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www.postmagazine.com 5 POST JULY 2015 BITS & PIECES ILOURA ANIMATES TED 2 STAR MELBOURNE — Australian animation and visual effects studio Iloura (www.iloura. com.au) animated Universal Pictures' and MRC's talking teddy bear for Ted 2. The studio completed more than 1,000 shots for the comedy, drawing on the experience from working on 2012's Ted with Seth MacFarlane to help push the character's per- sonality even further. MacFarlane returned as writer, director and voice of the star in Ted 2. He's joined once again by Mark Wahlberg as John Bennett. Iloura's VFX supervisor Glenn Melenhorst and VFX producer Ineke Majoor put together a team of 120 artists in the company's Melbourne studio to work on a number of sequences that required artists to animate Ted and integrate him into real-world scenarios. The goal was to always have Ted appear as a real character, and never look cartoony. Melenhorst emphasizes how important Ted's nuances needed to be: "Ted has but- ton eyes, and when he interacts, he needs to turn his whole head. To exude his char- acter and emotion, we needed to rely on subtle animation techniques, such as the level his head tilts, or how much his eyebrows move. In a comedic sense, Ted is the straight guy, so these characteristics were very slight but essential to get just right." To help with Ted's presence, MacFarlane was shot wearing an Xsens MVN mo- tion-capture jacket. The sensors were simply strapped over his normal clothing, leaving the director free to carry out his other duties. This gave Iloura's animators a video guide to Ted's physical performance. In addi- tion to animating Ted's head, face and legs, Iloura's artists also added his tuxedo and other attire as CG elements. More technically-challenging work involved Ted's interaction with his environ- ment. Ted holds a number of items, so every interaction with an object needed to be augmented with CG reactions. Further work by Iloura involved the opening "cosmic zoom" sequence; Ted's wedding; modeling of Boston, including cars and pedestrians; photo-real CG geese; and a choreographed dance sequence. For the big musical production, which sees Ted accompanying a large group of dancers, motion capture was recorded with three separate dancers and combined to create Ted's moves. Postvis supervisor Webster Colcord turned to MVN Link, Xs- ens' next-generation lycra suit, which enables users to capture the motion of actors at up to 240Hz, and at distances of up to 150m. "The dancers could run as far as they wanted without us ever having to constrain their distance," says Colcord. "Not having to worry about staying within a volume [as with optical motion capture] is a great advantage, as is the fact that we don't have to worry about markers being occluded." FLASH FILM WORKS GOES UNDERCOVER FOR SPY LOS ANGELES — Under the supervision of VFX supervisor Dave Lingen- felser, Los Angeles-based Flash Film Works recently provided compos- iting and VFX work — including car chase scenes, helicopter stunts and intricate fight scenes — for Fox's hit summer comedy Spy. The film follows Melissa McCarthy as a deskbound CIA analyst who is thrown into field work after an agent is assassinated. It's up to her to prevent a global disaster. With a film about spies, arch villains and dire global violence, there of course needs to be big action scenes with all the explosions and fight- ing that audiences expect of a summer blockbuster. To create those scenes, Flash Film Works used Blackmagic Design's Fusion Studio for all its compositing work. Flash Film Works' compositing supervisor Jeremy Nelson and his team created 232 VFX shots for the film, as well as shots used in the trailer. In one of the more intricate fight scenes, Flash Film Works used Fusion to turn a pair of flats into a pair of heels. "The actress did all her own stunts in flat shoes for the scene, and we added high heels to the shots," says William Mesa, owner of Flash Film Works. "We built the 3D model in LightWave, brought it into Fusion and did all the 3D tracking, placing and lighting, so everything matched in the shots. The lighting changes in particular were very intricate as we had to perfect the light on the heels as the scene transitioned through different lighting conditions, from inside lighting to outside lighting and more." Fusion Studio was also used for core compositing work, includ- ing projection and rig & wire removal. Nelson and his team relied on Fusion's efficiency and the ability to import a 3D track and paint out unnecessary parts, as well as frame projection to help develop a scene. While a standard paint out sufficed in parts of one action sequence involving stunt people hanging off a helicopter, more complex shots required 3D tracking. By tracking the helicopter, recreating it in 3D and using Fusion's rotoscoping tools to eliminate the stunt people's harness- es, Nelson and his team were able to help deliver a great scene. The same process was used in a pivotal chase sequence during which a stolen car skids to a halt after racing through the streets of Par- is. There were multiple skid marks on the street because the stunt was practiced several times. By 3D tracking the car and creating geometry and multiple projections in Fusion, Nelson was able to remove the skid marks from the shot. It took 15 projections in one shot to produce a clean slate since the cameras were moving, tracking and dollying. FOR MORE ON SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERS, TURN TO OUR VFX FEATURE ON PAGE 24.