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THE PEANUTS MOVIE www.postmagazine.com 30 POST NOVEMBER 2015 strip and in the cel-animated specials, needed to be maintained. This meant, when Snoopy jumps up and down, the viewer might see three sets of feet jump- ing, rather than one set moving very fast. RIGGING & LIGHTING According to rigging supervisor Justin Leach, 20 artists spent 18 months creat- ing the rigging for the film's characters. Autodesk Maya was the studio's primary tool. They also employed a shrink-wrap deformer. The studio maintains a Linux- based pipeline. Lighting supervisor Jeeyun Sung Chisholm and effects supervisor Elvira Pinkhas explain that each character came with its own detailed "bible" that needed to be followed. Skin could not be too simple, nor too realistic. Ears were allowed to glow with color, and there was always a little light bounce on a charac- ter's chin. The indoor and outdoor scenes have clear temperature differences, with the latter appearing warmer, thanks to sunlight. The film's dance sequence represented one of the most challenging lighting scenarios due in large part to the realistic mirror ball and all of the reflec- tions it cast. Studio ++ was used for lighting. Compositing was performed using The Foundry's Nuke. As many as 60 artists had their hands in the film's lighting, and an average of two or three shots were completed each week. Blue Sky's VFX team normally handle effects that range from water and fire to rain and snow, but The Peanuts Movie presented a unique visual that's closely tied to Pig Pen — a character that carries the effect with him. His dusty/tumble- weed-like aura was applied after charac- ter animation was complete. The studio created a spherical shape around him and spent a lot of time determining the performance of his swirling dust cloud, which consisted of four different types of elements. For VFX, Blue Sky starts in Maya, ex- ports out to Houdini and then exports to the studio's proprietary renderer. Custom plug-ins are used to create motion blur. Camera angles were also closely con- sidered. It was determined that Schulz illustrated the strip as if from an angle three feet off the ground. This would remain consistent throughout the film. Only in Snoopy's dream sequences would angles and motion break from the rule. STEREO 3D Dan Abromovich served as stereo super- visor on the film and says his team began conducting tests early on to determine how much the stereo effect could be used. "Snoopy's world has a lot of stereo 3D effects," he says. "Snoopy's is fantasti- cal, with a lot of volume, and background miniatures. Charlie Brown's is about half that, almost like a View Master." It was decided that all of the 3D stereo effect would go into the screen rather than out into the audience. Blue Sky created the stereo effect by replacing the initial camera in the animation with a stereo rig. The studio's stereo pipleine is what Abromovich describes as a "hodge podge," that includes Maya, Nuke, Studio ++, and new tools and plug-ins that are continuously being written. And while most films appear at frame rates of 24 frames per second, The Peanuts Movie was animated on the "2s." Each second of material consists of 12 unique frames played twice in succes- sion. This created a visual quality much like that of stop-motion animation. To see more imagery, as well as clips from The Peanuts Movie, visit the Post Website: www.postmagazine.com.