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Anime Speedway CG shifts into overdrive as Speed Racer takes the road

$6.00 USA $8.25 Canada

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April 2008 • Volume 31 • Number 4 INNOVATIONS IN VISUAL COMPUTING FOR THE GLOBAL DCC COMMUNITY

Also see www.cgw.com______for computer graphics news, special surveys and reports, and the online gallery.

______» D i r e c t o r R o g e r D o n a l d s o n Computer WORLD discusses The Bank Job. WORLD Post » The best way to handle HD spots. » The challenges of post- ing audio for reality Departments Features See it in www.postmagazine.com television. Editor’s Note 2 Cover story Who Needs a Mouse? Photo Anime, GDC 2008 featured new developer Hyper Pop Art 12 tools, a look at titles from large and DIGITAL CINEMA | The visionaries small studios, and an active recruiting behind The Matrix, along with a area. The big focus, though, was on number of VFX facilities, devise a new novel input devices. concept for the set design, animation, Spotlight 4 and color treatment in Speed Racer. Products By Barbara Robertson ’s 3ds Max 2009, 3ds Design 2009, more Fan Favorites 20 The Foundry’s 5 BROADCAST | Commercials are as much 12 Boxx’s RTX 8400, RenderBoxx 10200 a part of the Super Bowl as the game itself. What makes a winning spot? Viewpoint: Panorama 1 0 Some use humor, others sentiment. But Digital Landscaping most employ CG in some way. Portfolio 40 By Debra Kaufman Imagina Awards Knowledge & Career 42 When the Game Is Teachings from the Trenches Not Enough 26 Industry veterans lend their expertise to MULTIMEDIA | When it comes to devel- budding game designers at VFS’s Game oping a media project, the French are Design Expo 2008. pluralistic in their platform approach. By Kathleen Maher 20 Backdrop 47 Drawing the Line Road Test 32 Filmmakers incorporate a unique CAD | Orange County Choppers gets graphics style in Chicago 10. revved up, using complex digital design tools and techniques for its customized motorcycles. Special Section Storage Solutions By Karen Moltenbrey Choosing the right storage solution can be a daunting task. This special Nothin’ But Blu Skies 38 section examines how some facilities TRENDS & TECHNOLOGIES | Finally, the made their selections and how those video war is over as Blu-ray overtakes 26 products are keeping the companies HD DVD. competitive. By Jeff Sauer

On the cover: Speed Racer charts a new course in virtual cinema with its techno-colored, fully saturated, fast-moving universe created in a novel photo-anime, pop-art style, pg. 12. 32

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Karen Moltenbrey Chief Editor note

KAREN MOLTENBREY: Chief Editor [email protected] Who Needs a Mouse? 36 East Nashua Road Windham, NH 03087 (603) 432-7568

This year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) was bigger and better than CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Courtney Howard, Jenny Donelan, ever. There were new game development technologies and products, and even Audrey Doyle, Evan Marc Hirsch, new game titles. Some faces were new, yet most were familiar. There were George Maestri, Martin McEachern, Stephen Porter, Barbara Robertson

editor’s even a few vendors from outside the gaming world whose products and tech- WILLIAM R. RITTWAGE nologies have been adapted for this growing industry. As expected, Microsoft, Publisher Nintendo, and Sony had a strong presence. But so did the little guys, independent “garage” President and CEO, COP Communications developers who never cease to amaze us. And then there were the recruiters, big-name studios scouting new talent, along with the many artists looking for employment. SALES Both Microsoft VP John Schappert and inventor/futurist Ray Kurzweil enthralled LISA BLACK: National Sales Manager Classifieds • Education • Recruitment audiences with their keynotes. On the expo floor, the big buzz centered on the unique [email protected] interfaces, hardly surprising given the huge success of the Wii and Guitar Hero. (877) CGW-POST [249-7678] fax: (214) 260-1127 Speaking of the Wii, Nintendo demonstrated its Wii Fit, a new line of titles designed Editorial Office / LA Sales Office: to increase fitness through balancing and aerobics. Of course, this is all done in a way 620 West Elk Avenue, Glendale, CA 91204 that is fun. The games are played using the new Wii Balance Board (available in a few (800) 280-6446 months), which is about the size of a bathroom scale. Not only does it measure the PRODUCTION player’s center of gravity, but also the person’s body mass index. InterSense, for one, believes that the Wii is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of KATH CUNNINGHAM: Production Director [email protected]______motion sensing and games. InterSense enables real-time tracking of position, orien- (818) 291-1113

tation, and movement of people and objects. This technology has been successfully MICHAEL VIGGIANO: Art Director implemented in military, industrial, life-science, research, and engineering applica- [email protected] tions. InterSense -tracking systems also are being used within the entertain- CHRIS SALCIDO: Account Representative [email protected] ment industry by production companies, directors, and CG artists and animators. (818) 291-1144 Soon they may be used by game players. The company was at GDC seeking partner- ships to bring its advanced Motion Analysis Engine (MAE) to console games. MEA is based on six degrees-of-freedom (DOF) capture, compared to three or four DOF used in the Wii, so it considers the amount of force being applied, the angle it was applied, and the actual trajectory of an object. Simply put, it not only knows that a ball was thrown, but how fast it was thrown, whether a spin was applied, and where it was thrown. Computer Graphics World Magazine In a novel approach, Neuro-engineering company Emotiv Systems debuted its brain- is published by Computer Graphics World, computer interface. In a nutshell, the technology analyzes facial expressions and body a COP Communications company. Computer Graphics World does not verify any claims or language to factor emotions and feelings into gameplay. Through a player’s expres- other information appearing in any of the advertisements sions, an reacts appropriately to the player inside a virtual world. Also, game- contained in the publication, and cannot take any responsibility for any losses or other damages incurred play is adjusted automatically based on the player’s emotional responses. In essence, by readers in reliance on such content. a player can control play with his or her brain. The technology is complex, but Emotiv Computer Graphics World cannot be held responsible for the safekeeping or return of unsolicited articles, has packaged it quite nicely within the EPOC headset. Available later this year, it will manuscripts, photographs, illustrations or other materials. Address all subscription correspondence to: Computer come bundled with a specially developed game, though the technology will work with Graphics World, P.O. Box 3296, Northbrook, IL 60065-3296. Subscriptions are available free to qualified individuals existing titles. within the . Non-qualified subscription rates: USA—$72 for 1 year, $98 for 2 years; Canadian Another forward-“thinking” company is NeuroSky, whose MindSet SDK converts subscriptions —$98 for 1 year and $136 for 2 years; brainwave (EEG) signals into digital mental-state output for brain-computer interface all other countries—$150 for 1 year and $208 for 2 years. Digital subscriptions are available for $27 per year. applications. Available now, the MindKit-EM SDK consists of a neural headset, with an Subscribers can also contact customer service by calling 847-559-7310 or sending an email to [email protected].______integrated ThinkGear module and a sensing algorithm library. Change of address can be made online at http://www. omeda.com/cgw/ and click on customer service assistance. In his keynote, Kurzweil touched on computer interfaces, predicting that by 2010, Postmaster: Send Address Changes to keyboards and mice will become obsolete, replaced by “invisible devices” that disap- Computer Graphics World, P.O. Box 3296, pear into clothing, for example, while providing a more immersive, augmented-reality Northbrook, IL 60065-3296 experience. Soon, a mouse click will be a thing of the past.

2 | Computer Graphics World APRIL 2008 www.cgw.com______

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MODELING•ANIMATION Autodesk Launches New Max Versions, More Autodesk recently unveiled two new versions of its 3ds Max in 3ds Max 2009, with the exception of the SDK (which modeling, animation, and rendering software: 3ds Max 2009, is used within the entertainment market for integrating PRODUCTS geared for entertainment professionals, and 3ds Design software into a production pipeline and for development 2009, an all-new offering customized for architects, design- of in-house tools). In its place, 3ds Design 2009 features ers, and visualization specialists. Both offer new rendering Exposure, lighting simulation and analysis technology (for capabilities, improved interoperability with industry-stan- natural or artificial lighting) to assist designers with LEED dard software, including Autodesk’s Revit, and workflow 8.1 certification. improvements. However, each product is tailored to its Both 3ds Max 2009 and 3ds Design 2009 will be avail- specific industry, with unique interfaces and application able soon, with both selling for $3495. Upgrade pricing will defaults, tutorials, samples, and more. be available. Key features in 3ds Max 2009 is the new Reveal ren- In other news, Autodesk reduced pricing for Maya Unlimited, making the product more accessi- ble to new users. As a result, the Standalone version is now priced at $4995 (from its orig- inal $6995 price tag). Additionally, the company announced Maya 2008 Extension 2 software exclusive- ly for its Maya Complete 2008 and Maya Unlimited 2008 Subscription customers with Gold support. The extension includes enhanced creative control over polygon modeling and UV texturing, plus improve- ments to the Maya Muscle tool set. In a similar move, Autodesk announced Extension 2 for its Lustre 2007 (Linux) digital color system, available for Lustre dering tool set, which streamlines iterative processes, and Subscription customers only. The Extension is based on the ProMaterials library for simulating real-world surfac- a nonlinear, data-centric software architecture and com- es. The version also contains a number of biped enhance- bines high-performance clustered CPU processing with ments that make it easier to build quadrupeds, and new UV GPU acceleration. editing tools. Improved OBJ and Autodesk FBX file-format On another front, the company announced its intent export and import eases interoperability with Autodesk’s to acquire Kynogon, the maker of Kynapse artificial intel- Mudbox, Maya, and MotionBuilder, as well as other third- ligence middleware. Kynogon’s software has been used to party software. In addition, Recognize, a new scene-load- develop 65 AAA games (including Fable 2 and The Lord of ing tool, improves the inter-application workflow with Revit the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar), as well as for defense Architecture 2009. and security simulations, such as mission training and mili- Making its first debut ever was 3ds Design 2009, a tary operations on urban terrain. The acquisition is expect- brand-new product that contains all the features offered ed to be completed by next month.

4 | Computer Graphics World APRIL 2008 ______www.cgw.com

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Archive model VP14470

INTRODUCING THE ARCHIVE TM

If you work hard to deliver 3D graphics on short timeframes and tight budgets, you need The Archive; the world’s largest collection of premier 3D content.

The Archive features 16,500 production-proven 3D models including fully digitized vehicles, high-res human anatomy (including skeletal data from the Visible Human Project), famous landmarks, accurate military models, animals, 3D geography, and much, much more. Each model has been carefully crafted in industry-standard OBJ format for compatibility with virtually any pipeline.

And we’ve saved the best for last - The Archive is available for only $4,995. Now those deadlines won’t seem so ridiculous, and budgets not so tight.

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COMPOSITING The Foundry Offers Nuke 5

Visual effects software developer The Foundry is rolling out the next release of its compositing appli- PRODUCTS cation, Nuke 5, which features a brand-new user interface, the addition of Python for scripting, and support for stereoscopic workflow. Also, the product further extends its support for EXR images with the ability to read, process, and write more than a thou- sand channels per stream. Continuing with Nuke’s mantra of “designed by artists for artists,” The Foundry has concentrated on enriching and refining the product, and Nuke 5 is The Foundry’s first major step toward that goal since acquir- ing the product last year. The Foundry has reworked Nuke’s UI to improve the user experience and make it more approachable for a broader range of artists. In With the rise of stereoscopic projects, The Foundry has addition to augmenting the existing floating window layouts begun laying the groundwork for multiview compositing in with a flexible panes and panels system, Nuke 5 features per- Nuke 5. node mask inputs and expanded LUT support for file I/O color Nuke 5, available on Linux, Windows, and Mac platforms, space conversion. Support for Python has been added as well. is shipping now for $3500, with render nodes priced at $250.

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New Multibridge Pro has SDI, HDMI and Analog editing with multi channel audio for only $1,595

Multibridge Pro is the most sophisticated World’s Highest Quality editing solution available. With a huge range Multibridge Pro includes 3 Gb/s SDI and Dual of video and audio connections and the Link 4:4:4 SDI for connecting to decks such as world’s first 3 Gb/s SDI. Advanced editing HDCAM SR. Unlike FireWire, Multibridge Pro systems for ™ and Apple has a 10 Gb/s PCI Express connection for powerful HD real time Mac OS ™ are now affordable. effects in compressed or uncompressed video file formats.

Connect to any Deck, Camera or Monitor Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS X Multibridge Pro is the only solution that features SDI, HDMI, Multibridge Pro is fully compatible with Apple Final Cut Pro™, component analog, NTSC, PAL and S-Video for capture and Adobe Premiere Pro™, ™, Adobe Photoshop™, playback in SD, HD or 2K. Also included is 8 channels of XLR Fusion™ and any DirectShow™ or QuickTime™ based software. AES/EBU audio, 2 channels of balanced XLR analog audio and Multibridge Pro instantly switches between feature 2 channel HiFi monitoring outputs. Connect to HDCAM, Digital film resolution 2K, 1080HD, 720HD, NTSC and PAL for Betacam, Betacam SP, HDV cameras, big-screen TVs and more. worldwide compatibility.

Advanced 3 Gb/s SDI Technology Multibridge Pro With exciting new 3 Gb/s SDI connections, Multibridge Pro allows twice the SDI data $1,595 rate of normal HD-SDI, while also connecting to all your HD-SDI and SD-SDI equipment. Use 3 Gb/s SDI for 4:4:4 HD or edit your latest feature film using real time 2048 x 1556 2K resolution capture and playback. Learn more today at www.blackmagic-design.com

The Drawn Together images are courtesy of Comedy Partners.

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WORKSTATIONS Boxx Releases RTX 8400 Series, RenderBoxx 10200

Boxx Technologies announced the immediate availability of The RTX chassis houses as many as 24 hot-swappable data

PRODUCTS its new RTX 8400 Series, specifically designed for intense drives in addition to two system drives. Using a RAID con- digital intermediate (DI) and compositing workloads. The figuration, the drives can generate up to 1GB/sec of storage RTX 8400 can be powered by either one or two Quad-Core throughput that rapidly loads high-resolution data in memory Intel Xeon 5400 Series for DI or compositing work. processors and enables The RTX 8400 Series can be configured as a 2K Review/ playback of 4K, 2K, HD, Compositing Station or as a 2K Review Station with Capture capa- SD, and HDV at full res- bility from a camera, enabling users to check the quality of the olution in real time. material shot before moving into postproduction. Both configu- Ideal for TV and rations can include either Iridas FramecyclerHD or Assimilate film production, the Scratch. Pricing varies according to system configuration. RTX 8400 is optimized Boxx also recently rolled out the RenderBoxx 10200, a new to take advantage of power-efficient renderfarm module that leverages the speed of key features in popu- the Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5400 Series for improved rendering lar DI, compositing, and speeds. Boxx Labs maintains that the 10200 delivers approxi- color-grading applica- mately 28 percent more raytracing performance than the pre- tions. It features a high- vious-generation RenderBoxx. performance, scalable, and internal storage subsystem for Each 10200 module contains two nodes with two processors high-speed disk throughput, which is required with uncom- each, for a total of 16 rendering cores per module. The RenderBoxx pressed, multilayer 4K, 2K, HD, SD, or HDV material. 10200 is available now starting at $5805 per module.

