Sony Pictures Animation and Sony Pictures Imageworks have teamed with the educational platform Yellowbrick for “This Is Animation,” a free online course that introduces learners of all ages to the art and industry of animated filmmaking. Hosted by animation director Kris Pearn (The Willoughbys, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2), the course includes five modules that allow users to explore the core pillars of animation storytelling. “Animation is one of the most collaborative of all storytelling mediums,” said Pearn. “This course is about pulling back the curtain, showing the magic behind the process, and inviting new voices to explore careers - both artistic and non-artistic - in this incredible industry.” Check out a teaser for the course now: The course breaks down the animation process into five modules: The Pipeline – A big-picture look at the animation production process, including pre-production, production, and post-production. Learners will gain a comprehensive understanding of the different stages involved in bringing an animated project to life. The Idea – Explores how creative concepts evolve into stories. This module delves into the art of storytelling, focusing on the development of compelling narratives, themes, and character arcs specifically tailored for animation. The Hero – Craft compelling animated characters. Learners will discover the secrets behind creating memorable and relatable characters, exploring aspects such as personality, design, and animation techniques that breathe life into these creations. The World – Design immersive animated environments. This module takes learners on a journey through the art of world-building, focusing on the creation of visually stunning and believable settings that transport audiences to the heart of the story. Pulling It All Together – Showcase the many career paths in animation beyond art, including production management, business affairs, marketing, finance, and talent acquisition. This module highlights the wide range of career paths that exist in the animation industry. “This Is Animation” also features hands-on experiential learning, allowing participants to design their own rudimentary animated character and bring it to life through interactive exercises. “At Sony Pictures Animation, we believe great stories can come from anywhere,” said Kristine Belson and Damien de Froberville, presidents of Sony Pictures Animation. “Through this course, we want to inspire a new generation of talent and show that you don’t need to be an artist to work in animation - there truly is a place for everyone who possesses a love for the artform and the drive to be a part of it.” “At Sony Pictures Imageworks, we’ve always been proud to foster some of the most innovative talent in animation and VFX,” added Michelle Grady, president of Sony Pictures Imageworks. “We’re excited to launch this groundbreaking free online course, which not only demystifies the animation process but also empowers aspiring animators to explore their creativity and take their first steps into this dynamic field.” Users can now enroll in “This Is Animation” with an email address. Those who complete the course will receive a certificate of completion. Source: Sony Pictures Animation Journalist, antique shop owner, aspiring gemologist—L'Wren brings a diverse perspective to animation, where every frame reflects her varied passions.

Adapting the iconic, block-based design aesthetic of Mojang’s beloved Minecraft videogame into the hit feature film comedy adventure, The Minecraft Movie, posed an enormous number of hurdles for director Jared Hess and Oscar-winning Production VFX Supervisor Dan Lemmon. Tasked with helping translate the iconic pixelated world into something cinematically engaging, while remaining true to its visual DNA, was Wētā FX, who delivered 450 VFX shots on the film. And two of their key leads on the film were VFX Supervisor Sheldon Stopsack and Animation Supervisor Kevin Estey.  But the shot count merely scratches the surface of the extensive work the studio performed. Wētā led the design and creation of The Overworld, 64 unique terrains spanning deserts, lush forests, oceans, and mountain ranges, all combined into one continuous environment, assets that were also shared with Digital Domain for their work on the 3rd act battle. Wētā also handled extensive work on the lava-filled hellscape of The Nether that involved Unreal Engine for early representations used in previs, scene scouting, and onset during principal photography, before refining the environment during post-production. They also dressed The Nether with lava, fire, and torches, along with atmospherics and particulate like smoke, ash, and embers. But wait… there’s more! The studio’s Art Department, working closely with Hess, co-created the look and feel of all digital characters in the film. For Malgosha’s henchmen, the Piglins, Wētā designed and created 12 different variants, all with individual characteristics and personalities. They also designed sheep, bees, pandas, zombies, skeletons, and lovable wolf Dennis. Many of these characters were provided to other vendors for their work on the film. Needless to say, the studio truly became a “Master Builder” on the show. The film is based on the hugely popular game Minecraft, first released by Sweden’s Mojang Studios in 2011 and purchased by Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014, which immerses players in a low-res, pixelated “sandbox” simulation where they can use blocks to build entire worlds.  Here's the final trailer: In a far-ranging interview, Stopsack and Estey shared with AWN a peek into their creative process, from early design exploration to creation of an intricate practical cloak for Malgosha and the use of Unreal Engine for previs, postvis, and real-time onset visualization. Dan Sarto: The film is filled with distinct settings and characters sporting various “block” styled features. Can you share some of the work you did on the environments, character design, and character animation? Sheldon Stopsack: There's, there's so much to talk about and truth to be told, if you were to touch on everything, we would probably need to spend the whole day together.  