Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/739236
14 cgw s e p t e m b e r . o c t o b e r 2 0 1 6 Whatever Elliot did, whether flying, walking, or lying down, each hair moved appropriately and interacted with other hairs and anything else touching him, thanks to the compute power available in 2016 and more efficient proprietary simu- lation soware. "When Pete grabs a handful of Elliot's hair, the simulation provided the proper interaction between his hand and the fur," Saindon says. "Without that connection between Pete and Elliot, we wouldn't feel for the dragon." As for Elliot's wings, at first they were as small as the animated dragon in the 1977 film. "But, we did motion tests with those wings and knew that for a photoreal film, we needed wings that people believed would keep him alo," Saindon says. The crew determined the size the wings would have to be for his body mass, but they didn't look right, either. "They were gigantic," Saindon says. "They looked stupid." An albatross provided the answer. "An albatross's wings don't seem big enough to keep the bird in the air," Saindon says. "They're really clumsy in the way they take off, fly, and land. So, we incorporated that into Elliot's character." Elliot's a portly fellow, as Cozens puts it, with the potential for being a little clumsy. But how to make him aerodynamic? "In the beginning, we tried tucking his wings in to make him look like a plane, but it didn't work because of his shape," Cozens explains. "He looked like a caterpillar with wings. But [Senior Animator] Graham Binding found a reference from Fantasia with Pegasus flying and another of polar bears swimming underwater. In both, the creatures used their limbs to almost swim, whether it was through the air or water. And polar bears were the right body type." Thus, the animators opened up the poses and spread out Elliot's limbs so he would, in effect, swim through the air. "He became a gangly, loose character that we could almost let slip out of the sky in places," Cozens says. "He wasn't always the most graceful, and that change in thinking spilled into his personality." P E R F O R M I N G E L L I O T Elliot's personality changed through the story – he's a magical dragon, so he can be anything that works in the moment. When the frightened, five-year-old Pete first meets Elliot, the dragon is an old, wise, and majestic creature. Later, but still early in the film, Elliot is a teenaged brother to 10-year-old Pete. To- ward the end, Elliot becomes more parental. "David [Lowery] had a story he wanted to tell with the character, but he leaned on us to develop who the character was and how he would behave in storytelling moments." With that freedom, the animators found ways to add some Elliot quirks to the storytelling. "It was fun to find things for Elliot to do that were not on the storytelling notes," Cozens says. "There is a moment when Elliot sees a [CG] butterfly. He's surprised, then angry, and then curious. We wanted him to be curious, but layering in the dif- ferent reactions first allowed us to create a more rounded character. Another time, Elliot wakes up in the morning and can't find Pete. Instead of having him immedi- ately become worried, we have him first react as if Pete's playing a game. Then, he becomes concerned. Finding those little micro expressions and ways for him to react weren't on the nose for storytelling." Through it all, though, the team kept Elliot from veering into anthropomorphism. "I worked with Christian Rivers on previs for a while, and we had long conversations about creating characters," Cozens says. "I think we made a good choice early on, probably based on experiences with other films Weta has done, and that was to keep Elliot an animal." The animation team began with motion studies that examined how the digital pup- pet's rig would work, and how Elliot's scale would work in relation to little Pete. In terms of the rig, the trickiest spot was the area between his shoulder blades. "Pete needed to sit on Elliot's shoulders at the base of his neck," Cozens says. "Elliot's wings move when he's flying, and he uses his limbs a lot, which move the scapulae around. We spent time finding a good solu- ELLIOT'S ART-DIRECTED WINGSPAN IS LESS THAN WOULD ACTUALLY BE NEEDED TO CARRY HIM ALOFT, SO THE BIG DRAGON ALSO "SWIMS" THROUGH THE AIR WITH HIS LEGS.