Scared Shrekless

Well, what’s a Halloween without our adorable green ogre and his spooky friends? So we made “Scared Shrekless”, a Halloween TV special that was aired on NBC on Oct 28, 2010. The story takes place in Lord Farquaad’s haunted castle where Shrek challenges to spend the night telling scary stories. The last one to be scared would be called the King of Halloween. So Gingy goes first with what he claims to be a *true* story – “Bride of Gingy”. Then Puss and Donkey team up to tell what happened in the “Boots Motel” and finally Shrek comes up with “Shreksorcist”! No points for guessing who won the contest.

On the technology front one of the big changes that happened in Dreamworks sometime before the beginning of this project was the transition to a new pipeline. They significantly overhauled their previous pipeline and added a new layer upon it that enabled us to create work with Assets more efficiently. All tools were updated to be compliant with the new pipeline and the department workflows had changed accordingly. Now it was our turn to start using all of that in “Scared Shrekless”. So a bunch of us were sent for training to Dreamworks Glendale for about six weeks. I must admit, it gives a great sense of pleasure and pride to pass through the arch at the entrance of the campus and have the opportunity to meet all the incredibly talented people responsible for making great movies!

Although I was primarily an FX TD on this show, I was given an additional responsibility to setup and manage Crowds. There were on only two shots in the whole show that needed crowds and since we didn’t have a dedicated Crowds TD onsite, they initially thought of doing it in FX. But while I was getting trained in US they asked me to see if it was possible to learn and set up Crowds. I was pretty excited about the opportunity because after a long time I would be working with characters again. At that time, Allen Stetson was the Head of Crowds for Shrek 4 and he was really kind to take off some time from his busy schedule and guide me through the Crowds setup.

Overall another great experience and lots of learning. The show bagged 3 Annie award nominations – Best Animated Television Production and 2 nominations for Character Animation in a Television Production. The nominees for the latter were animators from DDU and I’m sure they must have got goose bumps sitting in the award ceremony.

Merry Madagascar

The first show going out of Dreamworks Dedicated Unit(DDU) – Merry Madagascar, a Christmas TV Special that was first aired in NBC on Nov 17, 2009.

The show was still in the early stages of production when I joined so I was lucky to get time to sink in to the FX TD role. The biggest hurdle for anyone joining Dreamworks is getting acquainted with its proprietary pipeline, software and workflow methodologies. With the exception of couple of departments the whole studio used software they have been continuously researching and developing for a long time. FX was one of those few departments that used “Maya” although to a limited extent which was comforting in a way that there was something that sounded familiar to me in the world of unknowns. Another comforting fact was that pretty much everyone in the studio were in the same boat as far as the understanding of the pipeline went. So I wasn’t the only dumbo in the group and we all had to crack the nut together.

One of the things that clearly stood out was Dreamworks’ honest and highly optimistic efforts to groom the team and prepare it for their projects although it isn’t technically a part of their company. They stressed on bringing in the same work culture as their US studios, tried to give us the same kind of facilities and environment to the extent possible and also follow the same training methods used in US. To make this happen they moved some of their best creative, technical and production people to India to form the leadership team. They also got the trainers from US for on-site training.

As for my part in this project there isn’t really a lot to talk about. It was mostly a learning phase and really asking a lot of questions, learning new stuff and trouble shooting issues. Now I know what a particles and volumes are, what are they used for. Also got to learn some rendering concepts and techniques like rasterization, shading, shadows, cut-outs, depth maps etc. Working with the render farm – monitoring, optimizing and troubleshooting renders deployed on the farm. I also got to execute a shot that needed an artistic non-linear motion blur effect.

When it finally got over with Jeffrey’s final approval there was a great sense of achievement all around and it definitely raised the hopes of Dreamworks to produce more shows in India and perhaps triggering a new phase of the Indian Animation Industry.

TD @ Dreamworks Unit, Technicolor India.

Hurray! A New job with the “Dream Team” 🙂

So after three good years at Prana, I moved to Dreamworks Animation that recently opened its new unit in Bangalore as an FX TD. Many of my friends and ex-colleagues were surprised about my switch from Character TD to an FX TD because I was never ever involved in FX work as long as anyone could remember. But things work little differently at DW from what one would normally think an FX TD would do. As an FX TD I “support” the FX dept and don’t really do shot work. So there is no immediate requirement to know about particles, fluids etc. although knowing it certainly helps solve issues related to those elements quickly. However the general idea of a Dept TD in Dreamworks is a person who has the ability to investigate issues and find the solutions using his general aptitude and logical reasoning. Scripting skills do come in handy in this process and the more experience one has the better.