Game Design at Vancouver School shows students how to make more VFS student work by Jelmer Boskma enemies, better heroes, cooler levels, and tighter connections to the industry.

                     

VFS grads get snapped up by top game companies like BioWare, Radical, Relic, and EA Mythic.

vfs.com/enemies

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Smash the high cost of full resolution HDTV monitoring with HDLink for only $445

HDLink is the world’s only full resolution HDTV Easy Software Setup with Lookup Tables monitoring solution that connects to both DVI The included HDLink Utility software for Windows™ and HDMI monitors, and features 4:2:2 and and Mac OS X™ features full color adjustments 4:4:4 quality. HDLink also includes SDI audio and 10 bit RGB lookup tables. With HDLink you de-embedding to RCA analog audio outputs can compensate for LCD colorimitry, view gamma for monitoring using HiFi equipment. encoded video or reproduce film stock looks.

4:2:2 and Dual Link 4:4:4 Quality Use DVI and HDMI Monitors With support for 4:2:2 HD-SDI, HDLink also has two HD-SDI Connect a 24 inch LCD computer monitor and HDLink will digitally inputs for full color bandwidth dual link 4:4:4 video - perfect for map all 1920 x 1080 HD video pixels to the computer display for feature film work. Dual link 4:4:4 connections allow full quality full HD resolution monitoring. Connect any HDMI monitor or video monitoring from the latest telecine suites, Sony™ HD-CAM SR projector for incredible cinema style monitoring that’s perfect decks, Grass Valley™ Viper camera and many more. for edit suites, location shoots, client monitoring and more.

Full Resolution HDTV HDLink Even big expensive 24 inch CRT displays can’t resolve the full resolution of the HDTV video standard. HDLink eliminates this problem because every HD-SDI pixel is mapped to the pixels in $445 the LCD computer display. Learn more today at www.blackmagic-design.com The Drawn Together image is courtesy of Comedy Partners. The Aviator image is courtesy of Miramax, Warner Bros. and theBasement.

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point Digital Landscaping By Gergely Vass

In recent years, panoramic rating the royal tombs in Egypt—infinitely long and/or large historical events and images have become exceed- journeys could be visualized. ingly popular among com- The main problem (if a problem at all) with these tomb paintings is their lack of puter graphics profession- realism. The Chinese painter Zhang Zeduan used the same trick of painting things als as well as photography next to each other—with superior technique—in the 12th century to depict the col- enthusiasts. And it’s no won- orful life of a city on his famous handscroll, “Along the River During Qing Ming view der. Such imagery has an Festival.” The artist used axonometric projection to reveal the depth of the scene, exceptionally large field of view com- pared to conventional photographs or even the human vision. With panoramic techniques, we can display the all-encom- passing, 360-degree view around us with high detail across the This panoramic image is the result of multiple digital photographs stitched together. entire image, making this the only method of which makes the 3D structures look flat yet allows the extremely wide viewing angle. truly capturing the image Such renderings of ancient times are very valuable for historians because they tell a of wide-open vistas lot about the life of average people: how they work, how they socialize, where they and landscapes. live, how they travel, and what tools and techniques they use. The creation of pan- oramic imagery on per- Historical Research sonal computers has During the Renaissance, artists and scientists conducted different types of experi- become easy. Digital ments to uncover the secret behind the realistic depiction of the three-dimensional Gergely Vass is a software developer in photographs created by environment around us on a flat sheet of canvas. Based on careful observations, the the Image Science Team regular, low-cost cam- theory of perspective projection was born. Paintings and frescoes created using this of Autodesk Media and eras can be automati- fundamentally new technique are realistic, as they approximate the representation of Entertainment. cally “stitched” together an image on a flat surface, as it is perceived by the eye. using free or low-cost Due to the fact that the image plane (the canvas or the wall to be painted) is sup- Panoramic software. Yet, panoramic posed to be flat, the perspective projection has a severe limitation: The theoretical techniques are far from limit of the viewing angle is 180 degrees; to avoid strong distortion, the field of view techniques new; the first panoramas should roughly match the angle at which we view the final painting. were created even before Trying to compensate for this, artists creating views of landscapes or city panora- enable an the invention of photog- mas chose the viewpoint that is fairly far from the subject, and added an extreme raphy itself. amount of detail into the picture. This way—without using a very large viewing all-encom- Before the era of angle—complete cities or historical events, such as battles, could be illustrated realis- passing, motion pictures, art- tically. This is analogous to current, conventional photographs cropped to a relatively ists had to depict series wide aspect ratio. 360-degree of events or multiple, One good example of such pictures is the engraving of London by the Czech artist simultaneous occur- Wenceslaus Hollar. His works serve as great reference on how old London buildings, view with rences on a single pic- such as the famous Globe Theater, looked hundreds of years ago. While Hollar was ture. By arranging able to create very wide images of landscapes, the limit of the perspective projec- high detail. pictures next to each tion forced him to cheat on the real perspective and focus on a limited viewing angle. other—as seen on reli- Without introducing a new alternative to perspective projection, he was destined to gious engravings deco- fail in terms of creating “truly panoramic” depictions.

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Panoramic Painting so it matches the speed with which the Scottish artist and businessman Robert Barker created the first “proper” panoramic image moves across the image plane. paintings in the late 18th century. His “immersive” images depicted the entire surround- These cameras use a narrow slit for ings on a single cylindrical canvas stretched all the way around the front of the viewer. exposition, just like modern digital rotat- The main contribution of his technique was to drop the idea of flat-image plane and per- ing line cameras. spective projection in favor of using a circular canvas and cylindrical projection. In his imagery, one can clearly see the curved outlines of buildings that otherwise are always Panorama Today straight on conventional perspective images. These curved lines are not some sort of Creating panoramic photos requires defect, however; if viewed properly on a cylindrical surface, the illusion is perfect. advanced equipment and skills. As a Cylindrical projection is just as accurate and precise as perspective projection, as result, this process had not become long as we do not flatten images that are supposed to surround us on a cylindrical wall. a mass-media focus until recently. Barker began his work on panoramic paintings of Old Edinburgh in 1796, and However, advanced computer vision and quickly filed a patent to protect his invention shortly thereafter. His system of repre- image processing algorithms running on senting an entire surround landscape through painting was so successful that he set up current PCs now allow us to “re-inter- multiple buildings in which he showcased panoramas of old cities and historical events. pret” standard photographs and turn These paintings were hosted in large, purpose-built structures to accommodate the huge them into stitched panoramic images. panoramas: which were more than 10m (40 feet) high and 26m (85 feet) in diameter. The first robust algorithms to match Visitors reached the viewing platform by a short staircase in the darkness, to overlapping images pixel by pixel were heighten the sensation of standing in front of the naturally lit circular rotunda. Without first proposed in the 1980s for applica- movie theaters or television at the time, these demonstrations were a big hit and proved tions such as stereo vision and differ- to be the best attempts to make a realistic record of the world around us. People paid a ent optical-flow based methods. Robust considerable amount of money to be able to virtually experience a journey across time matching and alignment of images and place, and to be “in” some great historical event or distant place of natural beauty. means that the best match is found even During the 19th century, panoramas became an early form of mass entertainment if the input photos are not identical—in in European and American cities. To draw more audiences into the shows, different which, for instance, clouds or people are versions of the illusion have emerged, including moving panoramas and dioramas. moving. The idea of representing a vir- The latter is a partial or complete panoramic image displayed in a highly specialized tual environment using digital panora- theater utilizing moving layers of paintings, dynamic lighting, and real scenery and mas emerged in the computer graphics special effects to further enhance the realism. Before he co-invented daguerreotype community only around 1995, but today (the first widely used method of photography), Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre was it has become a very popular technique the inventor and a master designer and painter of such theatrical stage illusions. among amateur photographers as well. Daguerreotype, the first commercial photographic process, used silver-coated copper Browsing panoramic images appear- plates to produce highly detailed images. Shortly after its 1839 invention—when panora- ing in online galleries is interesting, but mas and dioramas were popular—photographers tried to create panoramas by placing it is even more fascinating to look at 100- two or more daguerreotype plates side by side. Cameras using a point-like aperture and year-old panoramic photographs, such as a flat light-sensitive plate (as do most cameras) produce perspectively projected images, those from the “Panoramic Photograph so when the photos are placed next to each other, they will not produce a perfect pan- Collection: Taking the Long View, 1851— oramic effect. The edges of the images will be apparent even if aligned perfectly. 1991.” This can be found in the Library of To make panoramic photos that are not cropped perspective images, cameras first Congress, where hundreds of high-res pho- had to be modified. The first panoramic cameras with the crucial feature of panning at tos of cities, fires, floods, and more are dis- a relatively steady speed were rather difficult to build and use, thus original panoramic played (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/

plates are very rare. With the invention of flexible film in 1888, a new wave of commer- c______ollections/panoramic_photo). cial panoramic cameras with a rotating lens or rotating camera body were introduced. Swing-lens cameras have a lens that rotates around the camera’s rear nodal point as Gergely Vass started his career in the CG the photograph is taken, and a slit exposes the vertical strip of film that is aligned with industry as a Maya TD and soon became a the axis of the lens. These cameras are able to scan the viewing angle between 110 and Maya instructor in Budapest, Hungary. Hav- 140 degrees. The entire exposition takes only a fraction of a second; however, due to the ing moved to the “dark side,” he is currently quick motion of the lens, the devices usually have a fixed focus and a small aperture. a software developer in the Image Science This makes the technique ideal for outside work and less useful for low-light situations. Team of Autodesk Media and Entertainment. Nevertheless, rotating panoramic cameras are able to capture an entire 360- His research areas include image processing degree environment, since the whole camera body rotates, as opposed to just the and computer vision. Vass can be reached

lens. A sophisticated mechanism ensures that the film is pulled inside the camera at [email protected].______

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Images and photos courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures. 12 | virtual backgrounds thanks virtual backgrounds thanks number of VFX facilities. to which included artists at a which includedartistsata Digital cars race through W W ComputerGraphics World Speed Racer ’s pitcrew, rvosPage Previous rvosPage Previous APRIL 2008 Contents Contents

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Digital Cinema. . . .

In June 2006, the team of fi lmmaking visionaries who had created breakthrough visuals for The Matrix series found themselves brain- storming again with Matrix directors Andy and Larry Wachowski. This time, the genre-busting Wachowski brothers wanted to create a live-action fi lm based on the classic 1960s television series Speed Racer, an English-language adaptation of the seminal Japanese anime Mach GoGoGo. So the team—production designer Owen Paterson, art direc- tor Hugh Bateup, and supervisors John Gaeta and Dan Glass—fed the brothers ideas about set design, animation, and color treatments. As they did, it soon became clear that Speed Racer would extend the group’s foray into virtual cinema beyond anything they had done before. “The really attractive thing about this project was that we were inventing another universe,” says Gaeta. “And, it wasn’t entirely clear what the rules of that universe were yet.” On May 9, the world will see the result when Warner Bros.’ Speed Racer bursts onto the screen in a techno-colored, fully saturated, and fast-moving world no one has seen before in live-action cinema. As did the animated television series, the live-action Speed Racer centers on car racing, but the only real elements in the fi lm, for the most part, are the actors and a monkey fi lmed largely on greenscreen stages with Sony’s new F-23 digital camera. In the racing sequences, which comprise about half the 2000 visual effects shots, actors and their digital doubles drive some 63 digital cars racing on CG tracks in digital stadiums fi lled with millions of digital people. In the non-rac- ing sequences, digital backgrounds wrap around the actors in another Xxxx1000 shots. But, these are far from typical CG cars, tracks, stadiums, and backgrounds.

Shifting Paradigms With a target audience aged 10 to teen in mind, the team felt free to ignore conventional fi lmmaking for both Speed Racer’s action scenes and its style. “We imagined what the generation that created X Games would invent for motor sports if they could,” says Gaeta. “We cre- ated elaborate tracks with ramps and crazy shapes, added Larry and Andy’s affi nity for kung fu, and made cars that can drive on walls, jump sideways, and crash onto other cars.” They termed the car-on-car action “car fu,” and it happens with blazing speed inside hyper-real, pop-art, virtual environments. After an initial four-minute test that the brothers showed to Warner Bros., Kim Libreri and Mohen Leo led an eight-member team at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) that created further tests to help defi ne the racing look. (Later, the two visual effects supervisors, both of whom had worked on fi lms in The Matrix series, shifted over to , where much of the racing action took place.) Their mission was to pay homage to the original anime, but with CG and photography rather than cel animation. “We decided to establish a cartoonish feel by using rostrum cam- era techniques,” says Leo. In part, the idea of imitating rostrum tech-

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. . . . Digital Cinema

Procedural systems helped animators keep the cars on tracks, as illustrated in the bottom images, shown before rendering (left) and after rendering (right). Any wheel on the CG cars can turn 180 degrees, as in this fi nal shot (left). This helped animators create the “car fu” action shots.

niques was born of budget concerns. In animation and visual effects, for example, a rostrum camera might move across a the circumference of a sphere,” he says. it isn’t fully realistic. The photographs look painted background to create the illusion A second team led by environment real, but they move in slightly odd ways.” that a static car in the foreground layer is art director Lubo Hristov, who had been The team embraced the oddity and moving. “We could save money and har- a digital matte painter for The Matrix started experimenting. Into the bubbles, ken back to the cartoon animation aes- Revolutions, among many other fi lms, Stephen Lawes, the in-house compositor, thetic we were after, so that arose fairly moved onto the set in Berlin to colorize slipped greenscreen elements of Gaeta or early in the design,” Glass says. “And that and paint the assembled backgrounds Glass walking on a treadmill or stand- was one of the basic things that led us to (see “Bubbles on Set,” pg. 16). ing on a turntable—shot with very lit- shoot on greenscreen.” “By the time we got to Berlin, we had tle camera motion. To create false cam- Then, the crew discovered examples QTVRs we could pan around in, and that era moves, Lawes cut through the layers of high-quality QuickTime VR images everyone—the director of photography, and moved them. And, similarly, artists (QTVR), more often seen in low res on the directors, and the actors—could see,” at BUF Compagnie played with interest- real-estate Web sites for panning through Glass says. “Traditionally, you shoot the ing multiplane ideas, as well. photographed rooms. They decided to use live action on the greenscreens fi rst, and the high-res QTVR to create 360-degree then, when you know what angles you Elastic Parallax Nuances virtual environments. need, you shoot the backgrounds. We The group then pushed the look even fur- had to do things in the opposite order ther. Gaeta explains: “Once we got to the Bubble Wrap because of the number of [virtual] loca- spot where we were slipping and sliding, “We’ve been reconstructing camera tions.” Also, because these backgrounds slicing and dicing the layers to make elas- moves through photographed environ- were not typical. tic parallax nuances, we thought, ‘Why ments for years to achieve pretty impos- First, the artists often combined shots not enhance the colors?’ This is where sible camera moves,” Glass says. “So we from different corners of the world into Lubo’s work became critical.” took aspects of that into this simple envi- one image without regard to geogra- The crew had determined early on that ronment. We call it ‘bubble technology.’ ” phy. Second, they stacked spheres inside they wouldn’t try to twist the digital tech- Glass organized a world unit to build spheres to create onion-like layers upon nology into looking like fi lm. “Speed Racer those environments. Teams of photogra- layers, and cut holes in the layers to let the is grain-free and noise-free, so there’s no phers took high-resolution bracketed dig- images beneath show through. Then, ref- connection to fi lm, but it wasn’t our inten- ital stills around the world, shooting a erencing multiplane camera techniques tion to make it look like TV,” Gaeta says. minimum of eight photographs around used in cel animation but applying it in “We wanted to fi nd a place in between.” a circumference in each location. In San a spherical world rather than a fl at plane, For inspiration, they referenced the Francisco, Dennis Martin, who had been they moved the layers. Gaeta dubs the Manipulator Web site, pop art, high- a virtual cinematographer for The Matrix, technique they developed “photo anime.” end fashion photography, car commer- led a team that used New House Internet Glass describes the look: “If the camera cials, and such master of anime as Hayao Services’ PTgui software and scripts he does a dolly move, you expect to see paral- Miyazaki. “We realized that pop-art wrote to stitch the multiple exposures into lax, but with still plates, you don’t. We fake photography and commercial photogra- HDRI spheres. “We had 28K images around it by cutting a few layers to see a shift, but phy have a strange overlap with anime,”

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Digital Cinema. . . .

