Simply Audacious

BLUE SKY STUDIOS’ ARTISTS TRANSFORM CHARLES SCHULZ’S , , LUCY, AND THEIR FRIENDS INTO CG CHARACTERS

BY BARBARA ROBERTSON ©Twentieth Century Fox & Worldwide LLC Worldwide & Peanuts Fox Century ©Twentieth

8 CGW SEPTEMBER. OCTOBER 2015 ranslate Charles M. ing. Not backflips, but emo- Schulz’s “Peanuts” comic tional moments and feelings strip into a 3D animated expressed through the way a Tfeature? Easy peasy, right? character moves. Craig under- Indeed, that’s what many stands his father’s Peanuts on the crew at universe very deeply. He’d tell us thought. These artists had simu- when we crossed the line.” lated dozens of furry creatures in Craig Schulz also came to Blue and created Epic’s com- Sky to help the development plex environments. Surely anyone team master the visual lines. would consider that for these “When we first got the project, artists, the process of creating our initial reaction was gleeful,” Charlie Brown’s modest shape says Art Director Nash Dunnigan. and his unfussy neighborhood “The characters were already would be as simple as a peanut designed. We had lots of the butter sandwich. world designed. Well, it turned Lead Character Designer out it wasn’t so easy. When we Sang Sung Lee sums up a typi- built our first hero models and cal reaction: “Someone said to sent them around, the reaction me, ‘You did character design? was, “Eww. You totally missed So, what did you do? The char- our memory of who they are.” acters are already designed.’ ” And therein lies the problem. RATS! (TOP) WHEN TRANSLATING SCHULZ’S DRAWINGS INTO 3D CHARAC- As everyone on the crew soon TERS, ARTISTS STARTED FIRST WITH SNOOPY. (BOTTOM) IT TOOK 18 learned, moving a classic comic Thus, Dunnigan gave a group of MONTHS TO CREATE THE CG VERSION OF CHARLIE BROWN. strip into the 3D world in a way artistic and technical supervisors that preserves everyone’s mem- the chore of finding the best ory of the comic and the 2D version of each character, a task “We call it the classic period,” any angle in 3D works. But the television specials, while at the complicated by the ’s Dunnigan says. “We had the Peanuts characters change shape same time meets the expec- longevity. Schulz published his supervisors bring us models for with every angle. And, the mouth tations of modern audiences first “Peanuts” comic strip in each character from that period, shape looks like a pen line.” familiar with 3D animated films, 1950. His last appeared hours starting with Snoopy – facing According to Dunnigan, they is neither simple nor easy. after he died in February 2000. right, sitting, walking, standing. tried lots of versions of eyes and , who had di- “The supervisors discovered As a group, we voted on the best hair. “We balanced colors. We rected Fox/Blue Sky’s animated there was an evolution in Sparky’s pieces and parts, and combined tried to be faithful to the graphic film version of Dr. Seuss’sHorton style,” Dunnigan says, using them into a FrankenSparky. When pen line,” he says. “When Steve Hears a Who, directed The Pea- Schulz’s well-known nickname. we saw it, we sighed. That was [Martino] said, ‘We’re going to nuts Movie. He, Producer Michael “Snoopy went from quadruped to our best version of Snoopy. We commit to the graphic look,’ Travers, and others on the Blue biped. In the ’60s, the characters’ knew that if we all agreed, prob- we breathed a sigh of relief. We Sky crew worked with the Schulz head shape was like a windshield, ably the fan base in the world weren’t going to ‘upgrade’ the family, the Schulz museum staff, with eyes high on their faces, would, too.” look. But we knew it would be and the artists at Charles M. which would have been easier for The team applied the same technically difficult to get a pen Schulz Creative Associates in us. But in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, process to each character, cre- line to work in 3D CG. Sparky Santa Rosa, California, on the the eyes migrated to the sides ating hero models from pieces was so economical and sparse film’s story and visual develop- of the heads. When a character and parts that received the in the way he drew lines. We had ment. Schulz’s son Craig, his looks at us from the front, we’re most votes. to find out what that meant grandson Bryan, and Cornelius actually looking at it from the side, “That shape was the begin- sculpturally.” Uliano wrote the script. like a Picasso head.” ning of the process,” Dunnigan The artists had to make the “We logged a lot of hours The more the team talked says. “Then to get the CG version CG characters’ shape changes traveling to Santa Rosa,” Martino with cartoonist Paige Braddock, of what Charlie Brown looks like and pen lines credible to immerse says. “As we developed the story, the creative director at Charles took another year and a half.” them in a believable 3D world. we’d think of ideas, gags, things M. Schulz Creative Associates Adds Lee, “The benefit of 3D the characters might do. This is who oversees products related to is that we can create characters GOOD GRIEF! a 2015 . We couldn’t Peanuts licensing, the more they more believable to the audience have two talking heads. We settled on the Peanuts family as than 2D characters. If you look at It fell to the character devel- needed more physical storytell- drawn in the ’80s and ’90s. Horton (in Horton Hears a Who), opment team – Character

