![]() Many plates had heavy amounts of motion blur from quick camera movement and fast-moving actors, which made camera tracking and rotoscoping very difficult. Sequences that took place outside the Hellman Hall mansion featured massive bluescreens, which required intricate rotoscope and paint work in large areas for dozens of shots. Many of the plates had no stand-ins for our characters, so we had to time out our animation by eye, and some shots underwent retiming, which meant redoing the rotoscoping. In addition to creating convincing animation, another challenge was the converting hundreds of plates from the shoots into finished scenes that would hold our composited characters. Online resources like the Animation Reference Dog Walk and Run Cycles, Michael Schlingmann's Quadruped Locomotion Tutorial, SportsVet, and Dan Fotheringham's Creature Animation Master Class with Griffin Animation Academy were enormously helpful, as were the countless treadmill and animal motion capture videos I assembled into these YouTube playlists for the project: Because our work does not make it into the final film, the animation detail in visualization is in a grey area, where "good enough" wins out over "perfect." Of course, in this film it was important that our footfalls were accurate, and dogs moved at realistic speeds (a maximum run of 37mph, in the case of a dalmatian). Quadrupeds are complex and a significant challenge, and since our team was comprised of animators with varying skill levels, it meant that everyone would need to be trained up to handle the coming workload. With improved direction, the animators required fewer iterations to properly address notes, which meant shots were approved more quickly by production VFX Supervisor Max Wood. Along with new methods to quickly illustrate dogs, I had an improved eye for detail about them, which enabled me to give clearer and more informed feedback to animators later on. Lessons from these shows and observations provided an understanding of dogs in a variety of scenarios and states. My family raised four different dogs when I was growing up, but it had been years since I lived with one, so I watched a lot of episodes of The Dog Whisperer and Dog Impossible, as well as numerous other dog shows, which was very helpful when studying all the ones I saw on the street (LA is called "Dog Town" for a reason, and there are two different dog kennel business on the same street as our office). ![]() In addition to the draftsmanship practice, it was also helpful to get reacquainted with how dogs experience and express emotion. I bought the biggest sketchbook I could find, and got to work filling the pages with my drawing studies from pictures in these books and of photos I saw in internet image searches. To better understand realistic lighting to place our CG characters into their shots, I turned to Color and Light by James Gurney. Amberlyn, which provided essential tips for understanding a shape language and style that captured the essence of dogs. One particular book that helped me enormously was How to Draw Dogs and Puppies: A Complete Guide for Beginners by J.C. I called Marshall Vandruff, who was our visiting animal anatomy lecturer back at Rockstar Games, who recommended several book titles, and I checked out all the relevant books I could find at local libraries. We would be responsible for animating thousands of frames of animation, plus tracking, lighting, roto, and compositing work.Įarly on in the project, it was clear that one of the best ways I could help the team was by significantly deepening my understanding of quadruped anatomy and animation, in order to give informed and accurate animation direction. Our postvis cast included three unique dalmatians, a chihuahua with one good eye named "Wink," a terrier (puppy and full-grown) named "Buddy," three rats, and in one sequence: hundreds of moths. It felt like nearly everything I had learned on previous projects came into play, and it required new growth as an artist and leader.Īlthough it was the hope during production that real dogs could be filmed for all the scenes, in reality the breeds proved most useful as lighting and scale reference for their CG replacements. ![]() Our Technicolor Pre-Production visualization team, which included eighteen artists in total, handled postvis initially, and our role expanded into techvis for many intricate shots, and later on into previs for a surprise climactic moment in the third act. Since it was a Disney production, the funding was substantial, with the quality bar and expectations high to match. Time on project: October 2019 - October 2020Ĭruellawas an incredibly exciting and fulfilling experience, because the challenges, responsibilities, and personal involvement surpassed all of my previous visualization projects.
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