Gaeta says, “the colors, the way they jux- to create the stylized look of the cars, set, and animators worked with the prox- tapose and light things to create images tracks, and environments in Speed Racer. ies to create hero animation. During the more expressive than real.” With two or three minor exceptions, races, digital cars speed at around 200 And, that was only the beginning. the cars are always CG. Working in or 300 miles per hour over tracks created “When we decided we didn’t need to imi- Autodesk’s Maya, Digital Domain’s mod- with two kilometers of geometry. tate reality, it started to get very exciting,” elers started with the previs cars to cre- “It’s a ridiculous amount of geometry,” Glass says. “We started playing with ate the hero and background models. says Libreri. people’s perceptions to create emotional Animators referenced animatics and live- Gibson estimates that the crew han- moments, to exaggerate them.” action footage of actors “driving” digital dled four times the number of assets that For example, to enhance the moment cars that compositing supervisor Darren the studio had ever handled at one time when a racer’s will to win takes over, the Poe had assembled on set. for any previous project. “I get between artists at Digital Domain swooped the “We had hours and hours of animat- 300 and 500 e-mails a day requesting environment into an abstract, highly sat- ics created by Digital Domain and BUF,” assets. Models, textures, lighting, set lay- urated blue tunnel with fast-moving col- says Gaeta. “Digital Domain created our outs, animation rigs. I’ve never encoun- ored lines running through it, much as car rigs and standards for track surfaces tered anything as complex.” an anime artist might do. so there would be no disconnect later. To help animators control the fast- “In a similar way, we had focus com- And, their animators did exquisite previs moving cars on the huge tracks, the crew pletely under our control,” Glass says. animation. Having the primary vendor created procedural systems. “The fi nal “We made deliberate choices about what doing previs animation with pre-rigged race takes place in the middle of a city, is in focus and how things defocus. cars was the only way we could have sur- in an enormous stadium with a crowd of Traditionally, highlights defocus into vived. It accelerated animation approval.” two million digital people,” describes Leo. circles. And in animation, whole back- “We built something like a roller coaster grounds often have the same level of blur Car Fu with truss work and metal pieces—but a or defocus, which pops the foreground Johnny Gibson, digital effects supervi- roller coaster the length of a racetrack.” off the background. So, the idea of doing sor, calls the car fu animation rig one An animation system kept the cars a simple box fi lter across the whole back- of the most advanced he has seen. “The on the twisting tracks unless animators ground was very interesting, especially cars have advanced drive trains, the made the cars jump, and in that case, a with photographs. But John [Gaeta] axles fl ex around so that the cars can complex suspension assembly bounced prompted, ‘Why stick with a box?’ ” drive sideways, and any wheel can turn the car’s body and deformed the tires As a result, Digital Domain, for exam- 180 degrees,” he explains. “The wheels appropriately when the vehicle landed. ple, wrote software to create what Glass rotate at the correct rate for the car’s For straightaways, animators could set calls an “amusing set of fi lters.” Anything speed on the track. For medium to far the amount of procedural bounce. in a scene, whether live-action photogra- shots, when the wheels turn, the steer- To add stylized effects to the cars rac- phy or painted background bubble pho- ing wheel turns automatically.” ing around the tracks, the crew could tography, can defocus into a variety of For close-ups of cars with greenscreen move the digital cars—in their deformed fuzzy shapes, including triangles, dia- drivers, camera trackers at Digital Domain states on every frame—from Maya into monds, or hearts. matched proxy 3D cars to cars “driven” by Side Effects’ . In Houdini, clever actors in cockpits on motion bases shot on systems automatically created stylized Racing at Digital Domain In addition to Digital Domain, more than a dozen visual effects studios worked on postproduction for the show—compos- iting greenscreen shots into the digital bubbles and creating the races. Of those studios, Digital Domain, Imageworks, and ILM focused primarily on CG cars and the racetracks, with Digital Domain landing the bulk of the CG work. A crew of 440 artists at Digital Domain drew on the studio’s experience in creat- ing digital cars for television commercials, Artists manipulated the virtual backgrounds, which they created from enhanced photographs, along with their expertise in visual effects, to amplify emotional moments.

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. . . . Digital Cinema

tire trails, skid marks, peel-out smoke, both: the fl uid-driven surface and the tinguishable in photographs, the render- sonic booms, trailing bits of debris, and volume driven by the bubbles.” ing team moved on to complex scenes other effects on the fl y. using raytracing and fi nal gathering to For explosions caused by car crashes, Refl ections create refl ections and shadows. the crew used Digital Domain’s Storm, As the cars race around the tracks, they Shader writer Jim Rothrock, who for- which is a volumetric renderer. But, refl ect everything in the stadium, from merly worked at Mental Images, replaced rather than motion-blurring sparks from the fl ashbulbs popping in the crowds to the entire fi nal gathering solutions in car crashes and explosions, the effects the neon signs. “It’s the worst of all pos- Mental Ray with new technology he cre- artists built motion blur with geometry sible worlds,” says Haarm-Pieter Duiker, ated from scratch. Duiker then organized to control sparks at a sub-frame level. CG supervisor. “We have highly refl ective and enhanced the new rendering solu- “The sparks are curves and streaks cre- cars moving fast.” Another Matrix alum, tions into a production-ready system. ated based on velocity,” says Gibson. Duiker took a hiatus from marketing his “In one approach, you can bounce “The problem in doing this is that when Color Symmetry software to lead the ren- lights off everything, and we did that for the camera moves, you can get parallelo- dering team. Approximately 50 lighters the tracks; we raytraced the entire scene,” grams. So, to get a line biased in the direc- worked in Mental Images’ Mental Ray to Duiker says. “But for the cars, we ren- tion of the camera, we compute sparks in create the shots; Duiker had 20 lighters dered panoramas per frame per car.” camera space.” on his team alone. In effect, the digital cars act like the To help the fi lm keep a PG rating, the Because the goal was to have the scenes chrome balls used on set to gather light. effects crew rescues the drivers in car look like extremely processed photogra- Rays, sent out from the cars in every direc- crashes by covering them in foam. As the phy, the rendering team started by creat- tion, gather data from the background digital fl uid fl ows over the driver, the sys- ing photorealistic digital cars and tested images of the stands, the signs, the light tem that the effects artists devised grows their techniques side-by-side against real banks, the video screens, and so forth. spheres everywhere the foam sticks. “On cars. “We shot reference Corvettes in “It’s as if we put a virtual chrome ball top of those spheres, we grow more and ’s parking lot,” says Gibson. in the center of the car,” says Duiker. more spheres,” Gibson says. “We render When the real and unreal cars were indis- “So, on a per-frame, per-car basis, at that point in the frame, we know which lights to render; as each car moves, we see all the elements in the environment on the car. It gets us a long way.” In addi- To give the directors, the cinematographer, and the actors a view into the artifi cial world that would tion, lighters, for example, might use CG later surround them, Digital Domain turned its former compositing software, Nuke (now owned by lights to simulate headlights. The Foundry), into a real-time system named “Sparky.” On set, Digital Domain’s Darren Poe and other To handle the rendering load, Digital compositors used Sparky to put footage of the actors, shot on greenscreen with HD cameras, inside Domain expanded the facility’s rendering the 360-degree QTVR “bubbles,” that is, spherical collages stitched together from color-corrected capabilities. The facility put eight-core Intel and otherwise manipulated photographs. It was, in effect, a live keying system. machines with 16GB RAM on every artist’s “Having the ability to see on set what would later be in the show was useful,” says Mohen Leo, VFX desk and installed 700 render machines supervisor at Digital Domain, “but also, they wanted to be sure that as they shot the sequences, the with the same specs in a separate facility way in which they decided to line up the backgrounds would be preserved for post houses.” Thus, the linked to the studio by fi ber optics. post houses could see how the directors wanted the foreground and background images positioned, The crew rendered the scenes using a as well as the fi eld of view. —Barbara Robertson multichannel approach in Open EXR to produce approximately 20 layers so that compositors could better control various aspects of the scene. For the races, the background bubbles tended to be of sky and stars because the environment was largely the CG stadium fi lled with crowds. Effects artists created the crowds with Massive software and by replicating 2D images of 20 extras fi lmed on greenscreen stages. By placing the 2D images on cards instanced using parameters to create such variations as color and size, and then

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. . . . Digital Cinema

applying the cards to points in a 3D point race-car driver confronts bad guys in a cloud that represented the stadium, the big semi-truck on a lonely highway. artists multiplied the 20 extras into thou- “I have strong opinions [on] light- BUF Compagnie: Xtreme rally car race sands. “We could push the camera in on ing and texturing objects to look realis- designs, Royalton Industries, 2.5D designs these images and see the people in detail,” CafeFX: FUJI race tic from all the fi lms I’ve worked on in Gibson says. CIS: Compositing the past,” Knoll says. “But the normal Poe led the team of 50 compositors Digital Domain: CG cars, racetracks, rule book for photography was inappro- who assembled the shots in The Foundry’s and stadiums for Thunderhead and Grand priate here. It’s a crazy, odd stylization, Prix races, 3D compositing, anime FX, Nuke. “We can view proxy versions of on-set compositing and it takes a little while to wrap your the track and cars in the 3D environment Evil Eye: Speed’s 2.5D neighborhood, head around where to go with it. It’s a from camera angles as we’re compositing,” anime snow effects bold experiment. No one has ever done he explains. While on set, he had done ILM: Cruncher Block vs. Racer X this before. In the end, we ended up with Lola: Digital makeup early tests to help refi ne the super-stylized something attractive, appealing, and Pixel Liberation Front: Mach 5 pop-art look of the fi lm by experimenting button movie pleasing. And, it was fun.” with color, lighting, and graphic defocus- Rising Sun: Piranha, Cruncher gunfi ght For Gaeta, part of the fun of this proj- ing. In postproduction, he and the com- effects ect was pulling together a crew that he positors on his team applied the results : The had worked with on The Matrix, as well desert fl ats and mountain races, 2.5D design of those tests. “We added the bling,” Poe as talented effects supervisors in many Starz Media: Spritle and Chim Chim anime says, “lots of lens fl ares, glows, and optics. sequence drawn by Geoff Darrow studios. “We brought a lot of unbelievable We airbrushed in extreme color.” people with us from our community,” he says, “and a dream team of creative and Racing at Imageworks, ILM technical talent—Pierre Buffi n, Kevin Because most of Digital Domain’s Mack, Kim Libreri, Dan Glass, John Knoll, shots take place in stadiums, that stu- and others, people on the highest plane dio worked with simple bubbles. The of visual effects capability, the masters of three racing sequences in the 250 shots making things look right.” created at Imageworks, however, take car perfectly in focus for a couple frames But, “right” in this fi lm took on a new place in a desert and in the mountains, while it’s ripping by at a ridiculous speed. meaning. “Hats off to those who experi- which the production artists provided “The shots weren’t supposed to be realis- mented with this new, unnamed genre in in the form of more complex bubbles. tic,” says Peter Nofz, digital effects super- Sky Captain, Sin City, 300,” Gaeta says. “It’s Like Digital Domain, Imageworks used visor. “They were hyper-realistic. The the Matrix trilogy’s virtual cinema, vir- Maya for modeling, rigging, and anima- regular visual effects rules didn’t apply; tual cinematography, and virtual effects tion, and Houdini for effects. In addition, the idea was always to take everything to mutated toward the new style and a looser Imageworks relied on Maxon’s Cinema 11. We could have fun with the material.” application I’m calling photo anime.” 4D for some projections of images onto The bubbles were particularly fun for And, even though Speed Racer’s style geometry. And, as with Digital Domain’s Mack, who works with powerful, saturated is radical, fi lmmakers might use the tech- racing shots, Imageworks’ races are all- colors in his own fi ne-art digital paintings niques to create fi lms in other styles rang- CG except for the actors fi lmed in cock- and who has been creating digital back- ing from photoreal to non-photoreal. pits on motion bases. Both studios worked grounds using matte paintings and mul- “It’s happening because of advance- from shot designs laid out in previs. tiplaning for visual effects in such fi lms ments in digital cinema and compositing “The cars are doing all kinds of over-the- as Apollo 13 for years. “But we’re taking that give us the ability to mount an end-to- top stunts and crazy things,” says Kevin that idea to such an extreme here,” he says. end movie,” Gaeta says. “When you add Mack, visual effects supervisor. “Sometimes “It’s some of the coolest stuff I’ve worked ‘editography’ and post cinematography, you the ground is moving and not the cars—the on. It’s like pop art that’s alive and ani- get the feeling that we’re moving the goal road is on a conveyer belt to avoid moving mated, and it’s tricky. You can’t just satu- lines for production design and cinematog- through huge volumes of geometry, which rate an image. We’ve gone to great lengths raphy both. Credit George Lucas for seeing is also part of the animation style. Our job to get absolute complements with grada- this early on. It’s not about visual effects, was to keep things feeling real with proper tions in hue as well as value. It’s amazing. it’s about creating the form of a fi lm.” weight and physics, despite the antics. It’s Really beautiful; extremely cool.” stylized, and we looked for opportunities For ILM’s John Knoll, the fun of the Barbara Robertson is an award-winning to go super-stylized.” project was moving out of his comfort writer and a contributing editor for Com- For example, they might create more zone. He supervised a small team that puter Graphics World. She can be reached

or less motion blur than normal, or put a created a 30-shot sequence in which a at [email protected].

