Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/710451
www.postmagazine.com 42 POST JULY 2016 EDUCATION & RECRUITMENT pre-production during the second se- mester of junior year, in 2014. That was when they had to figure out the story, make the storyboards and countless animatics, and work on designing the world the story lived in. That summer, they reworked the entire animatic, and the film stretched from approximately three minutes to just over four. "When we came back to school, every- one was quite surprised at the changes we had made, and even though we had to fight for them a bit, in the end, the faculty liked them better," says Paddock. The group's entire senior year then was spent making the actual film, finishing it just one month before graduation. The filmmakers spent countless hours discussing the film's aesthetic. At the end of the day, says Kaur, the aim was to create designs that had a strong stylized lan- guage to them. "The bulky guard and the tiny, bullet-like nun were designed specif- ically so as to communicate their charac- teristics immediately, since the movie lasts only about four minutes," she explains. Littger is credited with the story. "It originally took place on just a fountain, since it had been just a one-person pitch. So we built it up and made it a bit more grand of a chase," Paddock explains. However, the concept resonated with each team member. "We all came from lives that have been heavily influenced by art, and we wanted to pay a bit of hom- age to it. As well, we all have had ideas that people don't understand or think are a little too strange, so they've put met- aphorical censor bars on us. This story was a bit of a therapeutic way to get our frustration out as artists," the filmmakers collectively say. "And contrary to what many people think, we weren't trying to make a direct claim on religious censor- ship. For us, the nun character represents censorship as a whole." Indeed, the filmmakers were inspired by Italy and its culture — from the art to the people. And, to an extent, their own personal experiences had an effect. "Our nun character brings a lot of appeal to the film. She's fun, and even though she is ruining these pieces of art, she is still just being herself," says Littger. Creating Artwork The film's pipeline was relatively stan- dard for a 3D animation production: Autodesk's Maya and Pixologic's ZBrush for modeling; and ZBrush, along with Autodesk's Mudbox, for texturing. Once the characters were designed, the artists fine-tuned the topography with Maya and Pilgway's 3D-Coat, which they also used for the UVs. The models were then brought back into ZBrush, where the artists painted the textures on top, mixing real-life pictures of specific material tex- tures and traditional painting. The team also used the RIS shaders in RenderMan and Maya to make the materials and tex- tures look more believable. The animators recorded a lot of live-ac- tion footage to calculate the beats and understand the mechanics of what they were about to animate. "It was a lot of silly reference video, because sometimes one of us would have to pose as one of the statues. Not nude, of course!" says Paddock with a chuckle. For lighting, they used the RenderMan plug-in for Maya, incorporating mostly spotlights with RenderMan RIS, since it was an interior shot at night. The spots helped give the look of moonlight through windows as well as typical lighting found in a museum, Kaur notes. "There was a need for a high number of lights to reproduce the museum lighting, but the excessive bounce lights caused film grain," says Littger. "It was hard to get low render times without it showing a lot of the noise. We were fighting it during the whole film, and, eventually, we just had to give up and allow it." Most of the effects in the movie — mainly glass reflections and light rays — were done in The Foundry's Nuke. The explosion near the end, when the nun breaks the glass, is hand-animated by Paddock, while Littger animated the swoosh around the kissing statues, both using Photoshop. The trio mainly used Nuke for com- positing. This included a fair amount of color correction, de-noising and artificial stimulation of depth. They also used the software to achieve a lot more atmo- sphere, further stimulating light and dark areas. Rendering was strictly done using Pixar's RenderMan. Due to the final size of the images, Ringling's renderfarm was especially helpful. "We had to settle for more noise on most of our shots though, because if we gave each frame the render time it needed to be clear and perfect, it would have taken two-plus hours for each frame," explains Littger. "We couldn't afford that, not with all the other students using it, as well." The nun's cape was simulated in 3D with Maya's nCloth for some shots, while in others, the artists hand-animated the cape. "We hadn't experimented with this feature before in our years previous at school, so it was fun to figure out," says Paddock. For hardware, the group used a com- bination of HP desktop machines, Wacom Cintiqs and Intuos tablets, along with some Apple MacBook Pros. It's A Wrap The filmmakers used humor to sustain themselves through the long, grueling days and nights. "It is the sleepless nights filled with our own silly brand of enter- tainment that stands out as the most memorable," says Littger. "That, and our occasional visits to the Cat Depot, where we got our healthy, hour-long dose of playing with the kittens." Looking back, they all agree they found value in learning to work as a team, letting go of individual needs for the good of the project. Currently, all three have gone their sep- arate ways — Kaur as an animator/design- er at a film studio, Paddock as a 2D artist for an independent game company and Littger as a storyboard/concept artist at a Brazilian animation facility. But all three cherish the time spent together. "These are the people we were closest to when we were far away from the comfort of our homes," says Kaur of the group. Now they can look back at "None of That" with great pride. The film recently was named as an official selection in the SIGGRAPH 2016 Computer Animation Festival, in addition to receiving various accolades from other festivals. The film is also getting attention online. Within three days, more than four million people had accessed it. "We were never expecting that and were beyond amazed to see that so many people related to the story in so many ways," Litter says. "They brought up some serious censorship situations and how the film was helpful to them in getting con- versations started on the matter."