Kevin Estey: Sheldon and I realized that when we talk about the film, either amongst ourselves or with someone else, we could just keep going, there are so many stories to tell. DS: Well, start with The Overworld and The Nether. How did the design process begin? What did you have to work with? SS: Visual effects is a tricky business, you know. It's always difficult. Always challenging. However, Minecraft stood out to us as not your usual quote unquote standard visual effects project, even though as you know, there is no standard visual effects project because they're all somehow different. They all come with their own creative ideas, inspirations, and challenges. But Minecraft, right from the get-go, was different, simply by the fact that when you first consider the idea of making such a live-action movie, you instantly ask yourself, “How do we make this work? How do we combine these two inherently very, very different but unique worlds?” That was everyone’s number one question. How do we land this? Where do we land this? And I don't think that any of us really had an answer, including our clients, Dan Lemmon [Production VFX Supervisor] and Jared Hess [the film’s director]. Everyone was really open for this journey. That's compelling for us, to get out of our comfort zone. It makes you nervous because there are no real obvious answers. KE: Early on, we seemed to thrive off these kinds of scary creative challenges. There were lots of question marks. We had many moments when we were trying to figure out character designs. We had a template from the game, but it was an incredibly vague, low-resolution template. And there were so many ways that we could go. But that design discovery throughout the project was really satisfying.  DS: Game adaptations are never simple. There usually isn’t much in the way of story. But with Minecraft, from a visual standpoint, how did you translate low res, block-styled characters into something entertaining that could sustain a 100-minute feature film? SS: Everything was a question mark. Using the lava that you see in The Nether as one example, we had beautiful concept art for all our environments, The Overworld and The Nether, but those concepts only really took you this far. They didn’t represent the block shapes or give you a clear answer of like how realistic some of those materials, shapes and structures would be. How organic would we go? All of this needed to be explored. For the lava, we had stylized concept pieces, with block shaped viscosity as it flowed down. But we spent months with our effects team, and Dan and Jared, just riffing on ideas. We came full circle, with the lava ending up being more realistic, a naturally viscous liquid based on real physics. And the same goes with the waterfall that you see in the Overworld.  The question is, how far do we take things into the true Minecraft representation of things? How much do we scale back a little bit and ground ourselves in reality, with effects we’re quite comfortable producing as a company? There's always a tradeoff to find that balance of how best to combine what’s been filmed, the practical sets and live-action performances, with effects. Where’s the sweet spot? What's the level of abstraction? What's honest to the game? As much as some call Minecraft a simple game, it isn't simple, right? It's incredibly complex. It's got a set of rules and logic to the world building process within the game that we had to learn, adapt, and honor in many ways. When our misfits first arrive and we have these big vistas and establishing shots, when you really look at it, you, you recognize a lot of the things that we tried to adapt from the game. There are different biomes, like the Badlands, which is very sand stoney; there's the Woodlands, which is a lush environment with cherry blossom trees; you’ve got the snow biome with big mountains in the background. Our intent was to honor the game. KE: I took a big cue from a lot of the early designs, and particularly the approach that Jared liked for the characters and to the design in general, which was maintaining the stylized, blocky aesthetic, but covering them in realistic flesh, fur, things that were going to make them appear as real as possible despite the absolutely unreal designs of their bodies. And so essentially, it was squared skeleton… squarish bones with flesh and realistic fur laid over top. We tried various things, all extremely stylized. The Creepers are a good example. We tried all kinds of ways for them to explode. Sheldon found a great reference for a cat coughing up a hairball. He was nice to censor the worst part of it, but those undulations in the chest and ribcage… Jared spoke of the Creepers being basically tragic characters that only wanted to be loved, to just be close to you. But sadly, whenever they did, they’d explode. So, we experimented with a lot of different motions of how they’d explode. DS: Talk about the process of determining how these characters would move. None seem to have remotely realistic proportions in their limbs, bodies, or head size. KE: There were a couple things that Jared always seemed to be chasing. One was just something that would make him laugh. Of course, it had to sit within the bounds of how a zombie might move, or a skeleton might move, as we were interpreting the game. But the main thing was just, was it fun and funny? I still remember one of the earliest gags they came up with in mocap sessions, even before I even joined the show, was how the zombies get up after they fall over. It was sort of like a tripod, where its face and feet were planted and its butt shoots up in the air. After a lot of experimentation, we came up with basic personality types for each character. There were 12 different types of Piglins. The zombies were essentially like you're coming home from the pub after a few too many pints and you're just trying to get in the door, but you can't find your keys. Loose, slightly inebriated movement. The best movement we found for the skeletons was essentially like an old man with rigid limbs and lack of ligaments that was chasing kids off his lawn. And so, we created this kind of bible of performance types that really helped guide performers on the mocap stage and animators later on. SS: A lot of our exploration didn’t stick. But Jared was the expert in all of this. He always came up with some quirky last-minute idea.  KE: My favorite from Jared came in the middle of one mocap shoot. He walked up to me and said he had this stupid idea. I said OK, go on. He said, what if Malgosha had these two little pigs next to her, like Catholic alter boys [the thurifers], swinging incense [a thurible]. Can we do that? I talked to our stage manager, and we quickly put together a temporary prop for the incense burners. And we got two performers who just stood there. What are they going to do? Jared said, “Nothing. Just stand there and swing. I think it would look funny.” So, that’s what we did.  We dubbed them the Priesty Boys. And they are there throughout the film. That was amazing about Jared. He was always like, let's just try it, see if it works. Otherwise ditch it. DS: Tell me about your work on Malgosha. And I also want to discuss your use of Unreal Engine and the previs and postvis work.  