Breath of air

Even though the animators carefully performed all those head, wing, and tail feathers, and timed the lofting and lifting of feathers in all the regions of Piper’s body, Alan realised something was missing.

“Piper felt stiff,” Alan says. “He felt CG. He needed to breathe. So we pushed a Renderman DSO (dynamic shared object) as far as we could to move his belly and make him feel vulnerable.”

They also realised there wasn’t any wind moving Piper’s feathers. “At the beach, we noticed that the wind had an impact on scale and how we feel about a character,” Alan recalls. “But wind was missing since we didn’t use simulation for any of the feathers. So we worked with rigging to roll the skin and create a certain amount of noise.”

He describes the effect as something like rolling a ball under a rug. “We ripple the skin using various x, y, and z magnitudes to give the effect of wind ruffling Piper’s feathers,” he says. “It also works for shivering, which helps us care for the character.”

And we do. Staying true to nature in the character’s look and feel connects us to Piper’s vulnerability and his struggle. But the animators achieved that reality through artistic, visual choices, not through physical simulations. They could freely reshape models, control silhouettes, rearrange sets, and exaggerate reality just enough to make the character compelling and the story delightful.

“I am so happy I didn’t have to turn Piper’s wings into hands or use eyebrows,” Alan says. “I love that we could create facial expressions with a totally different technique. Piper just shivers, blinks, and shakes his top feathers.” And makes you laugh in delight as he walks down the beach right into your heart.