SEPTEMBER. OCTOBER 2015 CGW 9 A FLEXIBLE RIG MOVED SNOOPY’S HEAD INTO A BOWLING PIN SHAPE. A PAINTING BY CHARLES SCHULZ HANGS BEHIND THE COUCH.

Development Supervisor Sabine “The majority of the time, the seamless as one mesh. We can In addition to typical controls Heller, Rigging Supervisor Justin head shape stays the same, but rotate Snoopy’s head up so it for moving the characters’ Leach, Lead Materials Technical the nose, eyes, and ears slide looks like a bowling pin and it heads, animators could pose Director Nikki Tomaino, and around,” says Supervising Anima- stays attached. We can move the floating elements using Materials Supervisor Brian Hill – tor Nick Bruno. “If I were to rotate his head over and it stays.” controls within the rig. to wrestle CG technology into the head and the head shape “They’ll follow the surface,” forms that could honor Schulz’s changed, the eyes would become DRAW THE LINES says Supervising Animator minimalist style in fully formed distorted. We had to keep Scott Carroll. “But, we can move 3D characters. everything in real-world space in Schulz was able to give his hand- them independently.” The artists decided to de- the same direction, but we had drawn characters expressions The animation supervisors velop all the characters’ bodies to move all the parts. So, to hit all seemingly with a flick of his pen- gave libraries of poses to each from the model of Charlie the poses Sparky drew, we built a cil. But while his 2D characters of the 80-plus animators and Brown that took 18 months to Mr. Potato Head system of parts might have dots for eyes, the CG sent each to “school” for three develop, morphing heads and that we could move, slide, switch characters’ eyes needed to be weeks of course work to learn changing clothes to fit each out, and replace.” 3D objects. Sometimes shaped what they could and could not character’s design. The magic Eventually, the animators, like dots, sometimes shaped like do; what was within the style that blended the 2D designs modelers, and riggers would sixes and nines. and what was not. with the 3D characters hap- create hundreds of poses. “We needed to create a spe- “We had to teach them pened in rigging. “It was like stop motion,” cific style,” Heller says. “Charles which poses to use and when,” “Our normal approach for Bruno says. “Otherwise, it would Schulz drew very specific eyes Carroll says. “Picking the poses rigging didn’t work out,” Heller have been impossible to keep with expression lines that we in- was key. Some artists thought says. “In Sparky’s profiles, the the characters on model. But, in terpreted as a nine or a six. And they’d feel limited by having to head shape can change, the stop motion, animators take off he also had a pair of wrinkles stick to these poses, but they nose moves down, and the ears a head and replace it. We have that we call periwinkles.” found it liberating. They were drop. So we created character switches for the heads that A custom rig made it possible able to be creative within the views in the rig. An animator blend between targets.” for the eyes and eyebrows to ride Peanuts universe.” could select ‘Sparky three-quar- To connect and disconnect on the surface of the models. The poses extended to the ters’ (which is more like one the heads, the riggers devel- “We had a lot of special characters’ entire bodies as quarter), push a button, and it oped a “suction cup” plug-in for technology to move shapes well as to their heads and facial would happen.” Autodesk’s Maya. across topology,” Heller says. expressions. “Charlie Brown’s Each child had six head poses “It’s a hybrid rig that uses “We didn’t want to change the arms have to grow for him to – profile right, one-quarter right, shrink-wrap in Maya,” Heller volume. When an animator pulls reach over his melon of a head,” profile left, one-quarter left, says. “We have two separate the eyebrow down, a custom Bruno says. “We switch from extreme down, and extreme up. meshes, but they render as plug-in creates a blink.” the default four-finger pose to

