Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/77744
n n n n VFX•CG Films flesh-colored," Cook says. "There's lots of dia- log and expression, and fun animation, but we played it subtle." Animators used visual refer- ence of the actor's performance for the facial expressions, and then keyframed the anima- tion. They also looked at examples from the real world for the big fish and a monocycle. "With the fish, we referenced a walrus and a sea lion," Cook says. "For the monocycle, we looked at motorcycles. It's one big wheel with a seat attached inside; the wheel rotates around the seat. It's a weird vehicle, so we needed to incorporate something everyone has seen before so the audience could believe it was real." Having the monocycle lean into turns like a motorcycle helped sell the fantasy. For Boris, Cook imagined a creature folded into a human shape. Boris himself was ac- tor Jermaine Clement in prosthetic makeup. Imageworks artists enhanced the prosthetics digitally to make things move, and added a symbiotic creature. "We animated finger-like things around his eyes," Cook says, "and this spider-like thing we called a weasel that comes out of his hand. Boris uses it as a weapon: He aims his hand and the weasel fires quills." Time Travel In a sequence that takes place in 1969, the char- acter Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), who can see the possibilities of future events, stands in an empty Shea Stadium at night eating popcorn. He's watching, through a portal, the Mets win the World Series when Agents J and K come A digital monocycle built and animated at Imageworks leans into curves like a motorcycle. Digital doubles and live-action footage of Agents J and K rode inside. either cycles or one-offs for Massive." On set, the actors had a tiny section of bleach- ers. The crew at Imageworks created the rest to match the real stadium, albeit with some artistic license. "Barry [Sonnenfeld] realized that to posi- tion the camera the way he wanted, we needed to change the upper deck and cantilever the angle of the seats differently," Hahn says. "It was one of those things, like physical simulations, in which the director modifies reality for the type of shot he' had huge matte paintings. From the ground up to the sky, it's all CG, including the sun flares and digital characters." The artists also revised backgrounds shot in s looking for." The crew also modified the Chrysler Build- ing in New York City to accommodate a shot in which Agent K (Will Smith) jumps off the top to do time travel. The actor jumped off a small set on a soundstage in New York City; modelers at Imageworks extended the set, be- yond reality. "For story and pacing, if we had stuck with the size of the real Chrysler Build- Brooklyn for the monocycle chase. "Because this happens in 1969, we had to do digital alterations," Hahn says. "We painted out street furniture, signposts, awnings, and so forth, and replaced them. And some shots required digital re-creations." captured as much information as possible, knowing they might need to digitally repro- duce the assets later. "It used to be that if the film crew didn't get the coverage they needed on the day, they were out of luck," Hahn says. "Now, if we can get enough information on location and plan to build assets, we can fill in or change locations later on; we can offer While on location, the Imageworks crew in. "The Griffin character talks about this mo- ment, and we had to re-create it," Cook says. "It's completely digital. We made Shea Stadium and put thousands of people in the stands." To control the crowd, the animators used (Left to right) A smiley face on a blue-painted soccer ball with tracking markers was an on-set stand-in. Animators used footage of actor Lenny Venito as reference for the keyframed performance. And, the final shot of the digital alien. Massive software. To feed Massive a variety of crowd reactions, Cook and three other crew members motion-captured themselves. "We did dozens and dozens of actions," Cook says. "For general crowds-in-the-stands motion, we stood up, sat down, walked, cheered, looked at each other, and so forth. For shots when the Mets win the game, we captured ourselves jumping over the railing and running onto the field cheering. Josh [Ochoa] cleaned up all the actions in Maya and prepped them as 54 June/July 2012 ing, Will Smith would have hit the pavement before the sequence ended," Hahn says. "We let it grow taller and taller as he falls. The real building is about 1000 feet tall. There's a point in the movie where our building is three times that." For the Cape Canaveral sequence, the crew tried to match the real event from 1969. "It was a mix of every technique you could think of," Redd says. "We ended up replacing all of the set, which was a one-and-a-half-story launch tower in New York, in 95 percent of the shots. We added all the smoke, steam, and fire. We all-digital shots as an alternative. We did that in multiple cases on this movie. We reframed shots because space constraints didn't give Bar- ry [Sonnenfeld] the composition he wanted. We had requests to create shots here and there. We're definitely getting to the point where technology is catching up to what filmmakers want. But, it's always surprising what comes out of their minds." n Barbara Robertson is an award-winning writer and a contributing editor for Computer Graphics World. She can be reached at BarbaraRR@comcast.net.