Animal Logic: Layout and animation
3D WORLD Part three of our deep dive into the animation and VFX studio reveals the vital layout and animation steps in production
Part 3 of our ongoing series
Above: Animation on Peter Rabbit evolved along with the character design to give the rabbits a more emotional connection to the audience
In 2007, George Miller’s Happy Feet won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It was a major turning point for Animal Logic, as the film’s feature animation was created in the Sydney studio. Since that time, the studio has become one of the premiere animation production companies, while also continuing to advance the art of visual effects.
Just some of the animated features by Animal Logic, or features where character animation has been a principal part, include Legend Of The Guardians: The Owls of Ga’hoole, Walking With Dinosaurs 3D, The LEGO Movie franchise and Peter Rabbit, along with its upcoming sequel.
This series so far at 3D World has looked at the art, story and tech side of bringing a couple of those films to life. Now in our third instalment this issue, we explore how the layout and animation departments contribute to making movie magic.
LEARNING LAYOUT
The role of layout is to stage or compose a particular scene – it may be completely animated or involve working with a live-action plate onto which CG characters will be inserted. “We take the storyboards and we bring them into the 3D world and make them come alive,” describes Sydney layout supervisor Ned Walker. “We bring in many elements like the camera rigs and the set and then do the lensing on the characters, the key poses, and start to tell the story in a 3D way.”
Layout’s role is also to establish the ‘beats’ of a sequence, by working with editorial to map out the way shots will be edited. This might start with an edit of the storyboards or previs (sometimes called an animatic). However, that kind of animatic edit does not always reflect the actual time it takes a character to get from A to B in a shot. Since layout uses the ‘real-world’ 3D characters and sets, the edit can be more accurately fleshed out at this stage. Once layout is complete, it will go to animation, but also comes back to the department for a final polish of cameras and staging.
Artists at Animal Logic use Maya for layout, relying on essentially the same tools that will be used for animation and lighting. It’s at this point, though, that ‘camera’ features heavily, since layout is where the composition of shots and lensing occurs.
“At Animal we’ve created a camera rig that reproduces what a real camera rig would be on a set,” explains Vancouver layout supervisor Regis Schuller. “I personally like when the camera feels real and it doesn’t look too CG, and so to achieve that we need to have camera rigs that reproduce reality, like a dolly or a Steadicam or something hand-held. Artists can animate the curves of the rig to add weight in the camera, mistakes or any kind of real-life movement.”
Animal Logic’s particular camera tools in Maya are set in the Artist Tool Palette (ATP). They also rely on something called ‘multi-shots’, similar to the implementation of a timeline like Maya’s camera sequencer to enable multiple shots in a single Maya scene. “It’s really useful,” notes Schuller, “because it allows the artists to create alternate shots, alternate coverage, alternate cameras in the same Maya scene framing the same action. And that’s something that we like providing to the editors – coverage.”
On The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, Animal Logic had a number of layout challenges,
“WE BRING THE STORYBOARDS INTO THE 3D WORLD AND MAKE THEM COME ALIVE” Ned Walker, layout supervisor, Animal Logic
ranging from turning concepts and storyboards into layout scenes, to coming up with complete sequences in layout itself. For one musical moment in the movie, in which the central characters are dancing in the streets of Harmony Town and being ‘chased’ by other characters and transforming buildings, Schuller says layout approached shots by establishing a language that matched the mood of the scene. “We pitched a lot of different kinds of languages in terms of camera movement,” he says. “Something that was scary, like being chased by a zombie, hand-held, close to the ground, wide focal lenses and super-scary close-ups. We looked at movies like Train To Busan and The Maze for reference. But as the director wanted it to be a ‘happy scary chase’, we also mixed this type of cinematography with other types of camera languages that were closer to musicals, like La La Land.”
On Peter Rabbit, which was a live-action/animation hybrid film, Animal Logic had several layout challenges, one of which was mostly carrying out layout after footage had been shot. “That meant,” observes Walker, “we were working just within a pre-selected frame. The crew planned for this and the footage was shot with an overscan so we could move around inside that image. We could make choices by panning or zooming to achieve the desired framing.”