10 CGW SEPTEMBER. OCTOBER 2015 five sometimes. Snoopy has asset again. “We’d turn every thing AUGH! growing, animation, and simu- poses with three fingers, four else off,” Leach says. “We worked lation tools,” Cavaleri says. “But fingers, and a paw. Every hand, with R&D and the mate rials Many of the Peanuts characters we didn’t expect the precise every arm pose is different, so crew to fill it and make it a solid have a full head of hair, and all level of control we’d need.” the rigs had to be robust.” textured object when rendered. wear kids’ clothing, some with Typically, the crew would To create a performance, But the geometry was the same, costume changes during the film. create a hair groom default with the animators picked poses we didn’t have new data.” “We had good grooming, a rig the animators used to pose with selected body parts and expressions for each frame. “Typically, we let the com- puter do interpolation between poses,” Carroll says. “But on this film, we had no interpolation at all. It was like stop motion. We moved and shaped the poses on a per-frame basis.” Fortunately, they chose to pose on “2s” rather than “1s,” much like the Peanuts Christ- mas specials, albeit in 3D rather than 2D. The resulting snappy animation helped them hide head switches. But, with motion blur added, the snappiness went away. “We didn’t want to use motion blur everywhere,” CG Supervisor Rob Cavaleri says. “But we had to use it in some places because we’d get strob- ing when the characters moved too quickly. So [animator] Jeff Kabour came up with a way to add animated 2D lines from the comic strip. That allowed ani- mators skilled with 2D drawings to bring Sparky’s lines into the movie and soften the transitions. We also smeared the geometry to simulate motion blur.” In addition, the crew created the appearance of motion blur with a 2D animation trick: mul- tiple limbs. “If we had done that normal- ly, we would have needed to create an asset for all of each character’s extra limbs and gar- ments,” Leach says. “That would have meant creating 2,940 extra assets, which was way too many. So we made ‘ghost limbs’ within the character.” If an animator wanted to use the left leg, he or she could see A CUSTOM RIG MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR “SPARKY” PEN LINES TO RIDE ON MODEL SURFACES. ARTISTS ADD- only that and then use the same ED PEN LINES TO SUGGEST MOTION BLUR, AND INCORPORATED “SPARKY” LINES IN VOLUMETRIC SIMS.

SEPTEMBER. OCTOBER 2015 CGW 11 R&D DEVELOPED GROOMING TOOLS THAT COULD HANDLE EXTREME SHAPE CHANGES. “We worked with R&D to reinvent our transmittance model,” Tomaino says. “It took a lot of back and forth. These crazy models were challenging.” The crew also developed new methods for rendering the sliding elements on the face without distortions, and for rendering “Spark-ified” textures, even though the shapes be- neath changed dramatically. To create facial expressions, the animators controlled the shape of the sliding periwinkles, the eyes, and the sixes and nines, but the geometry they

CG ARTISTS OFTEN INTERPRETED SPARKY’S HAND-DAWN EXPRESSION LINES AS NINES AND SIXES. saw in animation was for visual- ization only. “We pulled the geometric NURBS sheets representing the sixes, nines, and periwinkles, and used a closest-point pro- cedure to apply the materials,” Tomaino says. “The director and animators wanted the periwin- kles to arch in and divot down, but if they were on the model, the hair, and then if the hair when you’re animating on 2s, months of rig development, the they would change shape. So, needed follow-through move- you’re holding every other frame. materials department worked on the only way to have them ment, it would travel through The clothing keeps moving, and a new material rig. Blue Sky uses maintain their shape was to use the pipeline to simulation. But, it you don’t want it to.” a proprietary raytracing renderer the closest-point procedure. didn’t work for these characters. The team tried tightening the called Studio, and all the mate- We also took the geometry that Sally was the test. settings to have more control rials except the stripe on Charlie is on the sliding eye and used “We tried growing and groom- over the simulation. But that Brown’s shirt are procedural. that in a procedure to create ing her hair the typical way,” didn’t work. “We Spark-ified everything,” an eye divot. It all happens on Cavaleri says. “That exposed a “We were trying to fit a says Tomaino. “You see the the Studio [rendering] side of problem in the way we grew hair square peg in a round hole,” wiggle we added in every piece. things.” That meant Director on the control surface. So, Na- Cavaleri says. “We realized the The kids’ jeans. The leather. The Martino could change the way than Zeichner, an R&D scientist, animators would have to hand roof of the doghouse. The lines the periwinkles and eyes looked helped us rewrite that tool.” animate all the garments. We in the trees. The Charles Schulz at render time. The second problem was knew the silhouette of the line is sacred to us.” The materials group also that when a character’s shape garment, even while holding a used the closest-point proce- changed with a new pose, the pose, contributed to our ability MATERIAL RIGS dures to create a control signal hair might deform so much it to recognize the characters.” on the skin surface to change would fall off the model. That meant the rigging “At first, I thought this film color, specular, roughness, sub- “Lucy’s hair had to literally department needed to add would be easy because materi- surface, and bumps. flip from left to right depending separate clothing controls to als would play such a small role,” “When we use closest point on the way she looked at you,” the character rigs, as well. Tomaino adds. “But, it wasn’t to create a signal on the surface, Cavaleri says. “We needed 12 “When we saved a pose for a the case at all. Being subtle was you can really feel the integra- different grooms for her.” character, we saved everything: a big challenge. For Epic, we tion,” Tomaino says. “It gave us The clothing also presented the eye expression, the facial could pull skin reference. The subtle effects with the light. unique challenges. expression…everything, includ- Schulz world had no reference.” Otherwise, with these NURBS “We have a creature simu- ing the garment,” Cavaleri says. She found reference in un- sheets, if we had a light rig spin lation team for clothing, and As for the color and texture usual places. A grape in the light. around the character, the light a pipeline,” Cavaleri says, “but of the garments, during the 18 A toy pony. M&Ms. Yogurt. on the sheets wouldn’t change. “

