Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/691968
m ay . j u n e 2 0 1 6 c g w 7 To get the movie off to a flying start, Rovio created Rovio Animation, which would retain creative control over the char- acters and ensure that the core elements that scored big with audiences would make their way into the film. To this end, Rovio previsualized the movie and craed the story line, and Sony Pictures Imageworks completed the remaining work. Production spanned nearly three years, and at the peak, the Imageworks crew swelled to more than 80, with 300-plus working on it at one time or another. According to Pete Nash, senior animation supervisor, the film is filled with homages to the mobile app and uses the story structure of the game. A M O V I E , W I T H L E G S Many undoubtedly pictured a movie with limbless, ball- like characters, upon hearing about the project. Nash thinks that initial reaction provided an advantage because people had no idea what to expect. "In some cases, people may have had low expectations because they couldn't imagine how the game could become a movie. So when you do something that is quite sophisticated, no one expects it or sees it coming," he says. "It is a movie with very developed characters." According to the studio, The Angry Birds Movie is a culmina- tion of a long-term plan to ex- pand the game into the feature realm. Until now, Rovio made the conscious decision never to show the birds speaking or with wings and legs. The primary challenge for Imageworks was designing char- acters and a world rich in detail suitable for a feature-length presentation. In this regard, the artists had to transition the cast from flat, graphic icons to fully formed characters that could be animated in three dimensions. "The characters in the game are really simplistic. They do not walk or talk," says Francesca Natale, character art director who designed most of the major CG cast. "The goal was to find a character that was complex but still recognizable to the audience and three billion fans." The film leads – Red, Chuck, Bomb, and Matilda – were the main characters at the time of the game's launch. Red (Jason Sudeikis) is an angry bird who lives on Bird Island with the rest of the flock of large, flightless bird-like creatures. His cranki- ness and sarcasm are in stark contrast to the naively happy occupants of the island. Chuck (Josh Gad) is a fast talker and fast mover, which oen lands him in trouble. Bomb (Danny McBride) is not the brightest bird in the flock but has good inten- tions. However, he has a tenden- cy to explode when surprised, scared, or angry. Matilda (Maya Rudolph) is a New Age therapist with anger issues herself, whose anger management classes bring these misfits together. The new friends-in-need live on Bird Island. One day a visitor arrives, a pig named Leonard (Bill Hader), and strikes up a friendship with the rest of the birds. Red does not buy the pig's act, especially when he discovers a whole lot of little piggies hiding in Leonard's boat. His concerns are not heeded; he is, aer all, an angry bird, always pecking at something. The dri of pigs infiltrate the island, and the birds welcome their fun-loving, party presence. That is, until the pigs are caught stealing all the eggs. This does not fly with the birds, who build a ra and follow the pigs to Pig Island, a polluted, overbuilt pigsty, to reclaim their eggs. First, though, the birds must get angry. And they do, with help from Red. They attack by air, thanks to a giant slingshot, and collect their precious cargo and head back to their island paradise a little wiser and a little angrier. B I R D S O F A F E A T H E R Before modelers created Red, Natale generated nearly 100 possible designs with ink and paint. In the end, Red and his friends became more an- thropomorphic. "We found a design of a bird-like creature, with the feeling of a bird," says Natale. "The stance, the acting, and the appearance of the character all look anthropo- morphic. Similarly, they don't have actual wings; instead, they have arms that have the feel and look of wings in the silhouette and shape." Character modelers built the cast in Autodesk's Maya. Rendering was done with Imageworks' own version of Arnold (from Solid Angle, now acquired by Autodesk), and lighting was completed using The Foundry's Katana. Compositing was accom- plished in The Foundry's Nuke. Imageworks artists also used an in-house painting system within Maya, called KamiPaint, which is based on Autodesk's Artisan intuitive paint and sculpting interface used by the Maya brush tools. The birds have a rather simple design but with complex material properties – fluffy and feathery, with hair fanned out in clumps to resemble feathers. For this, the artists used an updated version of the studio's proprietary grooming toolset called Kami, which is based on THE PIGS ARE MATERIAL-BASED, WITH A SUBTLE HAIR LAYER. THE BIRDS ARE COVERED IN HAIR THAT RESEMBLES FEATHERS.