Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/336920
ANIMATION 24 ■ CGW M ay / Ju n e 2 014 of dragons," Otto says. "The difference between a dragon created for live action and the dragons in our world is that we can create humorous dragons. But, we still want to make them believable." Thus, the designers caricatured animals and objects from the real world. A dog. A crocodile. A cement mixer. "Grump, who is Gobber's dragon, is an oversized sea elephant mixed with a concrete mixer," Otto says. "He's a traveling trash can. We wanted to give the audiences a caricature of something they know. It's a whimsical world, overdrawn, oversized, but we wanted people to believe in the existence of the dragons." DeBlois helped provide Grump's voice. "We recorded one of my French bulldogs, and his sound made its way into the sound design for Gobber's Grump," he says. "My dogs have been featured in movies as far back as Lilo and Stitch." Tooling the Performances Helping animators create believable drag- ons and engaging characters was a new generation of animation tools the studio has named Premo, and a new rigging system designed to take advantage of fast graphics cards. The crew on this film were the first to use the new system. "It's revolutionary," DeBlois says of Premo. "The artists can work on tablet screens, like a [Wacom] Cintiq with a stylus, and manipulate a character like a stop-motion puppet. Before, they had to select what they wanted to move and input degrees or percentages. It's amazing that they were so proficient. Now, they have a seemingly unlimited ability to grab any part of a face or body and move it where they want. [Premo] allows them to work faster and more intuitively. Being able to work faster means they can refine the performances more." The visual complexity of the shots put the new system to the test. "Hiccup has the most complicated character rig we've ever attempted," DeBlois says. "He is in shots with Toothless and six other characters, and we also have the flight rigs and the saddles. It should break a system, but Premo is very powerful. It worked flawlessly." Like the first film, Dragon 2 has a live-action look that DeBlois attributes in part to Cinematographer Roger Deakins, who was a consultant. "His bold, uncompromised style influenced the look," DeBlois says. Helping the lighting team achieve that look was a new- generation lighting system the studio calls Torch. "Lighters can see quick renders of their setups," DeBlois says. "They can manipulate and tweak the light in each shot. It allows more subtlety." As the animators work, they can see keyframes rendered in real time with a standard lighting setup that gives them a sense of volume, dimension, light, and shadow. "Before, we had to simplify the workflow, turn on details, render the frames, and then see the work, " says Otto. "Now, we can create more sophisticated characters and more detail- oriented work, and run them in real time. It's one step short of seeing frames lit and finished. We see full resolution and geometry, and can interact with the characters live. It's more playful. We can iterate more, test things out, try a slightly different gesture, and find things we otherwise might not have found." Once approved, animated sequences travel to the character effects department for cloth and hair simulation. "Animators can see enough of that to know the animation is working and the movement is correct, but they don't see the final surfacing," DeBlois says. "The nuances are yet to come. The character effects team moves the hair and fabric, giving it weight and believability." ■ AT RIGHT, TOP TO BOTTOM: Hiccup discovers Valka's nest of dragons. Hiccup with his reunited parents. Each Viking in the village has his or her own dragon.