12 CGW SEPTEMBER. OCTOBER 2015 Shrink-wrap helped with the integration, as well. “Shrink-wrap was our savior,” Tomaino says. “When you take the NURBS sheets from little to big, if there isn’t enough topology, they will wrinkle. With shrink- wrap engaged, I could scale the periwinkles so the topology would match and make a beauti- ful line. We worked with Autodesk to have them develop it for us, and now it’s freely available.” Using the rig this much to drive materials meant reinvent- ing the process at Blue Sky, but it gave animation control over the materials for the first time. “Rigging and materials have worked together before, but nev- er like this,” Heller says. “Depend- ing on the pose the animator ' puts the character in, the rig spits SNOOPYS WORLD out values automatically.” “The best thing about Snoopy is that he loves with more detail, so we took that cue to make “Well, almost automatically,” Charlie no matter what,” says Director Steve our cameras more detailed and dynamic,” says Tomaino laughs. Martino. “Because of that, he becomes a great Cinematographer Renato Falco. “That contrast help. He teaches Charlie how to dance. The two made the movie more fun.” DUST MAGNET put on a pretty good magic act. But in addition, When Snoopy is in his backyard, his world is like Snoopy carries the emotion of what Charlie goes that of the other characters – a comic strip. But Although animation took the through in his [Red Baron] fantasies. Snoopy’s in his imaginary world, the scale and scope grow. lead from simulation in moving fantasies aren’t just sidetracks. They tie into Camera lenses are shorter. The camera and col- the characters’ clothes, the the bigger story. They take Charlie’s issues and ors are more vibrant. Snoopy’s imaginary world effects crew helped define one put them through a bigger filter using Snoopy’s is more like that of other CG films, but still within of the characters: Pigpen, the bigger, broader personality.” the Peanuts universe. boy who is always surrounded For animators, Snoopy was the most compli- In Charlie Brown’s world, long lenses on the by a dust cloud. cated character. camera make the world look flat, and the camera To fit the comic-strip style “Sparky didn’t want Snoopy to be a dog,” says is always level. In Snoopy’s world, the camera is into volumetric 3D simulations, Supervising Animator Nick Bruno. “Wagging his still level with Snoopy when he’s in the picture, the artists integrated 2D pen tail is on the very boundary of dog. His action but it moves more. lines and dust specs scanned is more like that of a kid. But he has to open his “We had fun with scale and lighting in Snoopy’s from Schulz’s drawings. mouth to a wide degree, and that mouth has to world,” says Lead Set Designer John Townley. “We “We brought Charles lie within his sculpt. His eyes move to the side of have big gobo shapes for clouds in 1900 . Schulz’s hand into the movie,” his head.” And, you might even see Snoopy’s doghouse at Cavaleri says. Animator Jeff Gabor, who was the character the top of the Eiffel Tower.” At first, the effects team lead for Snoopy, adds, “To be honest, animating – BARBARA ROBERTSON tried realistic dust clouds and Snoopy was like doing 2D animation with 3D tried stylizing the volumes parts and forms.” using 2D outlines. Riggers provided controls for animators to flip “It didn’t feel right,” says Elvira Snoopy’s eyes to one side of his head, lift his head Pinkhas, effects supervisor. into a bowling pin shape, slide his ears and eyes, “The characters are animated and stretch his mouth from tiny to huge. on 2s, and effects weren’t in Moving Snoopy into his bigger imaginary world sync. When Pigpen holds a pose gave the artists more 3D freedom. for a frame, the dust has to do “Charles Schulz drew Snoopy in exactly the same thing.” The effects team gave anima-

