Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/739236
s e p t e m b e r . o c t o b e r 2 0 1 6 c g w 1 3 a full-size furry head to snuggle against and a green, 22-foot-tall blowup dragon for eyelines. The blowup dragon doll also gave everyone an idea of the dragon's volume. "We thought about doing real-time com- positing, but there wasn't a need," Saindon says. "The head was better for Oakes to interact with. And, the blowup dragon gave us the mass, the girth, and width. His wings took up a lot of space." Prior to filming, The Third Floor provided previs, as did Weta Digital, with the latter also providing postvis. For some scenes, Saindon gave the video sync crew on set pre-canned animation of the dragon for live composites as a rough guide that helped Director Lowery see how the dragon would fit into an area being filmed. To help animators later, Fegley rode a motion base and sometimes rode on a crew member's shoulders. "We had solutions depending on the problem that needed solving on set," Cozens says. "The nice thing about doing the previs and then rolling into blocking and shots is that we handled a lot of problems early on." D E S I G N I N G , F LY I N G , A N D R E F I N I N G Meanwhile at Weta Digital, the digital dragon began taking shape as modelers worked from sketches by Lowery to sculpt the film's Elliot. "He gave us his thoughts about what a dragon would look like to someone who is five years old," Saindon says. "That's where we started. You can actually see little sketches by Pete in the movie that are sim- ilar. Then we pulled in Disney-esque ideas, like a big chin from Lion King's Scar." To visualize Elliot's facial expressions, the crew referenced and grouped together photos of animals in different poses – animals that looked like they were smiling, or angry, or sad. As they tested poses, they refined the design. Ears that were once on top of Elliot's head moved lower and to the side to help him look sad when needed. His nose evolved into more of a horse's nose so that animators could use his nostrils to help tell his mood. His fur changed from a fluorescent green to a color more appropriate to a forest than a jun- gle. And the artists gave him a little pattern on his neck to better blend into the trees. Each hair in Elliot's furry green coat was simulated. "We had a million hairs on King Kong [in the 2005 movie], and we simulated probably a tenth of them," Saindon says. "Everything was interpolated between. Elliot has 20 million hairs, and we individually simulated all those hairs." © 2016 DISNEY