Another challenge was composing the shots with animals. “We are mainly concerned about silhouettes and the framing,” notes Walker, who adds that special consideration was taken with framing rabbits for the film. “It’s actually very hard to frame rabbits because you want to keep their eyes at a nice level. We usually work with a rule of thirds, but we were also trying not to crop their ears. There were some full 3D sequences in there and I got to explore more of the framing with those ones.”
Below: A layout frame from The LEGO Ninjago
Movie. Note the lensing data burned into the image
ALL ABOUT ANIMATION
Working hand in hand with what layout delivers, the animation department at Animal Logic is responsible for the final performances in the frame. The department is headed by Rob Coleman, who came on board for The LEGO Movie. It was here that Animal Logic got to try out many new creative techniques, while also aiming to replicate the look and feel, in CG, of real-life ‘brick films’ (where filmmakers use real LEGO minifigs to animate their own stories using stop-motion).
“On The LEGO Movie,” recalls Coleman, “we stayed true to limited animation – I called it faux stopmotion. There’s no motion blur. We animated on 2s, 3s, 4s, 6s or 8s to make it look somewhat staccato, which is what you get when you’re creating stop-motion. And to get around the blur issue we created brick blur. So if Emmett moved really quickly – if you stop and frame through the film – you’ll see he’s got additional orange bricks coming up from behind him that make it look like a smear or a blur as you would see in a live-action film or hand-drawn animation.”
So many different characters in Animal Logic’s recent projects represent individual animation challenges. One of those was The LEGO Movie 2’s Queen Watevra Wa’nabi, a shape-shifting brickbased character who could transform into almost anything. To deal with the multitude of forms, Animal Logic started with art department-designed shape targets that the directors would approve. Then they had to devise a suitable rigging process for the animators to use.
“In Maya,” explains Vancouver animation supervisor David Burgess, “the Queen would start in her pile shape. We had hundreds of bricks hidden under the floor, which we called her ‘bucket of bricks’ – anything that you needed was there. Queen shapes that were approved by the director would be added to the animation library, so animators could access these complex shapes quickly. The rigging team also invented special tools so we could swap brick IDS and colours on the fly as we animated. That was super helpful in making her constant shapeshifting possible.”
Lead animator in Vancouver, Valerie Morrison, who worked on Queen Watevra Wa’nabi, says the character was a much more timeconsuming one to animate than a traditional LEGO minifig, but also gave the team a lot of creative opportunities. “Just by nature of the fact that we’re building with
“IT FEELS CLICK-Y, LIKE YOU’RE REALLY BUILDING WITH LEGO”
Valerie Morrison, lead animator, Animal Logic
bricks, it took a little longer to pose. We used some of the designs that were from the toy and were pre-designed for the movie, but then artists would also come up with their own ideas for different shapes she could make and different things she could do.”
“In fact,” adds Morrison, “most of the humanoid-looking shapes were created by the animators. Figuring out how to get her from one shape to morph into the other was a lot of fun. We did a lot of tests on that to figure out how to make it feel click-y and fun, like you’re really building with LEGO.”
Animal Logic had new animation challenges for Peter Rabbit, mainly related to how the design and behaviour of the CG rabbits would be realised. Initially it was imagined that the characters would be more anatomically correct. One limitation that was immediately identified, however, is that real rabbits have eyes on the sides of their heads – making it harder to produce anthropomorphic characters that would connect with audiences.
In early ‘audition’ pieces to establish the style of animation, these initial designs were not resonating, but when Animal Logic produced some animation tests that were more expressive, and that also matched the vocal delivery of main voice actor James Corden, the director Will Gluck, Coleman relates, said, “‘That’s it! That’s my character. I can see him now.’ It was a long process to get there but that’s how animation development happens sometimes. It’s really the same as acting.”
Discover more at animallogic.com