EYE OF THE WOLF

Wolfvision supervisor Eimhin Mcnamara combined 2D and 3D techniques to produce a visceral, multidimensional experience…

Originally, ‘wolfvision’ was going to be a self-contained sequence. “But as the animatic and story progressed it became clear to us that we needed to have this throughout the film,” recalls Mcnamara. “There is about three minutes and 20 seconds in total. One of my biggest challenges was trying to coordinate with everyone else. My shots were sandwiched in-between backgrounds being done by Cartoon Saloon and an overseas studio [Mélusine Productions] so I had to ensure that I had the most up-to-date assets.”

“I started off working in VR using Quill with Oculus Rift and ended up modelling some of the woods with Medium,” states Mcnamara. “That helped us pilot the initial stage of, ‘What do you want the camera to look like?’ There were some problems trying to translate the flat 2D style to the 3D environment. The mushrooms in the woods were not at all dimensional. There were a couple of things that we embellished in Blender using Grease Pencil to help bring it back on style with the main aesthetic for the film. Blender artists Daniel Pinheiro Lima and David Mcdermott were a great help for what I needed to do.”

Typically, fully animated 2D storyboards are transferred into 3D. “We did it the opposite way,” explains Mcnamara, “whereby, we would do quite complicated nuanced 3D work and render it all in 2D, so we had these 2D plates in the end that the compositing team would stack within Nuke.” The two parallel pipelines were created as the forest and town were treated differently. “We did use some shortcuts in terms of baking lighting into some of the town setups because they’re more graphically styled, so I built diorama sets in After Effects.”