Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/691968
m ay . j u n e 2 0 1 6 c g w 9 when he says something that's sarcastic, he'll do it with a smile on his face. It's part of his charm, his appearance. We borrowed that for Red," Nash says. Red, of course, has a pair of signature, thick, bushy, dark brows, which became "a major science project," says Nash. "There was this charcoal effect on the feathers of the eyebrows. It was difficult to not have them clump and not have the hair interpenetrate. If you go from an extreme surprise pose to an extreme worry pose, that is a lot of face change, and those clumps are going to blow all over the place. It ended up becoming a complex rig." B E A K B U D D I E S The bird community has roughly 130 types of birds, not counting the supporting crowds of char- acters. Even though the movie characters have limbs, they are still ball-like creatures, what Nash describes as "closed" characters, meaning their heads integrate into their bodies, as opposed to an "open" charac- ter that is tall and slender, with limbs. As a result, animation becomes difficult to solve at every angle – when you turn the characters around, their face distorts; when you animate their face, their body distorts. Bomb presented a partic- ular challenge when he would explode, which required the ani- mators to deform his face quite frequently. Using an in-house plug-in called TweakIt, the ani- mators could model and rig on the fly within a scene. "[TweakIt] allows you to grab a portion of the face and move it, then move the weights of the mesh," says Nash. "We did this at a very intricate level anytime something would expand or contort a lot, like when Bomb would explode." While Bomb tries to control his explosions, Chuck has little, if any, self-control. "Chuck is the most pushed character in the film because his power is su- per-speed. Josh Gad performs him like someone with ADD – talking a mile a minute, chang- ing his ideas mid-thought – so we tried to treat his animation that way," says Nash. "We tried to cram as many ideas as pos- sible into the performance as we could. We could do things like an impossible pose change without worrying about the ac- tual mechanics of getting there. It was surprising how many ideas we ended up putting into his performance." Further complications resulted from the slow-motion and time- lapse sequences involving Chuck. And then there is Matilda, who, in the beginning, is touchy- feely, always trying to be overly pleasant. "So we wanted her movement to be overly graceful, fluid, and perfect," says Nash. "But then, because she is actu- ally harboring a deep anger her- self, you'd see a quick flash of a demonic face – snap – and then she'd be back to her extremely pleasant self in an instant." Some characters were trickier than others, though the bigger animation issue resulted from large, complicated shots with many characters moving all at once. "When I came on board, they showed me some early storyboards, so I knew it would be an ambitious project," says Nash. In one sequence there are 50 to 100 pigs stealing the eggs in an orchestrated heist. "The whole movie is filled with shots like that," he adds. P I G P O W E R While simple in design, the pigs were one of the artists' greater challenges. "It's deceptively hard to get very simple things right," says Dimian. "Francesca [Natale] and Clay [Kaytis, co-director] were very clear that they wanted BIRD PROFILE RED Control curves – 3,000 Feathers – 300 Hair count – 3,000,000 CHUCK Control curves – 2,000 Feathers – 200 Hair count – 2,000,000 BOMB Control curves – 3,000 Feathers – 150 Hair count – 2,500,000 EAGLE Control curves – 3,500 Feathers – 500 Hair count – 3,500,000 JUDGE (JUDGE + COAT, WITHOUT CYRUS) Control curves – 4,500 Feathers – 400 Hair count – 4,500,000 TERENCE Control curves – 2,500 Feathers – 200 Hair count – 2,500,000 MATILDA Control curves – 3,000 Feathers – 500 Hair count – 3,000,000