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Broadcast. . . .

broke a number of records. The highly anticipated and ultra-competitive game was viewed Director: Nicoli Fuglsig by 97.5 million people, more than any other Super Bowl game. Agency: Wieden & Kennedy/Portland That turned out to be a good bargain for advertisers, which paid Production company: MJZ broadcaster Fox network $2.7 million for a 30-second spot, up CG company: The Mill/New York only $100,000 from the previous year’s ad rates. Everyone loves Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, Without question, people were focused on this history-mak- with its oversized balloons depicting popular characters. Wieden ing game—had the Patriots won, they would have tied the Miami & Kennedy, with MJZ’s director Nicoli Fuglsig, built a commercial Dolphins for the NFL’s second perfect-season record, albeit with a spot around this parade theme, with a story starring such bal- record of 19-0 compared to the Dolphins’ 17-0 season. But with so loons, along with some aerial high jinks not usually seen in the much riding on the actual gameplay, did viewers pay attention to annual parade. The concept for “It’s Mine” was simple and com- the commercials? The answer is a resounding “Yes.” pelling, and that, combined with a brilliant execution, had this AdBowl, a Web portal that asks visitors to rank the Super commercial soaring above Bowl ads, listed the top four audience favorites: Anheuser-Busch’s the others. The commercial starts on the ground, with big balloon versions of Stewie (from The Family Guy) and Underdog spar- ring over a bottle of Coke, a comical dispute they take to the heights above Manhattan. The ending twist is that neither of them wins the coveted Coke bottle: Rather, it’s the perennial loser Charlie Brown who, for once, comes out on top. Production company MJZ originally intended to Coke’s “It’s Mine” entailed complex animation of the balloon characters. Also, create practical balloons for all the characters, which Maya’s nCloth helped provide believable volume and squash and stretch. would be used in the fi rst one-third of the 60-second “Team,” Bridgestone’s “Scream,” Coca-Cola’s “It’s Mine,” and commercial. The switch to CGI would take place when the bal- FedEx’s “Carrier Pigeon.” Visitors to the site could rate the spots loon characters broke free of their earthly constraints and soared in real time, igniting Internet chat boards while the game was above the city. Specialist balloon builders were hard at work on in progress. As in past years, the best commercials were a mix the giant balloons, but by the time they were fi nished, the design of extremes—the invisible and the very obvious digital effects. for the characters had changed, and there was not enough time Squirrels clearly don’t scream (as in Bridgestone’s “Scream”), and for a rebuild. a horse can’t pull a train car (“Team”). And there are no monster- “At fi rst, they asked us to put CG feet on Stewie,” explains lead size pigeons (a la FedEx’s “Carrier Pigeon”). Conversely, the spots 3D artist Ben Smith from The Mill. “At the same time, we were were also laden with such invisible effects as changing seasons working with the CG balloons for background shots. Everyone got (“Team”), re-imagined cityscapes (“It’s Mine”), and a falling crate excited about how they looked, so they decided to just use CG bal- that segues from CG to live action (“Carrier Pigeon”). loons for the whole thing.” Whether the intent was a realistic or a stylized look, a humor- Creating the hero balloons didn’t increase the number of ous or a serious tone, or something else altogether, it was up to shots—which Smith counts as 30—but it did up the intensity of the entire creative group to work as a team to achieve the desired the work. Unlike the airborne shots when the balloons break free, results. Obviously, this was done with great success in the four the earthly-bound ones required sophisticated animation. “In the spots detailed below, with the VFX taking on the role of special early stage, when the balloons are trying to escape the tethers, teams to create the elements of magic and surprise, which made you see the ropes pull the surface of the cloth,” he says. “They these spots particularly memorable. were diffi cult shots.”

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. . . . Broadcast

know they’re there,” says Rob Churchill, Filmworkers Club creative director and lead artist. “The effects were truly pres- ent to help tell the story.” Perhaps the most invisible effect is the one that was the most pervasive. To show that Hank trained hard for an The Budweiser Clydesdales are Super Bowl commercial favorites. This year, the effects are entire year, Filmworkers Club had to mostly hidden, especially in the backgrounds, where digital magic changed the seasons. change the seasons in the spot, which The background plates were shot at Because The Mill created the hero was shot in Southern California. “I did the beginning of December, giving The characters, it also played a role in the several matte paintings and composited Mill’s team a week to start modeling the offline editing of the spot. In previsual- them into the scenes for the rough cut, to characters, which they did in Softimage’s ization, The Mill creatives established a make it come alive,” says Churchill. “For XSI. The models were then rigged and number of actions they wanted to incor- the final cut, I created matte paintings simulated in Autodesk’s Maya, and trans- porate, such as the head butt, and the in Autodesk’s Smoke, and combined that ferred back to Softimage XSI’s embed- timing for each action was crucial. “Early with some photography.” ded Mental Ray for rendering. The Mill’s on, we realized the balloons had to move Using the 3D capabilities within “secret sauce” helped considerably in at a certain speed to look real,” Smith Smoke, Churchill painted a full-on transferring the geometry back and forth explains. “If they went too fast, they blizzard, enhancing it with stock-foot- between the packages. immediately looked CG. We had a lot of age elements, for a scene in which the “Our software enables our office to creative control to make [the animation] horse runs through a birch forest. For choose which package they want to work work as a story.” the autumn scene, he replaced fore- in,” explains Smith. “It worked brilliantly. ground trees with others full of brightly When the animator is finishing, he or she colored leaves, adding falling leaves of overwrites the file, and it immediately Director: Joe Pytka similar hues. A farm in the background updates in the render. Both animating Agency: DDB Chicago (Omnicon) was replaced with the scene of fall trees and rendering took a long time to refine, Production company: Pytka on a mountainside. “The only elements and this way we could animate and ren- CG company: Filmworkers Club that were left was one tree and Hank the der concurrently.” The Budweiser Clydesdale horses are horse,” notes Churchill. Two other tools helped to sell the a staple at the Super Bowl. Every year, For the shots of summer, all Churchill CG balloons. ’s nCloth, viewers wait to see what the trademark had to work with was a blown-out sky. which is based on the company’s new horses will be up to. This time, Anheuser- “The original intent was to do a sky pass,” Nucleus technology, enabled the anima- Busch and its agency, DDB Chicago, have he says. “The agency thought it might be tors to maintain a believable volume for outdone themselves with “Team,” a com- nice to put a mountain back there. We the balloons, especially as they squashed mercial that hit a soft spot for viewers found a beautifully colored stock photo against skyscrapers and each other. “The and wowed most of the critics. of a mountain-scape that said ‘summer.’ squashy reactiveness was something we Combining the emotional arc of Rocky That was our base, and we doctored it up really had to push to make it absolutely with the beautiful horses and an ador- by changing the lighting a bit.” real,” says Smith. “Using nCloth, we able dog, “Team” charts the course of For the final shots, says Churchill, the developed a few pre-settings that worked Hank the horse, who begins training group went “full bore,” with meticulous well, and then we tweaked it on a shot- in hopes of becoming strong enough to rotoscoping around Hank, his hair, and by-shot basis.” The second tool was pull the Budweiser beer wagon. As Hank objects to create a perfect matte, while Autodesk’s Mudbox, a paint-based appli- trains, we see him perform such super- hand-painted trees tin the background to cation that Keith Kim, an artist at The equine feats as pulling a line of railroad make the composition of the scene per- Mill, used to hand paint all the creases cars, encouraged by a friendly Dalmatian, fect. Autodesk Inferno artists Chris Ryan in the balloons. until he makes the team. and Rick Thompson helped add many of The Mill also created a background When Hank pulls the railroad cars, these subtle details. shot, when bad weather halted the shoot that’s probably one of the few moments For the scene of Hank pulling the in New York. After taking digital stills of that a viewer might realize the spot actu- freight cars, Churchill reveals that Hank the New York location, The Mill’s artistic ally includes some digital derring-do. galloped on the tracks, while another team rebuilt the backdrop in XSI and used “The visual effects are there, but they’re plate captured the train car being Science-D-Vision’s 3D Equalizer to track it. so well integrated that you don’t even pushed by an engine. The engine was

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Broadcast. . . .

digitally removed from the picture, and ber of physical stunts captured in-cam- to closed wing is quite complex.” Churchill’s team created 3D digital har- era helped in building the realism. “We The main pigeon rig was built within nesses in Autodesk Maya. did drop a crate from 150 feet in the air, Autodesk’s Maya, and it incorporated “We had to make sure the rigging and we did toss cars through windows,” flight feathers and tail feathers. “With matched how the Clydesdales are rigged,” he says. “We didn’t skimp on physical a mix of built-in Maya tools and cus- Churchill says. “We had the production things on set and leave it all to CG. That, tomer tools, that got us 75 percent of the company take close-up, detailed pho- combined with what we did, gives the way there,” says Walker. “The interest- tos of the rigging so we could create commercial a bigger, grander scale.” ing bit is that we used nCloth, a built- it digitally.” For all the shots, the main Another reason to try to capture as in Maya tool and a new technology that tools—Flame, Inferno, and Maya—were much on the set as possible is that Butler integrates all their dynamic simulation networked together using Quantum’s and his CFC team realized into a single pipeline.” According to StorNext data-management software so they would have enough on their hands Butler, nCloth was applied to the wing the programs could share the same multi- creating photorealistic pigeons. “The and tail feathers, which added dynam- terabyte storage system. more physical elements we have, the bet- ics and made the feathers lay perfectly Filmworkers Club’s own Rocky feat ter it’s going to look, unless you have an over one another. was finishing the spot in two and a half unlimited amount of time and can make Smaller body feathers were still an weeks, at the same time they were fin- CG glass, for example,” he says. issue, and Side Effects’ Houdini saved ishing seven other Bud Light commer- The 3D department began develop- the day for this task. “It’s a very good tool cials, eight Cars.com spots, and a host ing the pigeons in November, in antic- for experimenting with highly technical of Will Ferrell Semi-Pro commercials. “It ipation of the mid-December shoot, setups,” Walker says. He describes the was a wonderful opportunity to show with animation beginning Christmas process: “In Houdini, we’d get the pigeon how much we could handle all at once,” week. “That gave us eight weeks,” says with the flight feathers already animated. says Churchill. Changing all those back- grounds to tell the story was challenging, but we got wonderful input from [agency creative] Adam Glickman, and that made us want to go for the gold.”

Director: Tom Kuntz Agency: BBDO Production company: MJZ CG company: Framestore CFC NY Carrier pigeons have a place in the his- tory of mail delivery, and BBDO helped client FedEx use the feathered postmen to make a point about the company’s speed and reliability. In “Carrier Pigeon,” The mayhem in the FedEx spot “Carrier Pigeon” is the result of physical effects coupled a young man explains to his boss how with realistic VFX. The giant pigeons, of course, are 3D. carrier pigeons, outfitted with GPS units, have solved all the company’s shipping Framestore CFC senior technical direc- Then we placed 15,000 to 20,000 body problems. That is, until the duo look out tor Andy Walker. feathers over the body and groomed the window and see monstrous-sized The Framestore CFC creative team them onto the pigeon surface. We cre- pigeons dropping crates onto a city simultaneously started previsualiza- ated a command-line raytracing tool that street filled with people terrorized by tion to block out animation, and hun- sorted out all the feathers and made sure the huge birds. kered down with R&D on the pigeons. they laid perfectly on top of one another.” The commercial was an artful blend Reference material included a stuffed The artists then brought the pigeons back of live-action greenscreen photography pigeon bought from a taxidermist. “Two into Maya for lighting and rendering. and very realistic . problems were covering the body with Shots that combined real and CG ver- Framestore CFC NY visual effects super- feathers and getting the wings to open sions of the same object were the most visor Murray Butler, who went to the and close with so many feathers,” says challenging. For example, live-action live-action shoot, reports that the num- Butler. “The transition from open wing photography was used for the shot of the

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. . . . Broadcast

crate being dropped to the ground. “But For the animation, modeling, and we changed the trajectory, so we did that rigging, Method used Autodesk’s Maya; in 3D until the minute it hits the ground for rendering and creating the animal and breaks apart; that was when we fur, the team used Side Effects’ Houdini. used what was in-camera,” says Butler. Boyd created the fur tool that was “Over the entire spot, the main thing we plugged into Houdini. did was add little touches—bits of dust All the other animals were filmed kicking up, moments of defocus, camera live action except for the cricket, which shake.” In shots that didn’t have enough was dead but needed a face replacement. pigeons, the group added rotoscoped (Boyd is quick to point out, though, that pigeons from other takes and added them the insect was not killed in the making into the final shot. All the imagery was of the commercial.) “We worked with composited using a Flame system. a base plate where the animal did most The special touch that Butler and his of the motion, and we were tweaking it crew found the most amusing were the hel- to get the most out of the performance,” mets that the pigeons wore. Although the explains Boyd. real pigeons initially wore prop helmets, Each artist chose an animal he or she they didn’t look convincing. So Framestore wanted to work on. “In that way, each CFC created CG helmets and, using 2d3’s artist could focus on his or her own shot, Boujou and RealViz’s MatchMover, tracked so we had a variety of looks and feelings the shots so they could place the accessory for each shot,” LeBloch adds. “Each artist onto the pigeons. owned the shot.” Tracking the animal’s “One thing we thought was quite funny In “Scream,” digital artists were tasked head to replace the face was often done was the helmet display from the pigeon’s with face replacements of woodland crea- with 2d3’s Boujou or “old school”—by point of view,” says Butler. “We watched tures. Making the task all the more difficult hand—if the face was too small. was that the final shots were shown full 2 and Resident Evil—for which The biggest challenge was turning all frame and in HD. Framestore CFC did the effects—to create this work around in a short, eight-week the graphics you see.” ment for the animals. “We knew they timeframe. Most of the 3D comps were wanted exaggerated screams,” says lead done in Apple’s Shake and Adobe’s After 3D artist Andy Boyd. “And animals don’t Effects. “We would render eight passes Director: Kinka Usher open their mouths on cue.” and pre-comp that, and then deliver two Agency: The Richards Group Director Kinka Usher did try, in layers to the [Autodesk] Flame artist,” Production company: House of Usher fact, to capture as much as he could in- explains Boyd. “Then the Flame artist CG company: Method camera. To this end, an animal trainer would finish the comp, integrating live It’s a calm day in the country, and brought a van full of animals to a shoot action with CG.” Chester, a friendly little squirrel, hops out in the mountains near Los Angeles, and “A lot of the techniques we used were onto the road to retrieve an acorn. As he the crew was able to capture several of tried-and-true methods we’ve used for nibbles the nutty treat, he sees an auto- Chester’s movements using three squir- years,” adds Boyd. “When dealing with mobile bearing down on him at a high rels. “We got the shot when his head fur, getting it to work right when the rate of speed. This horrifying scenario pops up in the beginning, him running animals were moving subtly was tricky. unleashes a series of screams from a for- into the road to get the acorn, and the We had to be very detailed with our est full of animals. One by one, in over- very end shot when he runs out of frame,” tracking so nothing would give away wrought comedic style, a raccoon, an says 3D artist James LeBloch. our effect.” owl, a rabbit, a mouse, a tortoise, a doe, Boyd reveals what made this commer- Boyd reports that creating the fur tool a grasshopper, three groundhogs, and cial particularly challenging: The animal has already come in handy for another the car’s passenger shriek. But, thanks to faces the artists needed to replace were job and another animal: this time, a kan- Bridgestone tires, their fears don’t come full frame—and in HD. “It’s easy to see garoo, for a project he cannot name at to pass; the driver simply and safely if you don’t have the details right,” he this time. swerves around the terrified squirrel. says. “Doing a 3D squirrel was a challenge, From the moment that the Method but doing the face in 3D HD and cutting Debra Kaufman is a freelance writer in the creative team got the boards, they knew between the 3D CG face and the live-action entertainment industry. She can be reached

one job they’d be doing was face replace- one was even more of a challenge.” at [email protected].