SS: For Malgosha as a character, our art department did a phenomenal job finding the character design at the concept phase. But it was a collective effort. So many contributors were involved in her making. And I'm not just talking about the digital artists here on our side. It was a joint venture of different people having different explorations and experiments. It started off with the concept work as a foundation, which we mocked up with 3D sketches before building a model. But with Malgosha, we also had the costume department on the production side building this elaborate cloak. Remember, that cloak kind of makes 80, 85% of her appearance. It's almost like a character in itself, the way we utilized it. And the costume department built this beautiful, elaborate, incredibly intricate, practical version of it that we intended to use on set for the performer to wear. It ended up being too impractical because it was too heavy. But it was beautiful. So, while we didn't really use it on set, it gave us something physically to kind of incorporate into our digital version. KE: Alan Henry is the motion performer who portrayed her on set and on the mocap stage. I've known him for close to 15 years. I started working with him on The Hobbit films. He was a stunt performer who eventually rolled into doing motion capture with us on The Hobbit. He’s an incredible actor and absolutely hilarious and can adapt to any sort of situation. He’s so improvisational. He came up with an approach to Malgosha very quickly. Added a limp so that she felt decrepit, leaning on the staff, adding her other arm as kind of like a gimp arm that she would point and gesture with.   Even though she’s a blocky character, her anatomy is very much a biped, with rounder limbs than the other Piglins. She's got hooves, is somewhat squarish, and her much more bulky mass in the middle was easier to manipulate and move around. Because she would have to battle with Steve in the end, she had to have a level of agility that even some of the Piglins didn't have. DS: Did Unreal Engine come into play with her?  SS: Unreal was used all the way through the project. Dan Lemmon and his team early on set up their own virtual art department to build representations of the Overworld and the Nether within the context of Unreal. We and Sony Imageworks tried to provide recreations of these environments that were then used within Unreal to previsualize what was happening on set during shooting of principal photography. And that's where our mocap and on-set teams were coming into play. Effects provided what we called the Nudge Cam. It was a system to do real-time tracking using a stereo pair of Basler computer vision cameras that were mounted onto the sides of the principal camera. We provided the live tracking that was then composited in real time with the Unreal Engine content that all the vendors had provided. It was a great way of utilizing Unreal to give the camera operators or DOP, even Jared, a good sense of what we would actually shoot. It gave everyone a little bit of context for the look and feel of what you could actually expect from these scenes.  Because we started this journey with Unreal having onset in mind, we internally decided, look, let's take this further. Let's take this into post-production as well. What would it take to utilize Unreal for shot creation? And it was really exclusively used on the Nether environment. I don’t want to say we used it for matte painting replacement. We used it more for say, let's build this extended environment in Unreal. Not only use it as a render engine with this reasonably fast turnaround but also use it for what it's good at: authoring things, quickly changing things, moving columns around, manipulating things, dressing them, lighting them, and rendering them. It became sort of a tool that we used in place of a traditional matte painting for the extended environments. KE: Another thing worth mentioning is we were able to utilize it on our mocap stage as well during the two-week shoot with Jared and crew. When we shoot on the mocap stage, we get a very simple sort of gray shaded diagnostic grid. You have your single-color characters that sometimes are textured, but they’re fairly simple without any context of environment. Our special projects team was able to port what we usually see in Giant, the software we use on the mocap stage, into Unreal, which gave us these beautifully lit environments with interactive fire and atmosphere. And Jared and the team could see their movie for the first time in a rough, but still very beautiful rough state. That was invaluable. DS: If you had to key on anything, what would say with the biggest challenges for your teams on the film? You're laughing. I can hear you thinking, “Do we have an hour?”  KE: Where do you begin?  SS: Exactly. It's so hard to really single one out. And I struggle with that question every time I've been asked that question. KE: I’ll start.  I've got a very simple practical answer and then a larger one, something that was new to us, kind of similar to what we were just talking about. The simple practical one is the Piglins square feet with no ankles. It was very tough to make them walk realistically. Think of the leg of a chair. How do you make that roll and bank and bend because there is no joint? There are a lot of Piglins walking on surfaces and it was a very difficult conundrum to solve. It took a lot of hard work from our motion edit team and our animation team to get those things walking realistically. You know, it’s doing that simple thing that you don't usually pay attention to. So that was one reasonably big challenge that is often literally buried in the shadows. The bigger one was something that was new to me. We often do a lot of our previs and postvis in-house and then finish the shots. And just because of circumstances and capacity, we did the postvis for the entire final battle, but we ended up sharing the sequence with Digital Domain, who did an amazing job completing some of the stuff on the Battlefield we did post on. For me personally, I've never experienced not finishing what I started. But it was also really rewarding to see how well the work we had put in was honored by DD when they took it over.   SS: I think the biggest challenge and the biggest achievement that I'm most proud of is really ending up with something that was well received by the wider audience. Of creating these two worlds, this sort of abstract adaptation of the Minecraft game and combining it with live-action. That was the achievement for me. That was the biggest challenge. We were all nervous from day one. And we continued to be nervous up until the day the movie came out. None of us really knew how it ultimately would be received. The fact that it came together and was so well received is a testament to everyone doing a fantastic job. And that's what I'm incredibly proud of. Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.