As far as I’m concerned, it is a huge challenge and there will be many new things to learn and a totally new domain to explore. Also bring a TD gives maximum exposure to the Dreamworks pipeline that has evolved over years and known to be one of the best in the industry. On the flip side, it would make me drift away from my profile as a Character TD but I believe it is the best opportunity for me to get into the pipeline design aspect of the production and aspire to bring both experiences together and build a stronger skillset.

Delhi-6

When Jumanji released in 1995, I was doing my pre-university and like others I was eager to start thinking seriously about what I’ll do with the rest of my life. With that in mind I attended a “career councelling fair” where a certain multimedia institute showed a small segment of Jumanji to attract students to join their course which would eventually lead them to work in Jumanji-2 perhaps :). Though I had other plans for my career at that time, I was very impressed to know that all those animals were computer generated.

Fast forward to 2008 and I’m actually involved in creating a photorealistic CG monkey for a scene in the Bollywood movie Delhi-6. Although it was for just one scene of the movie, it gave a glimpse of what it takes to create a photorealisic CG character work. My respect to those who worked on movies like Jurassic park, King kong, Chronicles of Narnia increased manyfold.

Being one of the members of the character development team my role was to rig the monkey for realistic animation and deformation. To begin with, we had fun collecting monkey reference at the sets of Delhi-6 in Mudh Island where a monkey trainer was hired to bring his monkey. We saw bollywood biggies like Abhishek Bachan and Omprakash Mehra with their team planning and executing the scenes. After the monkey trainer arrived with his monkey, we got to work shooting pictures and videos of the monkey as it did different actions as instructed by its trainer. We also took body measurements of the monkey to get the proportions right for modeling.

One of the many challenges we faced while developing the CG monkey was to get the body volume vs fur volume right. It is tricky because the fur density varies across the body making it hard to imagine the shape and volume of the body mesh that would make the monkey look good after the fur is put on it. So we made another mesh to represent fur volume and tweaked both the inner body mesh and the fur volume mesh relative to one another untill it looked right. The fur volume mesh would not only provide a good reference for fur generation but also help animators get a visual feedback during animation in terms of the degree of fur penetration that would happen at different poses.

Once the body proportions/volume and fur volume looked good, we began planning for the rig. Watching closely at the some of the action we had captured, we identified the range of motion and some of the key poses that the monkey normally gets into and also some of the limitations – a monkey cannot stand straight comfortably without support because of the structure of the pelvic bone, and it cannot stretch its hands sideways fully because its clavicle is more aligned front-to-back rather than sideways like humans. After these points were discussed with animators the rig requirements were laid out and we finally started rigging it. Two very helpful resources for body setup were Animator friendly quadruped rigging by Zavier Solsona and Animator friendly rigging by Jason Schliefer. We dealt with most of the deformation issues using corrective shapes – before and after animation and a few even at the rendering stage to control the fur that reacts to the underlying mesh deformation.

All in all it was a very iterative process involving all departments working very closely with one another to make a single shot of a photorealistic creature – where it enters the frame, snarls at the camera and moves away – look “real”. The other monkeys in the shot were just copies of the same monkey.

So once again, I would like to thank and congratulate the team at Prana for all their efforts that went into this project.

Tinkerbell … out of pixie hollow!

TINKERBELL DVD is out and I’m all excited and pumped up to share my thoughts and experiences like everyone else at Prana Studios and Disney Toon Studios(DTS) who worked in it.

Its a wonderful movie and it makes me put everything behind and just sit back and enjoy it like any other kid. What makes this movie interesting? Firstly, it purely revolves around Tinkerbell – her origin, the character and her quest to realize her true talent and how she eventually establishes herself to be the best of her kind. Its definitely not the same “Peterpan-fighting-Captain hook” story where poor Tink is sidelined and has no words to express her feelings. Yes, I said “words”! You’ll actually hear Tink speak in this movie, for the first time ever since her appearance in 1953. She is also accompanied by her friends, each having their own unique personality and talent.  Her tinker companions – Clank, Bobble – and her cute pet mouse Cheese are very humourous. Adding depth to the story is the philosophy of changing seasons in London – called “Mainland” in fairy terms – and how fairies make it happen.

Tinkerbell is by far one of the best CG animation work to have come out of an indian studio and I hope it gives a boost to the indian animation industry and its aspirants. The artwork is truly stunning and I applaud the art directors from DTS for their wonderful visualization. A major influence to the quality of the movie was none other than the pioneer of CG animation industry and CEO of Pixar – John Lassater, who himself took keen interest to review and appreciate the movie throughout its development.

I believe Tinkerbell holds a special significance in one way or the other to everyone involved in its making. For the producers at DTS, it marks the beginning of their new venture of Disney Fairies franchise whose success depends on the success of this movie. For an upcoming ambitious company like Prana Studios it is perhaps the best thing that could’ve ever happened.