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HP recommends Windows Vista® Business

 ______

Wow and amaze your audience using HP’s cutting edge with multi-core Intel® Xeon® processors. The HP xw8600 ’s breathtaking visuals and blazing fast performance create a seamless artistic environment for you and your creations. Now that you have the tools, let the story unfold.

Come see HP at NAB booth #SL6105

Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. All rights reserved. Microsoft and Windows are U. S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Windows Vista is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other company and/or product names are trademarks of their respective owners. ©Copyright 2007 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L. P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. Screen image courtesy of Autodesk, Inc. © 2002 – 2007, All rights reserved. Keyboard shown may differ from keyboards currently available.

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. . . . . Multimedia

'SFODITUVEJPTªOETVDDFTTEFWFMPQJOH GPSBNVMUJUVEFPGNFEJB #Z,BUIMFFO.BIFS

The French, as they would be the fi rst to point out, are different. In this particular instance, the French have carved out an approach to multimedia that’s unique in the world market. French facilities are having very good luck developing cross-platform titles. It could be argued that the ability to ramp up projects on several fronts may even be part of the national char- acter. The French love media: They fancy movies, they adore animation, they prize video games, they’re mad for manga, and they treasure televi- sion. What’s really fascinating is the way in which it all comes together. When talking about multimedia, it’s probably helpful to defi ne what types of media are falling into this rather large bucket. In the case of France, it’s pretty much all forms of media—movies, animation, inter- active drama, mobile phone applications, graphic novels, online games, disk-based games, and console games. On a recent visit to France, I visited three companies that are developing cross-platform projects: the unfortunately named IP4U (Interactive Project for you), Ankama, and Planet Nemo. IP4U focuses on developing titles for mobile phones that also stretch across to television. Ankama has developed the popu- lar Dofus MMORPG, and Planet Nemo develops TV shows and online properties. All three companies are supporting their titles with cross-platform content, and they are representative of the French companies working in media and entertainment today. This shouldn’t be a surprise, really. The French were instrumental in the develop- ment of multimedia. The Lumiere brothers, Louis and Auguste, invented the portable movie camera. In fact, the Lumieres are credited with creating the fi rst movie-comedy when they used their new invention to fi lm their gardener. Louis stepped on the hose, the gardener went to have a look at why it wasn’t working, Louis took his foot off the hose, and voilá, the next thing you know, you’ve got Martin Lawrence. It has been argued that the fi rst fi lmed animated cartoon was Fantasmagorie, made by French director Émile Cohl in 1908. The French did not invent digital games (which began in 1958 with Will Higinbotham’s Pong), although Ubisoft, Vivendi, Eden,

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Multimedia. . . . .

and Ankama are world leaders today in countries, France has a head start. be bought outright. As a result, projects computer-game development. Apparently Unlike some countries that may be don’t usually originate in studios and the Swiss invented the comic strip with just building a homegrown industry, networks. Rather, all parties meet to put Rodolphe Topffer’s “Adventures of Oba- France’s animation industry is well estab- together a deal, and very often govern- diah Oldbuck” in 1842, but the French lished, stylistically innovative by defi ni- ment agencies are part of the funding redefi ned the graphic novel with Heavy tion, and routinely singled out for awards package. As a result, projects are allowed Metal, or Metal Heurat, and the world has (the Oscar-nominated The Triplets of to develop more organically. never been the same. Belleville being another international hit). Today, French companies are bring- One of France’s most well known ani- ing it all together, fi nding inspiration in mated exports, Astérix, has been teach- other media and combining media as a ing school children French via comic way to build brand for a title—and this books and entertaining them via ani- is something the French have been very mated features. Moreover, French mul- good at all along. Consider, for example, timedia companies are hir- France’s entry in this year’s Academy ing every single graduate Awards: Persepolis, the movie interpre- produced by the lead- tation from Sony Pictures Classics of ing French anima- Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel about a tion schools, such as young girl growing up in Iran during the Les Gobelins in Paris, early days of the revolution. The fi lm was Supinfocom in Valenciennes, and interesting on several levels—on its will- CNDBI in Angouleme. A recent article ingness to use simple line-drawn anima- in the Christian Science Monitor tion that looked like its paper-based pro- proclaimed France as “’s genitor, and its use of animation to tell latest rival.” a very human story. It’s simply one of It’s tempting to make com- many examples of the French’s very idio- parisons to the US Hollywood syncratic approach toward entertainment establishment, but it would media. And it’s an approach that is fi nd- not really be accurate to ing a world audience. do so. Actually, French media companies are The Animation Trail taking a very different Animation is one of the fastest grow- approach to creating fran- ing areas of entertainment worldwide. chises compared to US com- The number of animations coming from panies. While animation is Hollywood are increasing every year, but a strong component of French other countries are building their own multimedia, it’s only part of the animation businesses, as well. story. It is more common for French European countries are creating animated companies to create cross-platform stories in a variety of styles and often with projects from conception, and it’s easier a more regional appeal to counter the slick for them to do so. product coming out of Hollywood. The relationship between the cre- There are almost as many strong ani- ative community and the media business mation regions as there are countries. community has developed differently in Ankama is one of Eastern European animators helped show France. In the US, much of the creative France’s leading game the way. First, they were a source of low- control is in the hands of the networks developers, having cost labor; now they are a source of tal- and the studios, which are, of course, garnered success with its ent. The same process is occurring in Asia. grounded in traditional media—TV and widely popular Flash-based Countries that once provided the labor for movies. Studios buy and own properties Dofus MMORPG. The com- animation in the West are hoping to cre- and franchises. In contrast, intellectual pany is currently working ate their own media franchises for their property always belongs to the creator in on another title, Wakfu.

children. Among the Western European France, and the rights to the IP can never Images ©2007 Ankama.

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. . . . Multimedia

Multimedia developer ing in big cities. Groove High, meanwhile, Planet Nemo creates was developed for an older audience, the TV shows and online 8- to 11-year-olds. properties. Its lat- “It’s difficult to build a brand for 8- est project is Groove High, which caught to 11-year-olds if you don’t have a lot the eye of Disney. of money for marketing,” says Frédéric Before the deal was Puech, Planet Nemo’s CEO. As it turns sealed, though, Planet out, however, graphic novels are a good Nemo began building way to reach young audiences. Planet an audience through Nemo sold more than 100,000 Groove comic books. High books in 14 months. “That helped us in our negotiation with Disney,” notes Puech. Planet Nemo has a second project in the works with another US company. The studio is working with the Discovery Channel on “Aloutah,” a cartoon series that will include two-minute Flash-based shorts. The shorts can be used as inter- Planet Nemo audience for the show. stitials between the televised program- Planet Nemo is developing a project it Much of Planet Nemo’s content is ming, but they will also be used as Web created in-house called Groove High. The developed for kids from pre-school age content for YouTube shorts, and may be company has a deal with Disney for a to 12 years old. In France, Planet Nemo exchanged as mobile content. series of 26-minute animated shows. But Animation has made a name for itself However, Puech is proceeding cau- even before the deal was sealed with with its work on the cartoon show Bali— tiously. The audience for “Aloutah” is Disney, Planet Nemo was able to begin about a cute doggie-like creature that younger—in the 7- to 12-year-old range— building a brand for Groove High with negotiates an urban environment—which and while children of that age are increas- comic books that have developed a loyal is designed to appeal to pre-schoolers liv- ingly getting cell phones, they are usually

Cross-platform development has several meanings. It can entail developing for itself a little party in March, the annual MIX08 event, and invited developers and different device platforms, such as TV, cell phones, and the Internet. And it can designers, a group Microsoft has designated Des/Devs, to try out new tools and imply developing for different operating system platforms—Windows, Mac, see what they think. This is not the big, mean, rough, tough Microsoft of old. It’s Linux, Symbian, and whatever else is coming down the pike. a new Microsoft with tatts and attitude, and a whole lot of former Adobe and The two different types of cross-platform development used to exist in sepa- Macromedia employees. rate spheres: One worried about operating systems on the PCs and media types Microsoft’s new cross-platform development strategy is based on Silverlight— for entertainment. Forget that; now it’s a matter of capturing those shrinking its competitor to Flash—and the company is complementing Silverlight with attention spans wherever they might be directed. development tools such as Blend and a revamped Visual Studio. It also hopes to It’s a new ball game, but no one is going to retain possession of the ball woo designers with new graphics and Web tools; however, the company has a lot for long. The arrival of broadly deployed high-speed broadband connections has more work to do along those lines. Designers live in an Adobe world, and for now, turned the Internet into a viable network for entertainment content. The arrival Microsoft is letting them do it and hoping they’ll deploy on Silverlight. of phones with powerful multimedia processors has suddenly made the idea of Meanwhile, Adobe is scrambling to revamp its tools. It has expanded the a phone as an entertainment device go from one that is really stupid to one that capabilities of Flash with the AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) platform. The is really brilliant, almost as soon as Steve Jobs told us he thought of it. And TV is company has added onto its tool set with Thermo, which, like Blend, allows everywhere, albeit in somewhat different forms. So, now the most talented com- the integration of different media types and programming. It is competing with panies in the world are squaring off against one another to deliver the tools to Microsoft head-on with the Adobe Media Player (AMP). And Adobe has worked remake media. behind the scenes on its venerable graphics tools, updating them for a 3D world Guess who else is caught up in the Web? Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft threw and an interactive/multimedia world at that. Adobe tends to think of its custom-

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Multimedia. . . .

inexpensive versions with limited multi- Because much of the content is des- your average teenager. Catman is a phi- media capabilities. Instead, Planet Nemo tined for mobile, IP4U does a lot of Adobe losopher, and the producers at IP4U is much more interested in the possibili- Flash development. However, as the com- hope to see the combination of cool ties of kids creating their own short con- pany adds 2D TV animation to its lineup, graphics, a little Eastern mysticism, tent for “Aloutah,” which they can then it is also turning to traditional animation and lots of action pay off for interna- trade, show on YouTube, or even show tools, such as those provided by Toon tional audiences. on TV. Boom Animation. Catman is another IP4U IP4U property that has IP4U, founded in 2004 and located in been developed from Valenciennes, is coming at the multime- a completely different dia opportunity from another direction. angle. Of course, the The company originally was founded Catman content will with the idea of creating mobile anima- be delivered for cell tion and games with cross-platform sup- phones—IP4U’s main port from graphic novels, Web content, playground—but it is and TV, albeit with the intent to cre- also headed for the ate content for mobile phones, TV, and Internet and televi- online portals. The company has devel- sion. The very stylized The French, in particular, are savvy when it comes to extending a oped games for other companies, includ- drawing style sup- property to other media channels. IP4U is developing Catman for ing Vivendi, and is now working on its ports a cool charac- cell phones, its main media, but is extending the title to the Inter- own projects. ter—a cool cat who’s a net and television as well. IP4U is also creating animated shows detective. for French TV, and has projects for national According to the description of Ankama broadcasting. Lulu La Peste, one of IP4U’s Catman on IP4U’s Web site, “Catman Of the three companies, Ankama is prob- major projects, is also being published as is sensitive, fearless, asks a lot of ques- ably the most established. The studio books. In this instance, the company is tions about life, and doesn’t know much has one of the most successful massively working with co-producer HLC. about the world around him”—just like multiplayer online role-playing games

ers as designers—but is giving them development tools. enough to have access to a movie camera and a few million bucks. Content devel- But here’s the really revolutionary part of the whole Des/Dev equation: This opment will increasingly be conceived of as a multiplatform creation that can be new generation of creative person might feel more like a designer than a devel- chopped up, repurposed, and redefined according to the situation of the consumer. oper, or vice versa, but that person also understands both sides of the story. At The tools are already pretty far along to make it all happen, but they’re not there MIX08, creatives talked about the need to work in the same formats and try and yet. And then there are human considerations, infrastructure considerations, and avoid throwing content over the wall to each other. They talked about collaborating the reluctance of the old guard to go quietly into that good night. in design and development earlier and needing to work in the same formats. They Microsoft has been building .Net as an underlying infrastructure for develop- were generally young, and they were generally just getting started in their careers. ers working on applications for different devices and networks—Internet, phone, That’s a dramatic change in just the last two years or so. Way back then, it and home networks. It’s got a head start with Windows for PCs and phones, but seemed that IPTV meant either the cable companies taking advantage of the it’s got some work to do in terms of the search and content development tools. Internet to do the same old thing or the Internet companies attempting to take Adobe has a head start with Flash—it’s on everyone’s computers and just about over from broadcast to do the same old thing. With the arrival of Rich Internet everyone’s mobile phones—but there’s quite a bit of connective tissue missing. Applications, such as Google Earth or Adobe’s Kuler (color picker), or even those So far we haven’t even mentioned Google or Apple, but they, too, are playing annoying widgets that wind up on our Facebook pages, it’s starting to look like the the same game. Google isn’t worrying so much about the tools—it points the way entertainment of the future will have more in common with games and Internet to open source and says “Anyone can play, we’ve got the network.” Google’s got sites than the I Love Lucy Show. search, it’s got advertisers, it’s got consumers. Apple’s got the iPhone, the iTouch, People not only want all kinds of media available at all times, they want media the iPod. It needs more development tools, but it’s got a nice, cozy, closed sand- appropriate to the situation. And there is the growing network of interconnected box for developers to play in. people who are in constant, if superficial, contact with each other via the instant What comes next is the deluge. And you can bet that media is never going to messaging app Twitter or Facebook, or just chatting in Halo 3. It is no longer be the same. —Kathleen Maher