Director Kris Pearn and a host of key artists deliver this online training. Sony Pictures Animation and Sony Pictures Imageworks along with Yellowbrick have launched a free educational resource called THIS IS ANIMATION! It breaks down the process of animation using a whole bunch of real-world examples from Sony projects, including Into The Spider-Verse. You can sign up for free here: yellowbrick.co/sony The post ‘This Is Animation!’ from Sony Pictures Animation and Sony Pictures Imageworks lets you learn the craft appeared first on befores & afters.

Bringing Mojang’s beloved blocky sandbox videogame to the big screen posed a wide range of creative and technical challenges for Sony Pictures Imageworks. In this in-depth conversation, VFX Supervisor Seth Maury breaks down the studio’s work on Jared Hess’ hit The comedy adventure from Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures stars Jack Black, Danielle Brooks, Sebastian Hansen, Jason Momoa, Jennifer Coolidge, and Emma Myers. Hess directs; Roy Lee, Jon Berg, Mary Parent, Cale Boyter, Momoa, Jill Messick, Torfi Frans Ólafsson and Vu Bui produce, with Todd Hallowell, Jay Ashenfelter, Kayleen Walters, Brian Mendoza and Jon Spaihts serving as executive producers. Oscar winner Dan Lemmon serves as the production VFX supervisor. The film is based on the hugely popular game Minecraft, first released by Sweden’s Mojang Studios in 2011 and purchased by Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014, which, immerses players in a low-res, pixelated “sandbox” simulation where they can use blocks to build entire worlds.  Here's the final trailer: The studio handled environments and character animation for a number of key scenes in the movie, including Welcome to Midport Village, the attack on Midport Village, the Elytra wingsuit canyon chase, the diamond mines, Woodland Mansion – including the zombie baby atop a chicken fight and Endermen showdown. They also handled the Nitwit work where Jennifer Coolidge’s Vice Principal Marlene hit a Nitwit with her car… the romantic dinner they shared afterwards, and the scene in her office. “In the diamond mines, Garrett wants to take a bit of a detour because he wants to sneak some diamonds into his pocket as he needs the money,” Maury says. “Then the piglins chase him through the mine very briefly. We also did the creeper farm stuff where the big Great Hog and some piglins were chasing Henry, Garrett and Steve before it all blows up.” Maury says that the production relied on a combination of boards, previs, stuntvis, and live-action plates to build sequences. One example is the wingsuit chase. “They had boarded it, prevised it, then shot it based on the previs,” he explains. “They had Jack and Jason and some stunt guys for stuff that was a little more problematic physically to do. They shot plates for all of that.” Imageworks took those plates and roughed out the animation. “We were basically mocking up or doing postvis for those shots… moving cameras through the environments with those plates so that we had something that was more representative of what the final shots were going to look like.” While not fully animated at that stage, the postvis helped inform the cut. Maury notes, “It’s so rough that it’s not like, ‘Oh look at all the time I spent animating this character.’ It was like, ‘Hey look, we got this working so that you could say it’s moving through the environment in a real way.’” The goal was to create animation-ready sequences that could maintain spatial consistency. “You don’t want the actors going 500 kilometers an hour here and now going 20 kilometers an hour over there,” Maury elaborates. “Why does this feel weird? Because the clouds are suddenly blurry on one and not in the other.” To help populate complex sequences, Imageworks used motion capture for background animation - especially for piglins during the village raid. “We were lucky to have Derek Tannahill as a supervisor on the show,” Maury says. “He had access to the mocap suit. So a lot of the piglins in the background are actually Derek. A lot of the villagers are actually Derek too.” Maury adds, “I think there were three pigs that were kind of medium-sized, which would be the closest to a human. There were three smaller ones and three that were a little bit bigger. And then there was a couple that were just really, really, really big.” Rather than guessing what would be needed later, they mocapped a wide batch of piglin behaviors in advance, like “Do one as a heavy pig, do one as a light pig, do one as a twitchy pig, do one as, you know, a really, really frantic pig.” Those were then applied to characters of different sizes to keep variation high and repetition low. “If you’ve got a guy swinging his arm, then another guy swinging his arm in the exact same way, it’s obvious,” he says. “So even if we had a great take, we didn’t want to overuse it.” For stunt-heavy scenes like the Midport piglin raid, the production had actors perform full choreography ahead of filming. According to Maury, “They shot the whole thing with stunt actors in a fake version of the set at the proper scale and size. It was really great. So when they actually shot the sequence itself on set with the real actors, we had that choreography to work from.” Maury