Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/747534
74 P E R S P E C T I V E | N OV E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 6 and very unappealing. If they were covered in felt and animated more like stuffed floppy puppets, they became charming, even endearing. Bridget is a perfect example of this idea. She's a contrast of ugly and cute, the same recipe used with the Trolls, but with a different balance. The visual structure and color for the film is based on the emotional trajectory of Poppy and the idea of happiness. Poppy is the embodiment of happiness. She is bright magenta, the most fully brilliant color we could find. The Trolls lose their color when they lose hope and are sad. Branch embodies the visual version of this idea. He is a Troll who has lost hope, lives in a permanent state of unhappiness and is therefore, sucked of his true color. Troll Village is colorful and reflects the attitude of the Trolls. Branch, the conspiracy theorist, is a reclusive weirdo living on the outskirts of town under a rock in a subterranean fear bunker. He is terrified that the Bergens are coming back, so has stored enough supplies down there to last him twenty years if necessary. To show this visually, his bunker is sucked of color and reflects subtle hints of the Bergen palette to suggest the idea that he is slowly becoming what he fears most, the Bergens. On the other hand, Bridget, the hero Bergen, is the only Bergen that has a little faded Poppy-pink in her corner of the world. In her dull orange and green environment, she has some pink, a visual hint at the Troll joy she carries within. She's the only Bergen with it. At the end of the movie, Branch finds his true colors and the Trolls teach the Bergens what it means to be truly happy. We show this as the Trolls sing and dance down Bergen Town's main street, carpeting it in full over-the-top Peter Max color and felt. The other visual element that is key to Trolls came about because of the size of the little characters. We wanted them to feel small in a human- scaled world, so we adopted a macro camera effect, causing the focus of the world to fall away very quickly behind them. A lot of bokeh photography is used in this movie. We analyzed macro photography, especially the images of snails by the Russian photographer, Vyacheslav Mishchenko. Above: Cloud Guy attempts a fi st bump with a skeptical Branch in this frame capture from the fi nished fi lm. Pushing the background into soft focus gives the illusion of a low-to-the-ground macro camera. Below: Early Satin & Chenille character development sketches drawn by Priscilla Wong.