Posted : July 2013
Author : Nicholas Pell
You probably have a pretty good idea how traditional
animation works: A guy sits at a desk, draws a series of pictures and voila: Steamboat
Willie. But what about 3D animation, like the new Despicable Me 2? Turn out
it’s a pretty labor-intensive process, but it’s still a lot easier than doing
everything by hand. We spoke with Dan Warom, Crowd Supervisor at Scanline VFX
and a major animation studio vet, about how Gru comes to life. Read and learn.
“A rig is essentially the muscles, skeleton and skin of a
character,” says Warom. “Sometimes there are guys whose sole job is just to be
the face animator.”
Everything starts with pre-production. It’s where the story
gets put on storyboards, but also where technology is developed specifically to
make it happen. “Every film is different, and you need to adapt your technology
to that,” Warom explains. “Making a 3D animated feature is like building a car.
You need to adapt your production pipeline for the specific product.”
This is also the stage where the art department decides, for
example, exactly what Gru is going to look like. In doing so, they have to work
with other departments balancing three things: what they want, what can
actually be done with existing technology and the deadline for the finished
product. “Bob, the blue blob from Cowboys vs. Aliens is quite challenging to
make a rig of,” says Warom. “The art department might have wanted something
crazy with two hundred arms or whatever, but the animation department might
step in and say ‘the tech just doesn’t exist to make that kind of a rig yet’ or
request more time to get it done.”
Once all the storyboarding is done, it’s time to make a
rough version of the entire film. Only after that’s all been squared away is it
time for all the other departments to come in. “After final layout you start
installing the actual characters the animators will use. This is when the
lighting department, the effects department, the character effects and the
crowd department all come in.”
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| The Harlem Shake is so played out. These days it’s all about The Gru. |
Rig Time
They may be products of the imagination, but there’s a lot
of substance to the elements you see on screen. This is because the characters
are built around a rig. “A rig is essentially the muscles, skeleton and skin of
a character.” It’s the animated character at his or her most basic. Warom, who
worked on Kung Fu Panda, notes that “sometimes there are guys whose sole job is
just to be the face animator.”
When you make a rig, you start from simple sketches. These
sketches will show characters and objects from several different perspectives,
allowing for the rig to be shown from all sides in a 3D environment. Using
these models, the team makes 3D models using something called wireframe
animation. There’s an element of drawing the models, however there’s more to it
than that. The team will effectively tell the computer that Lucy Wilde’s head
has certain dimensions and that it moves according to a certain set of physics.
This logic is created not just for the characters, but for all the objects in
the film.
Post-Production
At this stage, there are several different facets that must
develop simultaneously. That’s why the work is divided and farmed out to
different departments during post. These departments include:
Crowd Department: When you watch Gru addressing 10,400 of
his minions, that’s the work of the crowd department, Warom’s specialty. “This
is generally grouped under animation,” he says.
And Ron Burgundy thought he was kind of a big deal…
Effects Department: When things blow up, that’s the effects
department. However, they don’t just work on big things. The little details
that make the final product believable - a character kicking up dust walking
through the desert, for example - are the domain of the effects department.
Lighting Department: After the crowd and effects are put in,
the lighting department gets a crack at the film. Can’t show Gru in an, ahem,
unflattering light, right?
Character Effects and Finaling Department: Remember, it’s
not just the characters that move; it’s also their clothes and hair, for
example. The finaling department adds these finishing touches during
post-production.
Compositing
Once all the departments have done their job, there’s just
one small problem: they’ve all got different versions of the film. “A character
might be rendered separately in the effects and the environment,” notes Warom.
Compositing brings all of these versions together into the finished product,
what you eventually see on the screen.
The Silver Screen
Once the compositing is done, the film gets transferred to
digital video or film so it can go out to theaters and entertain the heck out
of you. The good news for the guys making the sequel? A lot of the work from
the original film can be reused. “You build the film as modularly as possible,
so that when you have a sequel, you just reuse the parts over again.” The one’s
that haven’t been blown to smithereens, that is.
~Blog Admin~
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