says they focused on matching the stunt choreography with CG characters. “If the stunt actors did something that looked great, there’s no need to replace them. We just needed to find a way to get the piglins to fit in the same space.” Of course, blocky piglin characters take up more room than humans. “If you’ve got two humans side by side and then you put in a piglin that’s twice as wide, sometimes you had to copy the performance but move them over so that they would fit,” he says. “It’s like trying to put a bunch of cars on an elevator - they're so big they can’t fit in that space. So, you copy the motion, but sometimes you have to shift them over a bit to make it work.” Maury continues, “Those shots were pretty straightforward in the sense that they had practical actors in those costumes, right? So, we were doing head replacements on those characters because those costumes were quite large. You didn't put a little tiny Beetlejuice head on this big body. But, there's not a lot of guesswork in there as far as what needs to go into the shot. It's put the heads on the characters and then if they want more characters in the background, you add them in the same kind of style as they are in the practical costumes.” The infamous Garrett - baby zombie fight atop a chicken drew attention from early trailers - and required a very specific approach. “That was all keyframe animation except for the characters outside,” Maury says. “You can’t mocap a baby with really, really short limbs and a giant head riding a chicken.” Still, the production had live-action reference. “They shot this sequence again with the stuntvis team,” Maury explains, “then boarded it, shot it as best they could with the actors and stunt performers they had, and then gave us plates.” Using that as a base, the team refined it for animation. He adds, “It was just a lot of keyframe work. You look at it and go, ‘Okay, what’s the funniest, silliest thing that we can have in here?’” Creating motion that felt faithful to the game’s aesthetic while viewable on screen required experimentation. “For example,” he says, “trying to get the Great Hog to move in a way that felt aggressive… it didn’t have the body structure to move fast. That was a bit of an experiment.” The Endermen posed similar challenges. “In the game, they’re very static,” Maury notes. “They don’t bend their legs. So, there was a lot of back and forth. Do the limbs bend? Do they not bend? Do we have them take real steps?” Maury goes on to explain that character proportions created their own physical logic. “Imagine my head is this big [he gestures]. If I turn that too fast, it’s not going to feel like it weighs 40 kilograms. It’s going to feel like Styrofoam. So, we slowed stuff down.” These kinds of adjustments helped translate the game’s visual shorthand into something legible on film. Maury and his team had to figure out how to get needed weight and feel without the characters seeming too stiff. In the game, they slide almost like chess pieces. A number of characters, particularly villagers, were shot in partial costume and composited later. “They had their arms like this, with blocky stuff on them,” Maury gestures again. “We were doing head replacements because the costumes were quite large.” In some cases, the studio extended background crowds digitally. “They might have only had six costumes available for any given shot,” he continues. “If they wanted more characters, we’d add them in the same style in CG. That’s not overly complex - you’re populating a background to feel natural.” He goes on to say that all animals were fully CG. “There wasn’t anyone in an animal costume. They were added in after.” With so many characters and objects flying through the air, matching the logic of physical motion was essential. If cameras show characters flying past things really fast and then stop on a dime, they start to feel fake. “We tried to keep the camera behaving with the same rules as the flying characters. It has to feel like it’s within the same physical constraints.” That required close coordination between layout and animation. “Our initial blocking passes for flying sequences really helped because we didn’t want to reinvent each one of those shots later.” Looking back, Maury says one of the most rewarding aspects of the show was the team itself. “It might have been the longest show I’ve worked on. But because of the timing - the streaming pullback, the strikes - a lot of VFX folks I hadn’t worked with in years became available. So, I ended up working with Derek and a bunch of leads and artists I already knew.” “It wasn’t just my department,” he continues. “It was lighting, comp. The show was really stacked. And I got to work with people I’d normally only see in the coffee line.” Maury also got to enjoy the film with his family. “It was the first time I went to the theater with my kids for something I worked on. They’re Minecraft fans. That was great.” As for the reception, he’s measured. “It’s a fun, silly film. And if you laugh at it because it’s silly, then great. But it’s not Shawshank Redemption. Why would someone review it like it was going to be? Sometimes you just want to go [to the movies] and have a good time.” Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.

