O’Beirne says. “Everything moves so fast, making sure we could get a good read on the characters was important. When the eyes are ‘on screen,’ it’s like looking into the character’s soul.” The artists then began using stereo to enhance the story. “We have a concept of ‘story stereo,’ ” O’Beirne says. “We use stereo to underline or contrast the story over the whole course of the movie. If we want something to be disturbing or unnerv- ing for the audience, we tend to go deep. When we want the audience to feel comfortable, we go flatter. All cinematography Shen’s shots with pencil and paper in traditional animation style. “I had him doing all these moves with swords, passing his legs over his head,” he explains. “We also played a lot with his tail, using it almost as another weapon, a fifth limb. He’s a sneaky guy. He’d sweep open his tail and block with it to hide his opponent’s vision so he could strike in a treacherous way. It was cool. I didn’t know how complicated it would be to rig the CG character. In drawing, you can cheat a lot. But we [also] found ways.” Fighting Feathers Lord Shen’s “tail,” of course, is made of indi- vidual feathers that can splay open like a fan or fold over each other and close. “It’s like six tail rigs all combined,” Parkinson says. “It repre- sents all the work we did on Crane, on Viper, and on the tail rigs for Monkey and Tigress.” Originally, the crew planned to have the K K ung Fu Pan - ung Fu Panda 2 A vat ar da Monsters vs. Aliens How to T rain Y our Dragon Shrek F orever After Megamind