Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/48986
Animation ■ ■ ■ ■ didn't teach every team how to animate elephant seals, which were all keyframed. Th e krill? Will the Krill and Bill the Krill, voiced by Brad Pitt and Matt Da- mon. Th ey're the reason I wanted to make this movie. Th ere's a parallel story about the tiny little krill, and their story is so good and so funny. And, to animate things as little as krill sounded amazing. Th ey look like little brine shrimp. Th ey are almost at the bottom of the food chain; they're insignifi cant. But they have a big impact on the biosystem of the world. Fish feed on them, whales feed on them. We have thousands and thousands of krill. What is their story? Will the Krill decides he doesn't want to be in the krill swarm, so he and his best friend, Bill the Krill, break away from the swarm and end up as two little individuals in the ocean. Th ey have contact with our hero pen- guins. Although neither species knows about the other, we see them both. Did you use motion capture for the penguins, as on the fi rst fi lm? We used some motion capture, predominately for the dancing and dramatic sense when the penguins walk around. [Director] George Miller comes from a live-action background, and he's comfortable di- recting actors on stage, so he could do take after take quickly. He could get a performance he wanted in an hour or a day that would have taken us a month. But he also enjoys the animation process because he can plus the performances and add facial animation. Motion capture allowed the two worlds to come together, and because the characters are humanoid and walking around, I'm fi ne with it. When the characters come to animation, they have their weight built in already. So, we get the combination of movement from talented performers di- rected by the director and performances stylized by our talented anima- tors. Also, when George wanted thousands of characters on screen danc- ing intricate choreography, keyframing would have been impractical. Did you motion-capture any of the other characters? We also used motion capture for Sven, the puffi n, when he's on the ground, but we keyframed him when he's fl ying. But, not the krill, of course. Th ere was an attempt. Th ey did a bunch of experiments. Th e krill have 10 legs and arms, so they had a conga line with fi ve dancers trying Images courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures. December/January 2011-2012 27