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. . . . Multimedia Image ©2007 Ankama. ©2007 Image (MMORPGs) on the market with Dofus, a smart, funny place for young teens. In fact, Ankama claims that Dofus has made it the third most successful game devel- oper in France behind Ubisoft and Eden. Ankama, based in Lille, has created Dofus—whose characters live in Amkana (a play on the company’s name)—for a 12- to 15-year-old audience. Dofus is a Flash- based online game with more than five million players and 500,000 paying sub- scribers who pony up approximately $50 (US) a year. The game has evolved into several modes of play, including some with free content. Primarily, however, After finding success with the MMORPG Dofus (shown above), Ankama is now developing the company derives money from Dofus a more complex ecosystem for Wakfu, which will be supported by an animated television as a pay-to-play environment. Its popu- series as well as an online site. larity in France has inspired a cartoon show and a spin-off, Wakfu, which, as of on inside jokes, product names, and so the All-For-Nots, about a struggling indie this writing, is still in beta. forth. However, marketing manager band. It’s sponsored by Chrysler and Dofus supports the expected modes Cedric Gerard smiles ruefully when asked Expedia. Also, Disney has announced its of play for a current MMORPG, includ- if they were aware of the American word own digital production studio. ing player versus player (PvP) and player “doofus.” “No, I wish we had known that,” After several spectacular failures at versus environment (PvE), and players he responds with a laugh. Knowing the creating interactive titles and games in may join guilds. Dofus was designed to company’s love of puns then, the name the 1990s, studios have had to admit that have a complex ecosystem that enables of the company’s comic book, Mutafukaz, they themselves aren’t so great at cross- more complicated interactions than sim- is clearly no accident. platform development, but clearly they ply fighting. For instance, people can All three of these companies are are regrouping and taking another run have jobs as alchemists or farmers, and addressing difficult markets—young at it. In the meantime, they’re giving the they can profit from these activities. teens and pre-teens primarily. The chil- French a shot. These innovative French Furthermore, there is a system of tax col- dren’s market is an important one. Kids developers represent the next wave of lectors, and the developers introduced are avid consumers of media, and they content creators who are evolving along a mode of transportation, Dragoturkeys, are influencers, as any parent who has with audiences. It won’t be enough to which can be raised and nurtured. been frog-marched by their children develop yet another reality-based TV An even more complex ecosystem is into a Toys R Us can attest. But they are series, Saturday morning cartoon, movie, envisioned for Wakfu, in an attempt to no longer a sure bet. You don’t find as or game. Consumers will expect a rich add a little more freedom of expression many kids glued to the front of the TV environment that lets them interact with within the MMORPG for players craving these days. Kids, just like their older sib- content wherever they are and regardless more variation (and, of course, there are lings and parents, are increasingly turn- of the medium at hand. people who have never gravitated much ing away from the television as their sole In some parts of the world, that means toward games because they don’t enjoy source of entertainment. They are play- business models have to change, and in the fighting aspect as much). Tellingly, ing games on their computers and on the US, we’re seeing some companies about 20 percent of Dofus’s audience are the Web, and they’re visiting friends in adapt faster than others. The result is not girls, and Ankama is trying to attract online communities (see “Commercial only richer media, but also content that even more young females. Furthermore, Space,” March 2008, pg. 23). breaks the mold. Wakfu will be supported by an animated Thus, US television broadcasters and TV series and a Web site. Players will be studios are becoming exceedingly inter- Kathleen Maher is a senior analyst at Jon able to unlock clues and find information ested in ways to build and bolster brand Peddie Research, a Tiburon, CA-based con- from the TV shows and the Web site to through cross-platform productions. Just sultancy specializing in graphics and mul- further them in the game. recently, The New York Times profiled timedia, and is also editor in chief of JPR’s

Ankama’s creators are great punsters; new projects coming from Michael Eisner, “TechWatch.” She can be reached at ___Kath-

thus, character levels have names based including an Internet/cable series called [email protected].

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DESIGN, DIGITAL ARTS, A little professional training AND FILM helps a lot of imagination go a long way.

From the fundamental principles of design, to the fundamental changes of the digital age, success in the creative industries starts with the programs in Design, Digital Arts, and Film at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies (SCPS). Every one of our programs, from graphic design, to animation, to product design—as well as our Master’s in Digital Imaging and Design—provides you with the expert instruction of our award-winning faculty in the dynamic environment of our advanced digital labs. Best of all, you’ll have access to an unparalleled network of industry professionals who will inspire your imagination and help you bring it vividly to life. GRADUATE DEGREE: CERTIFICATE PROGRAMS: CONTINUING EDUCATION: /Digital Imaging and Design /Animation /Design Fundamentals UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE: /Digital and Graphic Design /Digital Imaging and Photography /Film /Film /Digital Communications and Media /Interior Design /Motion Design /Product Design /Web and Interactive Design

Graduate Information Session: Tuesday, April 8, 6-8 p.m. NYU Midtown Center, 10th Fl., 11 W. 42nd St. (btwn. 5th and 6th Aves.) Please call 212-998-7200 to RSVP.

______scps.nyu.edu/x94 1-800-FIND NYU, ext.94

New York University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity institution. ©2008 New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies

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. . . . CAD

Photos courtesy Storm Sasaki/Orange County Choppers.

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CAD. . . .

or just inter- now airing on Discovery’s sister channel, TLC. Each episode esting reality TV, chances are you have seen at least a few epi- focuses on the process of creating a bike—from initial concept sodes of American Chopper, a popular documentary series fea- to final product. In TV land, this occurs within a one-hour epi- turing Paul Teutul Sr., founder of the famed Orange County sode; in reality, it unfolds during five to six weeks, on average. Choppers (OCC), and two of his sons, Mikey and Paul Jr. (also And too often, time is one of the biggest antagonists, as OCC is called Paulie or Junior). The father and sons are quite the char- nearly always facing an important deadline. acters, and their bigger-than-life personalities make for enter- Also adding to the show’s drama are the antics of the Teutuls taining television. But the real stars of the show are the custom motorcycles they build in their workshop in Montgomery, New York. “We never do anything exactly the same way,” says Jason Pohl, digital designer at OCC. “We are a total custom shop, so every time we set out to do a design and a bike, it’s all new—new to us, new to everyone in the shop, because it has never been done before.” It’s Pohl’s responsibility to integrate a customer’s unique identity, whether corporate or personal, into a one-of-a-kind customized chopper. And he shares the job with Paulie and Paulie’s father, Paul Sr. In fact, from the unique wheels, to the body design, to the exhaust pipes, no two OCC motorcycles are the same. “Every day is a unique challenge. We never know what we are going to run into,” Pohl says. Paulie Teutul (left, at the computer) and Jason Pohl (right) collaborate on a By employing digital design and the horsepower of custom motorcycle design that will be built by Orange County Choppers. Hewlett-Packard workstations with Intel Quad-Core technology, Pohl and the rest of the OCC crew are able to put and the OCC crew. Big, burly Paul Sr. takes his job seriously. So these unique visions on the road faster than ever before. does creative Paulie. Mikey, who is dressed in shorts no matter the season, acts as the comic relief, often incurring the wrath Short Road to Success of his very vocal father. At times, tempers flare and frustration OCC actually transitioned from a rather low-tech machine shop levels run high. And shattered windows and broken doors are into one using some of the most advanced digital design tools, left in the wake. all within a very short period. Paul Sr., a metalworker by trade, In fact, it was one such meltdown—this one by Pohl—that began building custom choppers out of the basement of his actually led to the HP/OCC relationship. During one particular home in Montgomery in 1999. He was immediately joined American Chopper episode, Pohl became extremely frustrated by Paulie, who lent his creativity and passion when trying to design a particular part while using another to the process, and later that year, the two manufacturer’s dual-core machine. “I got a little angry, I guess began their ride to success on the seat you could say, and I smashed my keyboard across my desk, and of Paul Sr.’s first bike, called True then I continued to hit it with a fire ax that we always keep Blue, which became an instant hit at close by for panic situations,” he recounts. “I just lost my cool Daytona’s Biketoberest. Sure that because I was so sick of my computer crashing.” more “hits” would follow, Paul That dual-core machine provided instantaneous power but Sr. established OCC before the did not have the necessary endurance and would overheat. year was out. “It just didn’t have the ever-lasting strength I needed to pull In 2002, the Teutuls—who through an entire project,” says Pohl. “It was going down dur- were already stars within ing intensive 3D applications—at a time when it was important the cycling world—found to us as a company to continue moving forward. OCC and our celebrity status beyond those clients were really depending on me to pull through the project, boundaries when Discovery and I would just hit a wall. I was so sick of the computer quit- Channel highlighted their ting on me that I took out my frustration on the keyboard.” unique bike-building ability on That episode was viewed by HP product manager Mike Diehl, the hit series American Chopper, who saw a golden opportunity to forge a working relationship

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. . . . CAD

between his company and OCC. He con- tinued to pursue OCC until he was finally afforded the chance to make a sales pitch. “He gave us the facts about HP and their intense R&D, and we decided to give them a shot,” recalls Pohl. After conduct- ing some comparative research and tak- ing the HP machine for a test drive, “we decided to give them a shot, and I will never look back,” he adds. “Everything is compatible in terms of what works with what so the machine doesn’t overheat and is quiet. It is just downright dirty. It just works.”

The OCC crew uses SolidWorks’ 3D software running on an HP workstation with Intel Quad- New Speed Limit Core technology to model its one-of-a-kind cycles, such as this Army Chopper. OCC took delivery of an xw8400, affec- tionately called “the eight machine.” It more serious, he adds: “It is the heart and Chopper was commissioned by the US contains eight processors, 8 gigs of RAM, sole of the entire design team here at OCC. Army as a recruiting tool; the Liberty and an 800GB hard-drive space, runs 64- I tried to crash it; I can’t crash it. It’s my Chopper’s copper finish contains pieces of bit Windows XP, and was shipped on the job to work as fast as I can and do as much copper from the actual Statue of Liberty. eighth day of August. OCC relies on this as possible, and see if it can keep up with In contrast, the group also builds numer- HP workstation with Intel Quad-Core pro- me. And it does, every click of the way.” ous choppers for individuals, both on-air cessors to run multiple applications, and OCC has built custom theme bikes and off-air. “Usually the client is corpo- to keep up with Paulie’s creative mind. for some of the biggest names in corpo- rate-driven and wants to promote their “It’s my baby. I put it to sleep at night, rate America—Microsoft, Lincoln, Airgas, company and product,” says Pohl. and I come in and read it lullabies,” Pohl PEZ, and even HP and Intel—that use it No matter the client, Pohl is usu- says jokingly of his machine. Turning as a marketing vehicle. The OCC Army ally the first to meet with the person. Together, they sit down and go over any design ideas the buyer may have, and Pohl obtains corporate logos and color informa- The Road to OCC tion, among other data. He then shows the person various samples of previously built Some may think Jason Pohl has the ideal job: designing dream machines at Orange County Choppers OCC bikes—from the old-school models to (OCC). And Pohl won’t argue that point. modern ones, from ones that are long and Pohl attended The Art Institute of Chicago, graduating with a degree in media arts and anima- low, to those that are tall and high. tion. Afterward, he landed a job creating video games at Incredible Technologies (Arlington Heights, Next, Pohl works out conceptual IL). There, he worked on an OCC-licensed title, and his work caught the eye of Paul Teutul Sr. “He drawings using pencil and paper, and liked some of my work and saw potential in me,” says Pohl. then uses Adobe Photoshop to duplicate After a number of early-morning phone calls from Paul Sr., Pohl visited the shop, liked what he the drawings on the computer in 2D, add- saw in OCC and the area, and joined the unique motorcycle gang. “I wanted to produce something ing color and shading, and ensuring that of substance, something real that I could touch,” he says. “Video games are great and I really love the corporate logos or artwork are in key that industry. But there is a shelf life to games. We were doing bump maps and bit maps, and six locations. “I also design the wheels and months down the road, someone else was doing something different and better. Producing the vir- other components found throughout the tual imagery wasn’t real enough for me. I wanted to create something more tangible.” bike,” he says. Designing a custom OCC motorcycle fulfills that desire. “When you see the bike rolling down After this, Pohl e-mails the imagery to the road, it is real and solid. It is going in someone’s garage for 30 years. It will turn heads for a long the client. “During the approval process, time,” he explains. they might want a different color on the A farm boy, Pohl grew up with dirt bikes and four-wheelers. “I always had a passion for these frame, which is very easy to change on types of machines. In the end, everything sort of fell into place for me,” he adds. And he’s been liv- the computer. I can do it in a split second,” ing in the fast lane ever since. he adds. “Using the computer allows me to work on multiple designs in a given

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CAD. . . .

day.” The number of drawings required our engineer and machinist, who uses came to OCC, the shop also acquired the for each project varies. For instance, the a CAM package to actually machine out Haas Automation CNC machines it cur- HP bike required 12 iterations. Nothing those parts from steel and aluminum,” rently uses. “It made a world of difference,” radical, Pohl notes, but some back-and- explains Pohl. That machining is done in- adds Pohl. forth work. In fact, the designer con- house at OCC. siders the overall style of the HP bike a “Everything is done under one roof, Design Evolution homerun on the very first design. from the design drawings to the finished Before Pohl joined OCC, Paulie was in For non-TV production bikes, the time product,” Pohl notes. “And everyone here charge of all the design work, relying from conception to delivery also varies has the chance to see the drawing come more on his expertise and experience depending on whether the client needs to life with a heart and a sole as it rips rather than on digital assistance. “He’d the motorcycle for a special event. “We down the road.” place a gas tank, and look at it. Then have some very interesting clients and OCC operates on a closed network, so he’d determine whether it looked good,” always have interesting situations thrown after Pohl places the CAD file on the server, explains Pohl. “He has an amazing eye at us,” says Pohl, noting that on average Quinn grabs it and takes it from there, mill- for design as far as bikes go. He is good at it takes several weeks to produce an OCC ing out the parts. According to Pohl, once what he does, but his process was more custom bike. in a while Quinn will argue that he can- hands-on, more trial and error.” But as The OCC motorcycles can be considered not mill out a certain part for one reason or OCC grew, so, too, did the company’s works of art. They are stylish, handcrafted, another, and it is up to the two of them to need to meet the demands of its grow- one-of-a-kind pieces that compliment their come up with a solution that works. ing business. The design process had to owner. But most important, these are high- “He is a machinist. He takes my surfaces be streamlined. powered, finely tuned machines that must and geometry and adds tool passes to it in Like any company adapting to a new be engineered perfectly—no easy task con- the CNC machine,” says Pohl. In the past, workflow, there was a growing phase. “At sidering that every piece must be designed prior to going digital, the CAD and mill- first, the drawings were more of a guide- and then engineered and milled separately ing were outsourced. “So we didn’t know line, and then we got stricter and focused for each project. what we were getting until the package more on the drawings,” explains Pohl. So, once the approval process com- arrived and we unwrapped it.” (The fabri- “Now they are like a blueprint—you can mences, the next phase begins: the 3D cation and mechanics, though, were done hold up the drawing and match it to the design process, accomplished mainly in-house.) But when Pohl bike as it rolls by.” with Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro and HP was impressed by OCC’s Alias StudioTools for the design work and craftsmanship, so much so that HP SolidWorks’ 3D mechanical design and bought a custom cycle designed CAD software for the modeling. “I take an around its “The Computer engineering package, which is SolidWorks, is Personal Again” ad campaign. and model all the wheels, the air clean- ers, and various components, and then give the files to Jim Quinn,