Plus, Sony Pictures Imageworks on ‘cubifying’ characters and environments, making Jack Black and Jason Momoa fly, and dealing with an intense array of different hair types on greenscreens. Yes, the internet has gone wild over *that* scene in Jared Hess’ A Minecraft Movie, when a baby zombie rides on the back of a chicken—the chicken jockey. Behind the visual effects of that sequence was Sony Pictures Imageworks, working with production visual effects supervisor Dan Lemmon.  “I remember early on looking at that scene and going, ‘This is the one the fans are going to love. The kids are going to love this,’” shares Imageworks visual effects supervisor Seth Maury. “That scene started with storyboards. Then we worked with Dan to create little animated vignettes of the characters. For the baby zombie and the chicken, we recreated one of the boards, which was the baby zombie falling out of the box onto the chicken. The director saw it and had such a good reaction to it, so we knew we were onto something that was energetic and fun.” During production, the scene—which takes place in a wrestling ring in the Woodland Mansion against Jason Momoa’s Garrett ‘The Garbage Man’ Garrison character—was filmed in a three-walled set. Imageworks extended that environment and then tackled the character animation (Wētā FX was involved in designing the characters and co-ordinating a motion capture shoot in their mocap facility). Says Maury about the final results: “I just remember looking at that one and thinking, ‘Wow, this looks great and people are going to love this,’ but you don’t know until you let it out in the wild what’s going to happen.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jared Hess (@iamjaredhess) Finding the Minecraft look In that chicken jockey fight, and in all of Imageworks’ visual effects for the film, the studio had to incorporate a specific ‘look’ to its characters and environments. It’s something Maury called ‘cubify’. “We had to work out, what does a cubified character look like and what does a cubified environment look like? The rules for the environment were that anything that was a hard surface was cubic and anything that was a fluid followed normal fluid rules. We spent months on what a cubic cloud looks like, for example. How square are they on the bottom? What kind of vaporous surface do they have on top? It had to look photoreal, but it had to look cubified. And my son came back from seeing the movie and he’s like, ‘I didn’t look at the clouds at all.’ And I laughed. It’s like, well, of course not, right? It’s a background element. It’s just meant to be something subconscious.” “The characters were much, much more tricky,” adds Maury. “Until you start to see them in 3D and you see it turn and you see it move, only then you can understand, ‘How square is a square head?’” For example, the character Chungus, a general Piglin in Malgosha’s army who is voiced by the director, presented several ‘cubify’ challenges to Imageworks. “We thought, what does it mean to cubify your tricep muscle or your back muscle?” notes Maury. “We would start to give it edged shapes, but it still had to have some kind of anatomical detail. If you pull back from a macro level, it looks cubic, but the more you push in, there is some organic quality to it.” When Chungus leads a raid on the village, Imageworks also had to deliver shots of many villager characters. Their stand-out qualities, aside from their squarish heads, included largely expressionless faces. “The original brief from Jared was that they were less emotive than more,” advises Maury. “They didn’t have a ton of expressions, and their emotions came out through their body. We still built a proper facial system for all of them and then had to work out, well, how far do we push it? Do they smile, for example? In the end, most of their emoting came with eyebrows and just some small smiles and little frowns.” “I was on set at one point talking to the choreographer and I said, ‘Well, what is their motivation? What are they meant to be doing?’ And she said that Jared’s brief was that they should be like chickens with their head cut off. They’re jumping around, they’re a little bit mindless, but they have some kind of intelligence. So, we started with the body motion and then we had to translate that same idea to the head.” Integrating live-action and CG For scenes involving live-action characters like Steve (Jack Black) and Garrett (Momoa), production filmed primarily on partial sets surrounded by greenscreen or bluescreen. Integrate the live-action actors with their many CG companions involved careful attention to matching the on-set lighting, notes Maury, who praises his lighters and compositors.  “We came up with two light rigs,” says Maury. “We had an HDRI from on set and we would use that to match the set lighting exactly. The other light rig that we had was a daytime light rig which was essentially a sun and a sky dome. Any time we had to integrate or put CG into live-action, the team had both of those going. We would typically use the on set HDRI rig in the middle of the set to make sure that everything integrated, since there would be lights coming from multiple directions. But the further you got out radially from the center of the action, we let it fall off into the daytime rig so that your brain still felt like it was photoreal.” Another essential part of that integration effort was dealing with live-action actors who just happened to mostly have quite fuzzy hair. The keying and rotoscoping involved was meticulous. “We paid a ton of attention to it and we heard as well that the studio was very keen on hair edges,” recalls Maury. “There were scenes with the villages where the performers were wearing a robe and a gray skull cap on with some tracking markers on it so that we could place the head, and they might walk behind Dawn (Danielle Brooks) who has very curly hair. Also, because all the characters were heavily rim lit, you picked up every little bright hair. Simply, it was a ton of keying work and a ton of roto work, and, at the end of the day, painting back hair by hair if necessary.”  