Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/48986
n n n n Animation knew XSI, we could teach them the new key- strokes in a week. What we cared about were their animation and acting skills. Did the animators have video of the ac- tors as reference, as well as the motion data? During the voice recordings in Los An- geles and Sydney, I had a team of videogra- phers shooting the main actors. Even though they're performing to microphones, once they get into the characters, they start performing with their faces. There are nice things you can do if you're there to watch or capture them on video; you can use their expressions to drive the animation later. Elijah [Wood] did some things with his eyes that became part of Mumble's performance. Brad [Pitt] might do something with the tilt of his head, the furl of his brow, that is inspiration for the animators down the road. We weren't motion-capturing. We were videoing. But, we would see patterns. I cut together what I called 'spirit reels' from the videos and had QuickTimes for the ani- mators to reference. Did any of the actors record the dialog together, or did they work separately? Brad and Matt came in for three days, so we had them in the same room, acting to each oth- er. And we had many of the other voice actors in the same space at the same time interacting; upward of eight performances in a big space all recorded at the same time. You get better perfor- mances. You get talk-over, which you also have in live action, so why not have it in animation? George [Miller] had the actors do the initial performances until they were happy together. He recorded that. Then, they could do the lines themselves as they had done in the ensemble piece. That way he had the clean lines, and if someone stepped on a word, he could replace it. How did you animate the schools of fish? We'd animate the main characters, the hero characters, and provide swim cycles for the fish—and the penguins—to the crowd team. We had about 25 artists plus a director and supervisor on the crowd team. They'd attach 30 December 2011/January 2012 Director George Miller recorded Brad Pitt and Matt Damon acting out the dialog together for three days to give Will the Krill and Bill the Krill their voices. Although the team experimented with motion capture for the tiny creatures, animators created all the performances with keyframe animation. our keyframe animations to a system that had run-time rules, and the fish would scatter like in nature when they came near the penguins. It was amazing. When the characters are swimming, did you animate to the movement of the water, or did the simulation team move the water based on the keyframe animation? We handled water in two ways. Basically, if the shot was about the character, the water team would match the animation. We would talk about the water with George, and he'd tell us whether he wanted the water to be calm or move a lot. We'd do some keyframe animation, and he might tell us to tumble the characters more or soften their movements as if they were in a swell. Then the effects artists would put the water around them. If the shot was about the effect, like ice tumbling into the water, we would match their simulation. We used [Exotic Matter's] Naiad for all the splashes and for the interaction of the characters with the water. The effects team then stitched the Naiad splash elements into a high-resolution surface simulated in [Side Effects Software's] Houdini. They were able to create a realism on the surface of the water that I think is breathtaking. They also did volumetric light shards coming down through the water. There's a beautiful shot with our two hero krill clutching the bottom of a piece of ice, with smaller pieces of ice tum- bling in the turbulence of the water. We look up through the water and see the caustics. For the krill, because they are about the size of a thumbnail, they put silt and dust in the water to help with the scale. It's amazing when you see it in stereo. Do the little krill survive? They do. Through a series of events, a mas- sive rogue iceberg crashes into the entrance of Emperor Penguin land and traps the pen- guins, which is something that actually hap- pened in the real world. In our movie, all the communities come together to overcome the troubles of the world, and even the krill have an impact. Did the icy environments change much? We had two main environments, Adelie land and Emperor land, and they change during the movie. We start with compacted snow on ice, and then we have fluffier, powdery snow. When the animators go into the scenes, they had a packed-ice layer or a packed-snow layer for the penguins' feet. Then another team added foot- prints in the snow, so we'd see little foot trails. The rendering of the snow, with sparkling high- lights, is so amazing. It makes it feel like you're there. Snow is a big part of the story; we had about 50 artists working on the effects team cre- ating character effects, water, volumetrics, and destruction. There are beautiful shots of com- pacted ice and snow breaking apart. Did you have favorite characters? Well, the krill are certainly high on my list. The elephant seals were a pleasure to animate. The main one, Beach Master, was a fantastic character to get into, and he has a sidekick named Wayne. I liked them a lot. And, animat- ing to Robin Williams is always great. He was Ramon the Adelie penguin, and the Rockhop- per. Ramon is very over the top theatrically, and he gets a love interest in this film, so that added a whole other layer to his performance. We see Mumble worried about his son, and Sven wrapped up in being an inspirational speaker. We have big catastrophes and massive dance numbers. The first film hit a very high mark. We tried to step above it. n Barbara Robertson is an award- winning writer and a contributing editor for . She can be reached at BarbaraRR@comcast.net. Use your smart- phone to access related video. Computer Graphics W orld