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. . . . CAD

its time to market by 50 per- custom guitar produced from the ground cent on average. The tools have up at the shop, a Peavey guitar whose 100- also increased communication plus chrome pieces were CNC’d by Quinn, between the design team and and more. The group has also worked on the client, as well as the design an OCC Chevy truck. “This is becoming team and the part manufac- a real passion of ours,” Pohl says of the turers. “It’s the way any art- extended design business. ist should work,” says Pohl. “If Indeed, digital design has enabled the Michelangelo had an HP with company to move from industrial appli- a digital canvas, he would have cations into these other markets with Using digital design tools, such as SolidWorks, has been going door to door.” ease. “We can explore different worlds increased the number of designs OCC can produce by With this digital evolution, and avenues, and totally dive right in,” nearly threefold. OCC has become more of a says Pohl. “And we are playing alongside According to Pohl, using the digital custom design shop in general. While cus- the big-boy designers. The opportunities tools allows him to make changes quickly tom choppers remain the top priority at are endless.” and easily. If the client wants to change the company, OCC is also producing vari- the gas tank color from blue to red, it can ous clothing (T-shirts, sweatshirts, and so Karen Moltenbrey is the chief editor of be done with a simple click of a mouse, forth, including its own Lugz boot line), a Computer Graphics World. whereas before it meant using the eraser and white-out and redrawing it. “I really respect Chip Foose, because that’s how he still does things—with an airbrush, A ‘Personal’ Touch pencil, ink, paper,” says Pohl. “But with Photoshop, I can do more than one design The relationship between Orange County Choppers and Hewlett-Packard runs deep. OCC has been per week; I do multiple designs per day.” road-testing a customized HP xw8400 workstation, while HP has been road-testing its own custom- In fact, Pohl often shows clients multiple ized OCC motorcycle. concepts at one time. When HP visited OCC to deliver the workstation, the contingency—like most visitors—headed “I can send designs to clients anytime, into the shop to look around. And what they saw was a huge marketing opportunity. “A number of anywhere,” Pohl adds. “I can also send companies have reaped success by having a custom bike in their ads or at conventions,” says OCC pictures from my phone of the parts being designer Jason Pohl. “It’s a crowd-pleaser; it never fails.” made and the bike being built.” The HP bike was designed around the vendor’s popular “The Computer Is Personal Again” Some of the more difficult designs campaign. The HP motorcycle is long and low, with an inverted, all-chrome front end. It that Pohl has done involved multiple sur- has a single-sided swing arm, a custom gas tank, and a custom dashboard that houses the HP GPS faces, whether on gas tanks, fenders, or unit (making it difficult to get lost), and more. Furthermore, the bike boasts deep-dish wheels that other parts—basically “any organic sur- are not merely an inch thick, but four inches thick in the front and seven inches thick in the back. face that is a challenge to model inside “The machine time on those was incredible. The machinists hated me for those wheels. Jim Quinn SolidWorks,” he says. Mostly, though, he worked on those things day and night for three to four days on a very large CNC mill,” Pohl recalls. finds the greatest challenge within the According to Pohl, everything on the bike screams “HP.” The Personal Again campaign plays out engineering portion. in the various decals. “It says ‘Workstation Powered’ right there on the primary cover,” describes “I am an artist, and to be thrown in Pohl. There is also an image of a Zen garden that’s taken from the laptop design HP used this year, as an engineer can complicate things at as well as blue LED lights, and a custom air cleaner that is chrome with black epoxy inlay. The part times,” Pohl adds. “They start talking that Pohl is most proud of is the headlight, the first one he has designed. about tolerances, finite-element analy- “It’s an entire 3D model. It’s streamlined, and has a rib on the top,” Pohl says. “It is something that sis, things like that, and I try to wrap my I really wanted to get out there, and when HP came along, I was able to make that happen. I had been head around it.” Still, he manages, thanks thinking of the design for a long time.” to the use of Cosmos, an integrated stress Pohl continues: “This is exactly what a premier chopper should be. It is a perfect example of quality, analysis tool within SolidWorks. American craftsmanship. Moreover, it is a perfect reflection of HP. “It’s more than just the logos,” he adds. “The modern, sleek lines of it and how it runs. It’s a workhorse, with 135 horsepower.” All Revved Up OCC and HP bonded even further with a 2007 Super Bowl ad starring the Teutuls and featuring With computer graphics technology and HP’s workstations. “And all this started with a phone call from a guy who called to say, ‘Hey, I saw HP/Intel hardware, OCC has increased the you on TV smashing a workstation keyboard,” says Pohl. “How cool is that?” design process threefold and has decreased

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. . . . Trends & Technologies

war by getting to market several months before Blu-ray, and it showed remarkable resourcefulness amid somewhat less broad support. Yet, it may have been Toshiba’s biggest alliance that hurt the most: HD DVD used HDi, an interactivity format from Microsoft. Given Microsoft’s history of co-opting technology, it’s likely that a lot of consumer electronics companies, perhaps Hollywood studios as well, saw that Microsoft dependence as unhealthy, if not profi t draining. The majority ulti- mately lined up behind Blu-ray instead. Thankfully, after two years of mar- ket confusion, and a million civilian As most content creators know, until a few casualties who purchased what turned short weeks ago, there had been a two-year out to be the “losing” format, HD DVD war raging (fi ve years if you count the pre- waved the white fl ag. In the end, it was product, pre-emptive volleys) for the future a Switzerland of sorts, Warner Bros., that of entertainable eyeballs and the ensuing bounteous wallets. It had been yet another format war—like VHS versus BetaMax and Rewriteable DVD before it—but this was a particularly high-stakes thriller of a format war that involved Hollywood alli- ances, hostility, high-tech intrigue, and big money. It was also a fi ght for the future of Like that early 20th century “war to end the not-so-free world of video and visual all wars,” this format battle was about a content distribution. planned assassination, and in this case, Consumer electronics companies advo- DVD was the Archduke Ferdinand. Only cating HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc (BD) had this war wasn’t about who killed DVD, lined up on opposite sides of intellectual- but who would get the chance to kill it, ended the fi ght, not through armistice, property patents, and like most of Europe or at least supplant it. At stake were pat- but by choosing Blu-ray. Warner had behind Austria-Hungary and Serbia in ent royalties for potentially years to come. nobly supported both formats, released “The Great War,” most Hollywood stu- Relationships were critical. movies on both, and even purposed dios fell into allegiance on one side or the Sony, one of the Blu-ray main pat- the “can’t we just get along” dual-sided other. They argued about technical superi- ent holders, owns Sony Pictures, which, TotalHD format that had Blu-ray on one ority: Blu-ray’s 67 percent higher capacity in turn, owns the vast fi lm library of side and HD DVD on the other. Then, in of 25GB for a single-layer disk and 50GB for MGM Studios. It also owns the jugger- early January, just a weekend before the a dual-layer disk, and a higher maximum naut PlayStation gaming platform, and largest consumer electronics event of the throughput of 40Mb/s. Yet, like World War I, it just so happens that the latest version, year, Warner dropped HD DVD, stunning relationships probably mattered more than the PlayStation 3, can double as a Blu-ray Toshiba. A few weeks later, major retail- right or wrong, good or better. player. Nevertheless, Sony found allies ers, including Wal-Mart, gave up HD Both formats supported high-def video in Matsushita (Panasonic), Pioneer, and DVD’s shelf space to BDs, and Toshiba and leveraged the same video encoding for- Philips, as well as motion picture studios had no choice but to lay down its arms. mats. And, while Blu-ray’s higher through- led by Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Studios, put offered theoretically higher image Paramount, MGM, Twentieth Century Make Hay While the Sun Shines quality, for all practical purposes and com- Fox, and others. And Blu-ray played nice An intriguing situation? Well, probably mon use, it is pretty much the same as HD by building interactivity around an open not. VHS-Beta was supposed to be the HDV. The interactivity potential of both is Java-based format called BD-J. format war to end all format wars. Blu- comparatively similar, going far beyond Toshiba, the main patent holder for HD ray versus HD DVD was more like a high- what one can do with a regular DVD. DVD, launched the fi rst offensives in the budget sequel, and if you stayed home,

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Trends & Technologies. . . .

nobody would blame you. The good news hot spots around props or actors might is that the cease-fire makes the future a score trivia points; they might also link lot clearer for high-definition video con- to direct commerce through an Internet tent distribution, and that opens oppor- connection that will be present on most  tunities for graphic artists. Blu-ray players. The DVD format offered    Blu-ray is, first and foremost, the high- DVD-ROM components with computer    definition video successor to DVD, and data and links, but BD can feed directly The list of Hollywood is looking forward to lever- to the Internet with links to movie-related Fusion houses aging the increasing percentage of HD- commerce, travel, and community, or continues, capable televisions in the market as a gameplay Web sites. to name a few... way to sell movies to consumers. Indeed, Not surprising given the nature of Java, Aardman Animations Ltd. with the format war raging on, cable and BD-J scripts can be started by a variety of Animal Logic Atmosphere Visual Effects satellite were offering consumers most of triggers. So, in addition to viewers calling Battlestar Galactica VFX Inc their high-quality viewing possibilities. up typical special features, BD-J applets (or BSkyB C.I.S. London/Vancouver Now, Bu-ray gives Hollywood, as well Xlets) can be triggered to start automati- C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures CAFEFX as aspiring filmmakers, a format for dis- cally at specific times in the movie content. Charlex Clear tributing full-length films in a very high That could be as overt and annoying as Custom Film Effects D.A.M.N. FX quality direct to the consumer. Web pop-ups or Flash ads that run across Def2Shoot Digi-Guys However, for graphic artists, Blu-ray’s a browser; but it also presents a potential Digital Dimension Digital Pictures Iloura interactivity is just as important as the new opportunity to add interesting infor- Disney Toon Studios Django Animation Ltd high-definition video content. That’s mation to the viewing experience. A rudi- Eden FX because BD-Java (BD-J) has far more mentary example of this might be the Enigma Studios Inc Envy Post Production capabilities than DVD in placing infor- pieces of trivia that pop up across the bot- Fake Graphics Ltd. Flash Film Works mation in front of the viewer, and in ways tom of classic movies on AMC, but more Ford Motor Company Inc. Framestore CFC that will require new visual paradigms. possibilities are left for the imaginative. Frantic Ghost A/S For example, we’re all familiar with Naturally, understanding Java and, IMAX Corporation Intelligent Creatures DVD special features that typically specifically, BD-J, will be a big advan- LLP Digital Inc. include director or actor commentaries, tage moving forward in that it will allow M2 Television Magna Mana Production biographies, and past works, and “the graphic artists to pursue very specific Matte World Digital Mechanism Digital making of” sequences. But imagine being visions for new menu and feature designs. Mercedes-Benz USA LLC Motion FX Origami Digital LLC able to access that information during the However, leveraging the full potential of Peerless Camera Company Pendulum movie—not by pausing and going to a BD will likely require a good deal of inno- Prime Focus London Rhino FX main menu to alter setup preferences or vation and collaboration, and graphics Rhythm & Hues Studios R!OT tracks, but by calling them up while the professionals will undoubtedly be a criti- Rocket Science VFX Rushes main video content remains on the screen, cal part of that. Sanctuary Post Screaming Death Monkey playing. That’s possible with BD-J. If you knew nothing about Blu-ray and Stargate Atlantis Starz Media Canada Co Imagine commentary talking heads HD DVD before, then more power to you. The Boeing Company appearing within a picture-in-picture win- The format war was all about greed and The Syndicate Tigar Hare dow in a corner of the screen. Imagine pride; and, in a lot of ways, it was embar- Toon City Animation Inc. Toy Box Entertainment biographies popping up in a semi-trans- rassing to watch. Yet now that there is a Turner Broadcast parent window over the side of the movie. clear choice for moving forward—and it’s TV2 / Denmark TV-Asahi Think about the new style of menus that a choice that offers opportunities to pres- Ubisoft Walt Disney Television Animation would be needed for calling up these var- ent content in new user interface para- ious options without pausing the movie. digms—it’s time for graphics profession- To great artists. Now imagine the jumble of on-screen als to claim some of the spoils. They all To a great team. clutter this would cause if it were not really don’t have to go to the victors. To the future. approached with a thoughtful eye. There are more possibilities, too, for Jeff Sauer, director of the Digital Video eyeon disk-based games, such as titles that Group, an independent research and test- might be integrated into the movie, ing organization for digital media, has been and more options for player interactiv- covering the DCC industry for nearly 15 years.

ity (even with remote players). Clicking He can be reached at [email protected].

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Clockwise from top left: Entertainment—“Smirnoff-Sea” from Framestore CFC (UK). The high point of Imagina is the Imagina Awards, which showcase the exceptional use of Industry—“Welcome Onboard” from IMAGTP (France). CG technologies applied to the artistic, engineering, and industrial professions. This year, in a crowded auditorium at the Grimaldi Forum in Monte Carlo, the audience—including Entertainment—“Oktapodi” from students at Gobelins l’Ecole de l’Image (France). Monaco’s Prince Albert—was treated to the “best of the best” in 3D digital production within the fields of media and entertainment, architecture, landscape, and territory. Winners were chosen by a jury of veterans from the respective categories. Among the finalists were stu- dents, filmmakers, independent artists, professional 3D artists, architectural visualization spe- cialists, and more—each demonstrating cutting-edge techniques in their particular sector. From the Industry Category—Best Graphic Image: “Welcome Onboard” from IMAGTP; Best Performance: “Realite Virtelle pour la Production Industrielle” from the Compiegne

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University of Technology; Special Jury Award: “Gears up to Welcome A380” from 3D Clockwise from top: Weave. From the Media and Entertainment Category—Best Animation: “Oktapodi” from Architecture—“The Olympic Stadium” from Squint/Opera (UK). Gobelins l’Ecole de l’Image; Best Special Effects: : At World’s End Entertainment—Harmonix Rockband from Passion Pictures (UK). from Walt Disney Pictures in association with Jerry Bruckheimer Films; Best Full-Length Entertainment—Chemical Brothers “Salmon Dance” from : Ratatouille from Disney/Pixar; Best Short Film: “Diji Vou Veu Volti” from Framestore CFC (UK). Studio Alea Jacta; Best School and University: ”Bolides” from Supinfocom Arles. Best Entertainment—“Camera Obscura” from Supinfocom Commercial: “Smirnoff-Sea” from Framestore CFC; Best Video Clip: Chemical Brothers Valenciennes (France). “Salmon Dance” from Framestore CFC; Best Video Game: Harmonix Rockband from Entertainment—“Diji Vou Veu Volti” (“I Love You”) from Studio Passion Pictures; Special Jury Award: “Camera Obscura” from Supinfocom Valenciennes. Alea Jacta (Belgium). A selection of the winning images appears on these pages. Stills from all the winners Entertainment—“Bolides” from students at Supinfocom Arles (France). can be viewed on the CGW Web site at www.cgw.com.

