Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/884568
8 cgw s e p t e m b e r . o c t o b e r 2 0 1 7 Design Painting Before and during the live-action shoot, 20 painters began working on the process that would lead to the creation of those 65,000 oil paintings. "Based on the script, we had a number of shots and scenes with a specific environ- ment – inside, outside, in the fields, the restaurant, and so forth – based on original paintings as reference," says Head of Paint- ing Piotr Dominiak. "Then we had scenes without the paintings as reference. We had to create environments and backgrounds for non-existent paintings, thinking how would he have painted them." Working from storyboards, the artists created digital matte paintings for the black-and-white scenes, the flashbacks oen based on photographs, and devel- oped an animation style for those. For scenes in color, which would look like Van Gogh paintings, they created a digital image to set up color and composition. From that reference, they produced oil paintings that would be used as reference keyframes for other painters to follow. All told, design painters spent a year re-imagining 125 of Van Gogh's paintings to fit into the story and into the size and shape of a film frame. Ninety-four of Van Gogh's paintings remained close to the originals; 31 were altered in some way. A character painted in one style might have appeared in another painting in a different style, for example. Or, paintings in one season or time of day needed to change to follow the story. "The backgrounds weren't so difficult to do," Dominiak says. "The main problem was the characters. The keyframes were based on one original Van Gogh painting. But what if we wanted Armand at night? We had to imagine what that would look like." And, they had to do so with the actors' features in mind, as well, not just the original subjects. All told, the design painters created 377 oil paintings, none of which appear in the film. The painters spent approximately five days creating each painting. "Once we had those physical paintings, we distributed them in digital form for the painters creating the final oil paintings to use as reference," Dominiak says. To find the final group of 125 with the right combination of artistic and animation skills, BreakThru interviewed thousands of paint- ers. Even so, the studio had these painting animators complete a 180-hour training program before starting on the project. "There aren't many painters or animators who can do painted stop motion where every single frame is painted and photo- graphed," says Tomek Wochniak, production manager. Frame by Frame in Oil While the design painters were creating digital matte paintings and keyframes, the directors had the live-action footage cut and edited into the footage that the artists would paint over, frame by frame, in oils on canvas. "The live-action footage was not ready to repaint just like that, though," Dominiak says. "We needed to do digital processing first before projecting it onto a canvas." The visual effects team composited the live-action footage with photos of the key- frame paintings, and added CG animation to give the background images movement and depth – a steam train rolling past a field of grain, flying crows, and blowing leaves, for example. To minimize unintended changes from one painting to the next, to ensure as con- sistent lighting as possible, and to facilitate each painter's task, the team devised a painting animation workstation system they dubbed PAWS, and installed 97 systems in the Gdańsk and Wrocław, Poland, and Athens, Greece, studios. "The idea of creating PAWS was to give the painters a chance to paint more efficiently and quickly," Wochniak says. "We had done 'Little Postman' in a painted style, and every single thing that moved had to be fixed in postproduction. The painters had to remember to turn lights off and on, hide the projector, not to kick the tripod, and so forth. So for this film, we construct- ed a simple workstation with a computer and soware. The painters have a dedicat- ed small area where there is no light from the outside." Each painter sits in front of a table angled at 45 degrees, with a monitor above. Above the painter's head are a camera and a pro- jector. Projected onto the painter's canvas frame by frame are the live-action compos- ites. Managing the projection and providing frame-based editing and drawing tools is DZED Systems' Dragonframe stop-motion animation soware. ACTORS RESEMBLING PEOPLE IN VAN GOGH'S PORTRAITS WERE FILMED, PROVIDING A GUIDE FOR THE OIL PAINTERS.