SEPTEMBER. OCTOBER 2015 CGW 13 PEPPERMINT 'S PENCIL TEST Animator BJ Crawford did one of the first tests using hand- drawn animation to explore poses from the comic strip while trying to capture the sensibility of motion from the original television specials. “The scene is dialing up Charlie on the phone, then hopping off the chair,” Crawford says. “To prepare myself, I went through the comic strips and tagged iconic sce- narios I liked. The props are all oversized, so she has to hold the phone with two hands. I tried to maintain the original propor- THE ELONGATED RAINDROP SHAPES CREATE THE ILLUSION OF tions, poses, and expressions as much as I possibly could while MOTION BLUR AND MATCH THE ANIMATION STYLE. translating the graphic style into animation.” Later, Crawford found himself assigned to drawing 2D animation that would appear in thought bubbles. He worked in fects crew,” Cavaleri says. “They look, something more playful TVPaint Developpement’s TVPaint Animation software. had to think about every frame than typical CG environments, “It was hard,” Crawford says. “I’d go through the comic strips like a 2D effects animator. Our more organic. But as they began to try to find an exact panel so I could match the line weight as tools were not made for that. to move from the doghouse into closely as possible to my image. I learned so much. Once I roughed But the effects came out great.” the neighborhood, they realized out the action and the timing, I had to put a Schulz line on top. The that Schulz didn’t draw estab- program is fast, but it gave me a boring line. I had to go in and etch WOBBLES IN THE lishing shots. out the line. Inking a character was something I had to learn.” NEIGHBORHOOD “He drew dialog and char- – BARBARA ROBERTSON acters, and pieces and parts of The crew’s respect for Schulz’s the neighborhood,” Dunnigan line and their determination to says. “Windows, rooftops. So for reproduce the comic strip as reference, Steve Martino and faithfully as possible extended Craig Schulz went to St. Paul, tors a big sphere to use as a visual in the animation, there’s no into the backgrounds, as well. Minnesota, and took photos guide, but the final cloud is made motion blur,” Pinkhas says. “So “Sparky was the spirit of of the neighborhoods where from small spheres converted we needed to figure out how every thing we designed,” Dun- Charles Schulz grew up.” to volumetrics and the scanned to make our effects read well nigan says. “We looked to his Then, working from the script drawings of dust specs. without motion blur.” strips for inspiration and found and story beats, they designed “We wanted something For water, they used the great landmarks. The living room the neighborhood. The house that had depth, to look good shape of the water drops to with the couch. The thinking where the Little Red-Haired in stereo,” Pinkhas says. “We create a motion-blur illusion. wall. The kite-eating tree. The Girl lives, across the street from didn’t want just pen strokes. “Rather than spheres that doghouse. Then we had to learn Charlie Brown. The baseball So, we added the volumetric look blurred when rendered how to draw like Sparky. Steve’s field. The school. elements – poofs of dust. The with refraction, we modeled [Martino] mantra was, ‘Where The shooting style, however, arc at the top of each sphere is elongated water drops into the do we find the pen line?’ ” introduced technical problems in represented as a pen stroke. We shapes the motion blur would They started with Snoopy’s the newly created CG neighbor- used a rig to control the size of represent,” Pinkhas says. “It was doghouse. hood. To match the comic strip’s the poofs and their speed, and the same with splashes. We “We did drawings and sculp- flat look, the crew had decided added noise to skew and squish sculpted them frame by frame, tures, trying to keep the wiggly to shoot with long lenses. some of the arcs. We also or every few frames, using lines and beveled edges without “Charlie is like a basketball controlled the motion of the shapes in Sparky’s style.” having the doghouse look old or on a body,” Martino says. “We dust specs. Usually we let the These tiny models of rain- rubbery,” says Jon Townley, lead didn’t want his head to balloon physics simulation do its thing, drops look like Charles Schulz’s set designer. “From there, we out and look odd.” but for this movie we needed pen line. By instancing the went to snow, other edges, and Moreover, they kept the more control.” models to particles and holding trees. We had to train ourselves camera about three feet off the Similarly, the crew stylized back the particles on every other to put the right wobble in the ground, and sometimes lower water to create a look and frame, the effects artists cleverly clapboard, to have the right for Snoopy. animation style that fit into the matched the animation style. frequency in the snow blobs “It was astonishing how Peanuts universe. “Wrestling effects into shape and branches.” much we had to massage the “To get a staccato feeling was really challenging for the ef- They wanted an asymmetric other elements in the frame to