Then there was Garrett’s pink jacket with all of its tassels, as Maury describes. “This was the thing that kept me up at night. The jacket has got all these tassels hanging off of it and he’s flying on the greenscreens and those tassels get lost in the motion blur in an instant. Many, many times we were painting those back or we had a CG version of them, which meant we’d cut them off along the bottom of the arm and replace them with CG.” Making Jack Black and Jason Momoa fly While evading a group of Piglins, Steve, Garrett and Henry (Sebastian Hansen) narrowly escape by launching themselves off a cliff edge using elytra wingsuits. Mid-flight, they are chased through canyons by a series of flying Ghasts, which eventually meet some fiery ends.  View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jack Black (@jackblack) Imageworks began its work on the flying scenes with an Unreal Engine scene and previs from production. “We had two canyons we needed to build,” outlines Maury. “Canyon A was modeled after the American Southwest and looked a little like the Grand Canyon. We found some photos of the Grand Canyon and sculpted the silhouettes of what it looked like to go down into the gorge, and we copied the staining patterns and the color banding. Then they go into Canyon B, which was much more of a limestone look. There’s some mountains in China that we used for reference there. The effects team and the environment team did an amazing job putting all that together.” The actors were filmed on wire rigs against greenscreen. “Dan Lemmon’s view was that, if your characters are going to be anywhere foreground to midground, you want them on a plate,” states Maury. “When they’re midground to background, it’s a digi-double. What we did a lot as well, because the rigs that they were wearing were either bulky or didn’t allow them to move as if they were really flying, was limb replacement. We might cut them off at the waist and replace the legs and then do a cloth sim. One of the trickiest things there was lighting interaction. When you’re on a greenscreen, it’s hard to get all the live movement that will sell—the rolling and tumbling and all that as they’re flying—so a lot of that we did in 2D later on to give it some dynamic movement.” The post How the crazy chicken jockey scene in ‘A Minecraft Movie’ was made appeared first on befores & afters.

by NAOMI GOLDMAN How can visual effects practitioners best collaborate to create a successful work dynamic and production?  How do you embrace new technology to enhance the pipeline and visual storytelling process? And what are lessons learned that other VFX teams can employ? Last week, VES participated in FMX, the 29th edition of FMX/Film & Media Exchange in Stuttgart, Germany, and hosted a live discussion on Award-Winning VFX Teams.  In extending that dynamic conversation, we are proud to showcase another VES panel with three outstanding VES Award-winning Visual Effects Supervisors.  They came together to share their insights into the talent, teamwork and technology it takes to create and nurture successful VFX teams. Lending their voices to this dynamic conversation: moderator Rob Legato, ASC, five time VES Award-winning Visual Effects Supervisor and Cinematographer and recipient of the VES Award for Creative Excellence; Michael Lasker, Visual Effects Supervisor and Creative Director of CG Features at Sony Pictures Imageworks – whose team won the 2024 VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Feature for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse; and Alex Wang, Production Visual Effects Supervisor whose team won the 2024 VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode for The Last Of Us. “I like to hire people smarter than me and find the personality that seems like they have not been tested or given the opportunity to show the limits of their talent.” -Rob Legato Rob Legato, ASC, five time VES Award-winning Visual Effects Supervisor and Cinematographer and recipient of the VES Award for Creative Excellence. Rob Legato: What does it take to create a team that allows you to realize your vision and the director’s vision? Michael Lasker: To build a team for Across the Spider-Verse, we had to enlist a team that would collaborate in this artistically-driven environment with a very graphic aesthetic.  We were already looking at artists during our work on The Mitchells vs. the Machines. A lot of people wanted to be part of the Spider-Verse; the trick was assembling people willing to experiment and find the visual answers to any number of challenges. The final look was an exploration, as we had six total universes to figure out and 1,000 artists across departments who thrived in bringing this unique film to completion. Rob Legato: On animation projects, artists often pitch their ideas; did that happen for you? Michael Lasker, Visual Effects Supervisor and Creative Director of CG Features at Sony Pictures Imageworks – whose team won the 2024 VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Feature for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Michael Lasker: Artists pitched their ideas to directors and producers early in the visual development process. Once you get to animation, where you are infusing performance into the story, it reveals a lot of new ideas. So many times, animators will show several versions of shots in our ever-evolving process.  One of the biggest strengths of this film is that you can feel the hand of the artists in every frame. Rob Legato: Alex – Your work was maybe a more traditional approach. But when you have so many artists and vendors working on a project, do you go in with a set aesthetic vs. always looking for the next great visual? Alex Wang:  It helps to start with an IP that many artists love.  On season one (The Last Of Us), we had 18 vendors on the show who worked on more than 3,000 shots…it’s like working on a slew of feature films.  On such a big show, it’s important to involve our vendors as early as possible on prep and concepts…through conversations and on-set presence to help establish the look of the world we’re building. Alex Wang, Production Visual Effects Supervisor whose team won the 2024 VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode for The Last Of Us. Rob Legato: When I work on things, I am continually gauging who is good at what and steering shots to them where they might excel, always moving things around.  