Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/457057
28 cgw j a n u a r y . f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 5 sister Dawn, Elijah Kelley is an elf, Maya Rudolph is Bog's mother Griselda, and Sam Palladio is Roland, the charming prince. "I thought it would be fun to make a film that was more for tween girls than Star Wars, which is for tween boys, although everybody loved it," Lucas says. "The idea of an upbeat, fun, simple movie appealed to me. Young girls are prone to infatu- ation. I wanted to make a movie about the difference between being infatuated and being truly in love. In the end, the princesses in this story are brave." To direct Strange Magic, Lucas tapped Oscar-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom, who had returned to Lucasfilm's Skywalker Sound aer a stint at Pixar. The short animated film "Lied" he had directed at Pixar received an Oscar nomination, and he had directed voice actors for three Studio Ghibli films. Strange Magic marks Ryd- strom's debut as an animated feature director; however, it is not the first animated feature for his crew at Lucasfilm's In- dustrial Light & Magic, who had created the Oscar-winning Ran- go. The lush forest setting and fairy-tale characters in Strange Magic are far from Rango's dry desert and gritty townspeople, but the textures and detail throughout stamp the film with a distinct ILM style. I G O T T A F E E L I N G "A lot of the artwork goes back to George's concepts," Rydstrom says. "There's a realism to it, but it's not quite as ethereal as classic fairy-tale art. The idea was to make it part of our backyard world. When you see the fairies from a distance, they're butterflies. The Bog King and goblins are visual mash-ups of insects and creatures. Nature was the key thing to draw on." Visual Effects Supervisor Tony Plett, who had been a look development supervisor for Dis- ney's Lilo & Stitch and Brother Bear before joining Lucasfilm and ILM, helped define the overall look, and then oversaw the process through DI. "The overall concept was that we didn't want to go with over- saturated colors and a whole rainbow of colors," Plett says. "We tried to get a live-action feel, so most of the movie is very dark and contrasty. I tried to push people to use pocket light- ing, small areas of light sources. We'd start with a few lights and bring everything up rather than over-light and bring everything down. I also used complementa- ry colors. In a blue sequence, I'd have orange accents." The team used The Foundry's Katana as the primary lighting tool, Pixar's RenderMan for rendering, and composited with The Foundry's Nuke for finishing touches. A catalog of HDRIs gave technical directors access to images at different times of day and in various lighting environments. Nigel Sumner, who had been a CG supervisor on Rango, supervised the visual effects created by a crew largely based in Singapore. "We had a vast catalog of concept art and color cues that set the tone and mood, but once we got into sequences, Gary [Rydstrom] would focus on the characters," Sumner says. "We drew on classic cinematography techniques. We had an open canvas for painting a scene with light and shad- ow. We didn't use HDRIs for every sequence, but we could leverage them when necessary, especially for outdoor environ- ments. We placed shadows for effect, and oen used a second shadow pass decoupled from the light for more control. There was a lot of opportunity to change the mood with lighting." One of Plett's favorite scenes is the introduction to Bog. You see his large shadow on a wall and then see him, much smaller and off to the side. "We never really see him completely," Plett says. "He's backlit with a flame. We used pocket lighting and minimized the color. I did the color script, but when we started doing the frames, I was a little nervous. Typically you want to see more in the frame. But I showed it to Gary [Rydstrom] and he said it gave the perfect feeling." S A Y H E Y . . . A L L A R O U N D T H E W A Y Although, like "A Midsummer Night's Dream," the film takes place during one day and night, there are still 20 unique envi- ronments – half inside and half outside. To have a correct scale MARIANNE AND ROLAND (PRINCE CHARMING) CAN'T HELP FALLING IN LOVE…OR ARE THEY?