Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/552848
20 cgw j u ly . a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 of the cool things about this sequence was the collaboration with Jake [Morrison], Russell [Earl], and Marvel. All these shots were CG, so there was a lot of camera and shot design. It was a process of trying all kinds of things to learn what worked and what didn't. We cast the net really wide. Marvel would take our footage and edit it to basically block in the sequence. And it evolved from there." At first, the sequence seemed too simple, like cool shots cut together. It had no emotional arc. Ant-Man would skydive from one world to an- other without angst. "We met with Marvel and Peyton [Reed], looked at an early version of the sequence, and talked about what we needed to tell Ant-Man's story as he traveled through the worlds," Harrington says. "His emotional arc became, 'Oh [crap], I can't stop this from happening.' Then panic, fear, and a moment when he accepts his fate and gives up." As he shrinks smaller and smaller, Ant-Man enters two worlds, one aer the other, that are not based on science. "The first world gets totally trippy and conceptual," Harring- ton says. "It's a kaleidoscope world. He's so small, as small as a quark inside an electron. This is when he lets go and accepts his fate that he will shrink forever and become nothing or the smallest thing you can be. He goes into zero-G, and where he had been tense with body language like a skydiver, he's now curled into almost a fetal position." From the quirky kaleidoscop- ic world, he shrinks into the final world. The void. "Visually, this world is empty and dark, with only dark matter in the background," Harrington says. "The shots are very wide to show how small and lonely he is. He can hear voices in the big room, but he's completely isolated. He thinks he will die." For this part of the sequence, the animators gave the CG character an underwater/zero gravity feel. Ant-Man is all-CG through the whole sequence. "We didn't have Gravity's budget," Harrington says. "And we had to do the shots quickly. We found the most effective way was to motion-capture someone we had sit on an apple box. He leaned back and held himself in place with his abs. It was very effective. When- ever we could, we started with motion capture to get us into animation quicker, but a few shots were keyframed." Of course, Ant-Man doesn't die. He's a superhero, destined for future films in the Marvel world. "We came up with this beat where he comes to and says, 'I've got to get out of here,' " Harrington says. Ant-Man pushes the "grow" buttons on his le hand, but they don't work. He finds one last disk that he could throw. It slips out of his hand and starts to float away. He grabs it, and we see close-ups of his CG belt, hands, and gadgets. "He does some Macgyver-ing to fit it into his belt buckle," Harrington says. "He slams the buckle shut, it turns blue, and the button on his le hand works. He starts scaling up." And, he lives. "The entire journey back is quick," Harrington says. "We play key shots from earlier in the sequence in reverse. We see him come back through his daughter's perspective. Since he's growing rapidly, he causes a vortex in the interior of the room. Boom. He appears." Before Harrington joined this project, he was not sure he would like working on the superhero. "It's funny, though," Harring- ton says. "I discovered that it's really cool, different work. One of the highlights for me was working out shots and shot design in the microverse. We had brought our filmmaking ex- pertise to the table and helped the filmmakers figure out the narrative for the sequence." And that was no small task. ■ SCALE WAS ALWAYS IMPORTANT, AS SHOWN HERE IN CONCEPT ART. Barbara Robertson (BarbaraRR@comcast.net) is an award-winning writer and a contributing editor for CGW. VIDEO, PREVIS STORY, 3D STEREO STORY: GO TO EXTRAS IN THE JULY.AUGUST 2015 ISSUE BOX C G W. C O M ANTS ON A MISSION When Ant-Man shrinks to insect size, he can communicate with ants and, in a sequence created at Industrial Light & Magic, lead the troops into battle. The sequence begins inside a plane. Ant- Man rallies the troops. "You can tell the ants are listening," says Harrington. "We animated them with their antennae moving. We also did some walking and milling cycles. They were fun to animate." The animators choreographed the shots using spheres and then dropped the walk cycles on the spheres. Ants close to cam- era received hero animation. During the sequence, Ant-Man hops onto the back of one of the ants. "We went all-CG with him," Harrington says. "We did motion capture here of someone running and jumping onto a wooden horse. When an actor is in a suit, it is often easier to use a CG double." Aer the ants paratroop out of the plane, they fly in formation. "We used a sequence from Apocalypse Now for inspiration," Harrington says. "Military formations are stoic and technical, though. Flying ants by contrast move a lot. We wanted them in formation because they were on a mission, and we wanted them thinking about it. But we couldn't forget that they're dumb ants. They might flutter away." C M Y CM MY CY CMY K