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www.postmagazine.com 25 POST NOVEMBER 2014 THE BOOK OF LIFE ANIMATION The Book of Life represents Reel FX's second venture into feature-length animation, following 2013's Free Birds. Produced by Guillermo Del Toro and directed by Jorge Gutierrez, the stereo 3D animated fi lm centers around Manolo, a boy who tries to follow his heart while fulfi lling the expecta- tions of his family. Turn to page 20 for insight from the fi lm's VFX supervisor, Augusto Schollaci. OSCAR OUTLOOK HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 ANIMATION DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon 2 follows the successful 2010 release and serves as the second chapter in what will ultimately be a trilogy. In the 2014 release, Hiccup is fi ve years older and is perceived as a hero in his village for having created a utopia in which the people serve the dragons and the dragons help the people. "Visually, Hiccup is clearly a more attractive, leading-man type," says Simon Otto, head of character animation at DreamWorks. "But as animators, we didn't want to lose the slightly awkward kid who talks more than he should and overcomes chal- lenges through wit and intelligence." Toothless the dragon returns, and this fi lm marks the debut of Hiccup's mother Valka, voiced by Cate Blanchett, who herself has a nest of dragons. "Our hero dragons have detailed rigs that make them capable of more perfor- mance and acting than the ones in her nest," explains writer/director Dean DeBlois. "For the nest of dragons, we took a standard body and changed tails, heads, spikes, wings, and colors to create variety." Helping animators create the 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. Also new was with the studio's Torch lighting system. "Lighters can see quick renders of their setups," DeBlois says. "They can manipu- late and tweak the light in each shot. It allows more subtlety." MALEFICENT VISUAL EFFECTS Digital Domain and MPC handled the bulk of the visual eff ects work for Malefi cent, the Disney feature that stars Angelina Jolie as the mistress of all evil, who curses the Princess Aurora to fall into a death-like sleep. Digital Domain contributed to 540 shots, which range from digital environments and creating the fairies responsible for protecting Prin- cess Aurora, to the wings of Malefi cent herself. The team in Vancouver focused on Malefi cent and her wings, while the pixies were created at Digital Domain's Los Angeles studio. Autodesk Maya was used for modeling, animation and rigging. Dig- ital Domain also employed proprietary tools for making specialty rigs and models. Side Eff ects Software's Houdini was used for water and clouds, as well as for any kind of light eff ects or particle simulations. The Foundry's Nuke was used to composite it all together.