14 CGW SEPTEMBER. OCTOBER 2015 VIDEO: GO TO EXTRAS IN THE CGW.COM SEPTEMBER.OCTOBER 2015 ISSUE BOX

THE DESIGN TEAM REFERENCED PHOTOS FROM CHARLES SCHULZ’S HOMETOWN FOR THE NEIGHBORHOOD.

create the right look,” Cavaleri was a daunting effort in 3D. in making a respectful 3D version Martino says. “There’s a mo- says. “When the kids are in “When you have characters of the comic strip, why not just ment when something rough is school, the camera doesn’t fit covered with fur or frantically make a 2D animated feature? going on for Charlie. He’s down in the classroom. We needed a flying, you can get away with “One reason I wanted to in the dumps. His head is down. breakaway wall so we could put a lot,” says Lighting Supervisor do the movie in CG is that Snoopy walks up behind him the camera across the street. Jeeyun Sung Chisholm. “Char- as I started working on the and is going to put his hand If we had used a shorter lens, lie’s head is huge and spherical, film, people came to me with on Charlie’s back. Because we we would have distorted the and so simple that we needed a Snoopy plush toys,” Martino have lighting, we see his shadow characters’ heads.” perfect shading model.” says. “The toys were yellowed. come up to meet his hand. For color, the design team In this minimal world with Their necks were floppy. People His hand presses into Charlie’s referenced the Sunday comic snow often covering the ground, had this great connection clothing, and we feel the con- strips. But, they found that, muted backgrounds, and with Snoopy as a plush toy. I nection. Because we get those especially in the early days, the vibrant characters, the color thought if we could depict that subtle elements in CG, there’s a colors were more muted and of the light was particularly softness and still have fun with stronger emotional connection pastel than they wanted. important. him in animation, it would be a in that moment.” “We went to Santa Rosa and “Snoopy was a white dot in nice combination.” And then, to turn the question asked when Charles Schulz had front of white snow,” Chisholm Texture, Martino points out, around, why – other than re- a hand in coloring,” says Lead says. “We had to make him a gives audiences an anchor in spect for Charles Schulz and the Color Designer Vincent Nguyn. neutral gray.” the imaginative world. Peanuts fan base, not a small “The last thing for which he And while the crew used “Everything in this world is consideration – did they work chose colors was the book ‘Pea- perfect five-point hero lights (key, based on drawings, but the ma- so hard to bring elements of the nuts Jubilee.’ These colors were fill, rim, top, and bottom bounce) terials give us something we can comic strip into the 3D world? saturated and vibrant. We used with the bright light behind for relate to,” Martino says. “The “People ask us why, if we’re that, and since all the charac- the children, to make Snoopy wood texture, the doorknob, the making a 3D film, did we em- ters came with their own colors, pop, they had to do the opposite. stucco, or bricks on the side of brace the 2D and try to come we decided to downplay the “Our biggest challenge was bal- a house. We can relate to these close to the comic,” Dunnigan background. We kept it muted ancing how realistic the lighting materials, and they tell us the says. “I think that’s what is inno- and tighter in range, and saved should be,” Chisholm says. “We scale is right. People can then vative about this film.” color for the characters.” tested a lot of levels of saturation believe the world exists and the “We picked the hard way,” The design department set and contrast, and explored a character is alive.” Lee says. the scenes in winter to create more stylistic approach.” Martino also believes that CG Townley adds, “But it was a timeless and less specific can add emotion. the only way it could have been feeling. Then they gave the light- WHY 3D? “Nick Bruno tells this story,” done.”  ing department color keys. This department, too, discovered Given the enormous technical Barbara Robertson ([email protected]) is an award-winning writer that creating Schulz’s simplicity and artistic challenges inherent and a contributing editor for CGW.

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