What’s your approach to allocating and managing the work? Alex Wang:  With many of our vendors, we already had a shorthand and knew where they excelled…environment, creatures, etc.  While we are often catering to strengths, we also ask what they like to do as vendors and how they approach a variety of challenges…such as making sure that the infection is grounded in what this situation would really look like. Rob Legato: In balancing who leans into their comfort zone or embraces something new, I usually get a response that creates some excitement for me to move the work forward.  And when I’m assigning something, I usually don’t pick the technique upfront, because new things invariably come up.  What’s your approach to the evolving dynamic? Michael Lasker: We’re continually evolving how we’re doing the work while it is in process.   Some tools are written from the ground up and optimized, but we always add tools to the toolset.  Early artwork if often not representative of the final, as we come to challenges from different directions and add to our naturalistic work. Alex Wang: Because this was our first season, we were establishing a foundation of what worked. From episodes 1-9, we started to develop a rhythm… the abstract nature of the infected and creature work, that got easier in later episodes. But because this is a journey across America, each episode had a different look…day, night, seasons.  So every time we solved a challenge, the next episode posed a new one. Rob Legato: What are some of the differences in working on a show vs a feature? Michael Lasker: More stylistic animated features pose different challenges.  Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and Hotel Transylvania were more traditional; in Spider-Verse, we had to throw out the efficiencies and create new ones. Coming off the first Spider-Verse, we knew they wanted something bigger and crazier.  At the start we didn’t realize every shot would be so different; once we saw the reference artwork, it started to reveal itself. Rob Legato: Alex, since your show had 18 vendors, did you create any kind of key or bible to show a standardized look? Alex Wang: A large art of my job was ensuring continuity and I divvied up the work in a way that would help ensure that.  Conceptually, the game was my bible every time I needed a reference point; there is a beautiful book of game artwork.  Between reviews, it was inspirational to get me back into that foundational mindset and excitement. Rob Legato: Since you were working during the pandemic, did that help or hurt your process? Michael Lasker:  I was working on The Mitchells vs. The Machines, and in the course of one week, we moved 600-700 artists home, got their machines up and it barely affected production; surprisingly, production even increased. We tried to send out QCs every day. Rob Legato: My work style was always to go to someone’s desk, even before IO and dailies…I like to nip issues in the bud or redirect. So during COVID, we would do online desktop reviews, which was very similar. “On such a big show [The Last of Us], it’s important to involve our vendors as early as possible on prep and concept.” -Alex Wang Alex Wang: Even with 18 vendors, I needed to make everyone feel they were working under the same umbrella. Everyone’s work got dumped into Shotgrid, vendors see things right away and I like to give feedback ASAP. If we had 1,000 finals, imagine the throughput. We needed a system that worked efficiently. Rob Legato. Do you prefer working at home or in a studio environment? Michael Lasker:  I’m the last person in LA who loves going to the office every day.  Client reviews and getting people in a sweatbox is great, but I like hallway talk and brainstorms. Rob Legato: I like to hire people smarter than me and find the personality that seems like they have not been tested or given the opportunity to show the limits of their talent. I don’t have to have all the answers – I just have to get them. Alex Wang: I invite supervisors to set to see the process and build a relationship; it’s hard to do that over Zoom. I like to harness people’s potential who have complementary skills to mine. I always tell supervisors to give me a bold version, don’t be shy. Michael Lasker: I encourage people to bring their ideas and try to make a creative, empowering environment where people can become stronger supervisors and I let people know that their cool ideas may well end up on the screen. Go too far, because we’ll learn something from it. “To build a team for Across the Spider-Verse, we had to enlist a team that would collaborate in this artistically-driven environment with a very graphic aesthetic.” -Michael Lasker Rob Legato: You are both creating things we haven’t seen before and the quality of the work is extremely high. What else is unique about your way of working? Alex Wang: What’s unique about our show is our showrunner Craig Mazin – an incredible writer and leader. On a show where the effects should be invisible, it should not take us away from the characters. He will always be the biggest champion for visual effects and made everyone who touched the show feel special. Michael Lasker: My main partner is the Head of Character Animation. On these more stylistic shows, the animation drives a lot of the style, and we needed a way for it to translate downstream.  I’m always seeking the motivation for the style. And the team at the studio just got it – having a studio behind such a huge gamble was a great collaboration. Rob Legato: Some lessons I learned early on, including a Frank Capra quote which says – at any one moment, whatever is on the screen is the movie star. So everything you’re creating and cutting is important. Any final advice? Michael Lasker: For artists out there, follow your passion and don’t let anyone slow you down. Every shot is like a painting and we try to infuse love, care and enthusiasm. Alex Wang: Stay hungry and stay humble. And don’t forget that the computer is just a tool in service to the story.