Personally, this movie means much more than a career milestone. The opportunities and exposure it presented is what I value most. During the course of this project I went from a Rigging artist-cum-tool developer to Rigging Lead. My thirst to develop a Rigging Toolkit materialized when I developed Prana’s Character Setup Toolkit for Tinkerbell project and I’m glad it proved so much useful thereafter for every project that followed. Working as a Rigging Lead exposed me to higher levels of responsibility and a chance to meet and seek guidance from veterans like Apurva Shah and Samir Hoon. I have been very fortunate to have worked with a talented team of high-spirited rigging artists without whose co-operation and contribution it would very difficult to handle the spectrum of rigging challenges the project posed.

Related links …
Disney fairies official website
Tinkerbell red carpet premier
Tinkerbell tops DVD sales charts

Tortoise Vs Hare

The second of the three-DVD series of Unstable Fables – Tortoise vs Hare – is out!

Though I didn’t work in it, I personally like this better than the first one – 3 Pigs and a Baby. The story is not so predictable which makes it interesting. It doesn’t completely go by the “Unstable fables philosophy” which is (if I’m not wrong) adding a twist to the original stories. Our story begins years after the original Hare and Tortoise race happened and since then Hare has been waiting for just one more chance to beat Tortoise. The “Mount Impossible” adventure race fits just right into the equation and the Hare challenges Tortoise again. This time they aren’t alone! Since it is supposed to be a team game, we also have Master Hare and Miss Tortoise :).

The characters are funny with each having clearly distinct characteristics. The movie is generally fast paced (Its a race after all!) filled with many gags.

Here is the like to the official website:
http://www.unstablefables.com/

Again, Congradulations to Prana team! We did it again! Yeaaahhhhh!

3 Pigs and a Baby

Another moment of pride and excitement for all of us at PRANA, the release of “3 Pigs and a Baby” DVD on 4th March. It is the first film produced by Prana Studios along with Jim Henson Company and Flame Ventures. “3 Pigs and a Baby” is the first of the three Unstable Fables series which are famous tales re-told with a wacky twist.

For more details …
www.unstablefables.com

I haven’t got a copy of DVD myself since it hasn’t released in India (I hope it will soon!) but its reviews have been really encouraging. For those of you who are in a similar situation, do check out the music video of the wolf song which one of the most entertaining parts of the movie.
You could also check out the trailer of the next movie in the Unstable fables series – “Tortoise Vs Hare” in the same site.

It took just above a year in the making and I’m sure every department went through good and bad times. Being the Rigging Lead it was surely a memorable journey till the end and I feel privileged to have worked with a very talented team. It has especially been a great learning experience working with David Tart, the Animation Supervisor whose contribution to this project and influence on Prana’s animation quality and work flow is highly commendable. He also raised the bar on the quality of rigs and the toughest challenge for us was to meet his list of rigging requirements. “Mason” might look great in the movie but he caused us sleepless nights till we got his rig approved. It was indeed the appreciation that came along with the approval that kept our spirits up for the rest of the project! Man what a day that was!

Kudos to the other departments too – Modelers, Hair and fur artists, Texturing artists, Animators, Lighters and compositers and the Production … You guys Rock!!!

Chubb Chubbs Save X-Mas

CONGRADULATIONS to all the CG Artists from PRANA STUDIOS for putting their best efforts in making it a big success. All was made possible in just above three months yet meeting the quality above expectations of the clients. What’s more … I was the Rigging Lead on this project and the biggest challenge was to meet the shortest deadline ever yet getting the rigs to meet the demands of the crazy animation. Its extremely satisfying to see all the hard work paying off now. Kudos to my team! Arun, Atri, Chris, Dipti, Mani R, Mani Kumar, Mani Bhushan Kumar, Parikshit and Seema. Special applause to our production coordinator Esmeralda who did a great job keeping track and making sure everything falls in place!

“Chubb Chubbs Save X-Mas” is the second short film produced by Sony Imageworks following the Original Oscar winner “The Chubb Chubbs”. Now wins the Big Apple award this year!

In “Chubb Chubbs Save X-Mas” Meeper and Chubbs are apparently kicked out of every alien planet they ever visited since none can stand the annoying habit of the Chubbs destroying anything and everything. As Meeper flies Chubbs in his “home-like” spacecraft in search of a new planet and perhaps a new home, he gets a message from Santa, that he would give away gifts for Christmas. So Meeper thinks he can make the best use of this opportunity and ask for a new home for him and his beloved Chubbs and there begins the fun!

Here is the link to the official site:
http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/chubbchubbs/

You could grab a copy of Surfs up DVD which has both the short films. If you cant wait to watch it click the link below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wPx5Ba5vOY