APRIL 2008 Computer Graphics World | 41

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. . . . . Knowledge&Career Career & Knowledge

with a wise man is better than be involved in games,” describes Dave Warfield, head of the 10 years of study.” This proverb rang true for attendees of VFS Game Design Program. Game Design Expo 2008, a sold-out industry event hosted by Vancouver Film School (VFS) in association with event part- A Weekend’s Worth ners G4TechTV, EA, CAEAA, Annex Pro, Crystal Dynamics, The price of admission for the two-day event was $80 Radical Entertainment, Big Fish Games, Metropolitan Hotel, Canadian (nearly the same in US dollars), but several attend- and The Province. ees considered the experience priceless. Speakers at the Expo Academia is an invaluable part of one’s education, and yet, hailed from some of the biggest names in gaming—, learning never stops—especially in the fast-moving, ever-evolv- BioWare, Eidos, EA, and Stormfront Studios—and worked on ing computer design field. Digital content creators know well some of today’s most popular titles. that a great deal of learning takes place outside the classroom, The Expo provided attendees the opportunity to gain through experience, both their own and that of their peers. It is insight from, as well as interact and network with, company perhaps for this reason that professionals working in the game owners, successful game designers and developers, recruiters, design industry comprised much of the Expo audience. and industry legends. The sessions, many of which focused on lessons learned in the making of a recent game, incorpo- CG Career Cross section rated information about the latest game design tools, work- Game Design Expo 2008 constituted an “industry week- flow processes, caveats, challenges, and workarounds. end,” two days of informative lectures by some of the leading “The year saw several enormous and critical successes minds in game design and development. Game designers, art- from which we can all take away important lessons,” explains ists, producers, presidents, CEOs, and founders of studios in Warfield. This theme of lessons learned permeated the event, North America discussed their processes and tool sets, inno- beginning with an insightful opening keynote. vations, and audience, as well as present, past, and future; Bungie Studios’ Jay Weinland, audio lead, and CJ Cowan, they also infused attendees with enthusiasm and offered real- director of cinematics, opened the Expo with the keynote world advice. address, The Bungie Way: Audio & Cinematics in Halo. The Expo’s sessions were approached in much the same Cowan was among four people honored recently by the Visual way as the Vancouver Film School Game Design Program’s Effects Society with an award for Best Real-time Visuals in a curriculum: with the knowledge that it is important to be Video Game for Halo 3. cognizant of each and every part of the game design and The keynote address proved informative, revealing, and development workflow. Attendees at this second-annual entertaining—and yet, it seemed a bit atypical for the indus- event took in sessions on cinematics, sound, focus testing, try. The presenters intended for the presentation to be a intellectual property, start-ups, consoles, and audience— departure from the flashy, heart-pounding, and perhaps “the subjects that make up the very core of what it means to overly hyped “it’s great to be part of this industry” keynotes

42 | Computer Graphics World APRIL 2008 www.cgw.com______

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Knowledge&Career. . . .

“Flash is a great prototyping tool—it’s quick, quality, and tests game mechanics.” —CJ Cowan, director of cinematics, Bungie Studios

this one,” describes Cowan—was automated. The cinematics team on Halo 3, which included two art- ists from the film industry, including one from Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), brought content into Adobe Premiere Pro to perfect the timing, and then used QuickTime within Maya to achieve the initial layout. Cowan walked attendees through custom tools, several of which were used in-engine. One streamlining solution, One Button Exporter Version 1.5, features a Make It So button for exporting an animation. “It takes 30 seconds or so to sync over In the foyer of Vancouver’s Vancity Theatre, game publishers show off their newest titles, vendors demonstrate their latest game- to the Xbox,” says Cowan, “and it used to take hours.” Each cin- design tools, and recruiters engage students about job openings. ematic involved six or seven Maya files, and all the scenes in Halo 3 were put through Guerilla, part of the Halo engine. many have witnessed time and time again. Instead, Weinland The internal pipeline overhaul resulted in more time spent and Cowan set out to impart honest, real-world wisdom, and to perfecting the project, and many contend that it paid off in walk student and seasoned designers through their process on spades. “When you can see your work immediately, in-engine Halo 3—and that’s precisely what they did, with great result. and as quickly as possible, it means you can do more iterations,” Cowan says. “More iterations means better art.” Halo Cinematics Engineers worked a year and a half to deliver an entirely reworked, Focus Testing streamlined pipeline and to provide the tools necessary for artists In a presentation by game publisher Eidos Interactive, Riley to craft Halo 3 (for more about the creation of Halo 3, see “Making Cooper, principal designer at the Crystal Dynamics subsidiary Halo 3 Shine,” December 2007, pg. 18). of Eidos, impressed upon attendees the importance of focus In the pipeline that Bungie used for Halo 2, artists produced testing and the value of hiring an independent company that custom animations in Autodesk’s Maya and then exported the provides the service. “You are so familiar with a game that you work to each individual game engine. Scripts were hand-authored won’t see challenges that can’t be overcome,” Cooper explains. and consumed considerable time. Individual assets were saved in “Testers find dead ends, barriers that might make the player put a series of folders and subfolders, which proved painful to man- the controller down—which is the last thing you want. You are age. “It took a long time to get everything working together,” too close to the material. You know it too well.” recalls Cowan. But the Halo 3 workflow was quite different. It is often very tempting to write off a problem with the game, The company designed the Halo 3 pipeline with the spe- attributing it to bad and inexperienced players. “You can’t do cific goal of giving more power to animators and artists, so they that,” continues Cooper. “You need to address weaknesses, were well equipped to create their best possible work. Custom things that detract from the quality of your game.” animation was streamlined in Maya, and hand-scripting was With potential issues addressed, the designer is ready to replaced with an automatically generated cinematic screen UI. pitch the game to publishers. Cooper presented a list of things The export process—saving “guns to that folder, characters to to keep in mind when presenting a pitch to a game publisher.

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. . . . . Knowledge&Career

the past, present, and future of console wars. A console war, or next-generation transition, has occurred roughly every five years since 1978, he says. In the ’70s, the Atari, Intellivision, and ColecoVision platforms were battling for consumer attention. “Prior generations still have legs,” recognizes Daglow, citing 12 mil- lion Sony PS2s versus 10 million PS3s in current use today. A cycle begins when new consoles are released, explains Daglow. After the debut of a new console, the early adopters are hard-core gamers. Because demand is high for the completely different, it is a great time for new IPs. Mid-cycle, the

During open house at Vancouver Film School’s Game Design Program, VFS alumni explain install base grows and the hard-core audi- their processes and lessons learned in the making of their game Bloom. ence broadens. It is still a good time for IPs, but more licensing titles—Star Wars, for For a list of those items, see “Going for publisher green-lights a game develop- example—make their way to market. The the Green (Light),” pg. 44. ment project, he says, reality hits: time install base is large late in the cycle, as constraints, a strict schedule, milestones Innovative IP due, ego, and fear of a $30 million fail- Following Cooper and his suggestions for ure. Those who succeed, however, stand pitching games to publishers, attendees to gain a positive industry reputation, became privy to the intellectual property return on investment, and the satis- (IP) and game publishing insights of Kelly faction of knowing they have created a Hpjoh!gps!uif! Zmak, president of Radical Entertainment, unique experience. a development studio of Vivendi Games. “Risk mitigation is the opposite of inno- Hsffo!)Mjhiu* “The kill rate on IP is huge,” says Zmak, vation,” Zmak warns. “Formulaic devel- who estimates the current IP success rate opment never works. Innovate within the According to Riley Cooper, principal designer at at 20 percent. This figure is not surpris- parameters you are given. For example, Crystal Dynamics, a subsidiary of Eidos Interactive, ing given the risks—money, reputation, if it is a sequel, push boundaries within game designers can increase their chances of hav- and relationships, he adds. those parameters.” ing a project green-lighted if their pitch to a game Zmak, in his own charismatic style, Zmak has seen phenomenal growth publisher includes the following elements. laid out the IP pros and cons. After a in team sizes over his career. It is not uncommon to have a team of 150 people The optimal pitch encompasses: working on a single title today. “When • Words: A good one-liner or a few sentences working with someone you don’t like, that captures the essence of the game focus on the 1 percent you agree on to get • Key art: Great-looking art does a lot for along,” he suggests, imparting wisdom a pitch “The artistry is he had gained from an industry peer. more important Keep learning, Zmak further advises: During the pitch, you should: “The game industry starts at hard; there • Present the ingredients: Good-looking than the gameplay is no easy, no medium. The reason they art, the design, a description, and the process mechanics.” call it ‘bleeding edge’ is because it hurts.” • Have confidence • Keep things separate: Do not combine —Kelly Zmak, Warring Consoles art and design, for example president, Radical Next, an industry legend took to the stage. • Practice the pitch: Share your idea with Entertainment Don Daglow, the founder of Stormfront others before the pitch, receive feedback Studios who is responsible for the first before you are in front of a publisher MMORPG, Neverwinter Nights, discussed

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Among the lessons McCarthy and his ! colleagues learned making games for a larger audience are: Making a game more “A lot is involved in starting a company. accessible does not mean “dumbing” it down, and a game should be instantly Don’t also be producer of your first engaging and enable the users to evolve game. Both are full-time jobs, and it is through experience. Additionally, sim- plified menus and screens are beneficial. important to do both well. Don’t Lastly, the game’s basic operation should sacrifice one for the other.” be outlined up front. “Game designers gravitate to complexity, and we mistake —Ron Gilbert, design consultant, complexity for challenge,” he admits. Hothead Games “We get bored when we’re too close to it for too long. Instead, think of the Apple iPod—the complex made easy.” licensing titles with familiar brands help ball, appealing to a non-traditional audi- McCarthy acknowledges that with reach “the non-gamer gamers.” Hard-core ence,” says David McCarthy, executive new platforms and new audiences, risk gamers are the minority, but the opportu- producer at the Fusion Business Unit of is unavoidable. He cites as a prime exam- nity exists for major successes, or hits. EA. EA Canada has, in essence, followed ple Nintendo’s Brain Age, a huge depar- Daglow recognizes that the excit- this example and launched Fusion, a ture for the company that proved an even ing, artistic world of electronic interac- business entity designed to tackle some- larger success. “Your process needs to tive entertainment also has a strong busi- thing different and drive into new plat- accommodate uncertainty,” he suggests. ness side. Big global teams have replaced forms and new experiences. “Do one or two things perfectly, not a regional ones, and MBAs want to global- Emerging market segments include laundry list.” ize the process to save approximately $20 female gamers and legions of retiring Overall, Game Design Expo 2008 on a $20 million game. Yet, he advises, baby boomers; in fact, roughly 25 per- provided students and alumni of game “never surrender your passion for games cent of today’s gamers are over the age design and development a considerable or the art—no one can take that away of 60. This phenomenon has brought shot in the arm. Students on the cusp from you. It is your craft.” about an increased demand for multi- of entering the workforce gained valu- player, multigenerational, and casual able insight and practical advice from Massively Multiplayer games. It is a void that EA is filling with major industry players. The speakers’ Speaking of consoles, the Nintendo Wii great success—at least in part, no doubt, words were encouraging and inspiring, is hands-down the breakaway hit of the thanks to the company’s philosophy on and yet, deeply rooted in reality and not decade. Other consoles have floundered multiplayer games. sugar-coated. a bit in the market and dropped in price; “There’s a winner in everyone, and Students and even aspiring students of and yet, the Nintendo Wii continues to everyone has a shining moment,” says game design—whether their interests lie be sought-after and command its asking McCarthy of the multiplayer experience. in design, animation, art, writing, audio, price. It has awakened—whether inten- “Too much competition kills the buzz.” or business, marketing, or publishing— tionally or accidentally—the until-now For this and other reasons, some of which can learn a great deal from today’s award- latent inner gamer in many women and having to do with preserving a child’s winning gaming gurus at the top of their

seniors, particularly. self-esteem, the company has done away game. To learn more, visit www.gamede-______

“Nintendo threw the industry a curve- with the “You Lose” screen. ______signexpo.com.

April 2008, Volume 31, Number 4: COMPUTER GRAPHICS WORLD (USPS 665-250) (ISSN-0271-4159) is published monthly (12 issues) by COP Communications, Inc. Corporate offices: 620 West Elk Avenue, Glendale, CA 91204, Tel: 818-291-1100; FAX: 818-291-1190; Web Address: [email protected]. Periodicals post- age paid at Glendale, CA, 91205 & additional mailing offices. COMPUTER GRAPHICS WORLD is distributed worldwide. Annual subscription prices are $72, USA; $98, Canada & Mexico; $150 International airfreight. To order subscriptions, call 847-559-7310. © 2008 CGW by COP Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without permission. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by Computer Graphics World, ISSN-0271-4159, provided that the appropriate fee is paid directly to Copyright Clearance Center Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 USA 508-750-8400. Prior to photocopying items for educational classroom use, please contact Copyright Clearance Center Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 USA 508-750-8400. For further information check Copyright Clearance Center Inc. online at: www.copyright.com. The COMPUTER GRAPHICS WORLD fee code for users of the Transactional Reporting Services is 0271-4159/96 $1.00 + .35. Ride Along Enclosed. POSTMASTER: Send change of address form to Computer Graphics World, P.O. Box 3296, Northbrook, IL 60065-3296.

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Lewis Kofsky is director of CG and Drawing the Line VFX at , guiding all Filmmakers employ an edgy animation style to re-create digital production, including film, the drama at the 1968 Democratic National Convention studio services, and gaming. His team produced the mocap and keyframe In 1968, drama erupted at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, punctuat- motion for the hit game Rockband ing what had already been a tumultuous year with the assassinations of Martin Luther and, more recently, delivered eight King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy just months before. Growing distaste for the Vietnam minutes of mixed-media animation War led to clashes between anti-war demonstrators and police outside the convention for Morgan Spurlock’s “Where in the venue, resulting in the arrests of a number of protestors. Eight of those people, includ- World is Osama Bin Laden.” ing Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Tom Hayden, were tried on conspiracy charges. Fast-forward to 2008 when, in late February, writer/ director Brett Morgen brought this story to the big screen Tell me a little about this in select theaters nationwide. Q style of animation. What In Chicago 10, Morgen uses a documentary style makes it unique? infused with a unique style of animation produced at It is a style designed to show- Curious Pictures, allowing him to redefine the docu- A case the talents of a great live- mentary narrative approach. The Curious team, led action director. It allows for by partner and director of CG and VFX Lewis Kofsky, performance control and nuance, and created approximately 30 minutes of motion-captured unlimited cinematographic coverage. We animation for the film, which relies on these seg- wanted a simple pop look that would not ments to re-create the documentary’s courtroom scenes. compete with the message of the film Complementing the graphic novel type of anima- and would support the archival footage. tion (akin to the look found in Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly and the recent spate of Charles Schwab How did you create the commercials) is the movie’s archival film footage. While there was a surplus of archi- Q look? val materials about this period in American history, cameras were not permitted in We started with a lot of archi- the courtroom during the trial, thus presenting the filmmakers with a huge obstacle. val footage of the characters “[Morgen] came to us with this challenging opportunity: to accurately re-create this A and utilized a combination of seminal event using animation to portray well-known historical figures,” says Curious techniques in order to create a Pictures partner Richard Winkler, who served as executive producer on the project. “On very unique, handcrafted animation style top of that, this was going to end up as the narrative spine of the film. The hybrid that brings many of the human subtleties mocap and animated process we developed enabled us to accomplish that.” of these people to life. In press interviews, Morgen explained that conducting on-camera interviews to re- create the courtroom scenes wouldn’t fit the nontraditional approach he wanted to take Has Curious used this style for the narrative. The only other option seemed to be dramatic reenactments, but he Q before? dismissed the idea, feeling that the physical differences between the participants and We developed this look specifi- the actors portraying them would be jarring. “Then, one day, I read a quote from Jerry cally for this film. It is based Rubin where he described the trial as a ‘cartoon show,’ ” Morgen had stated. “It was A on many techniques that we so obvious. By animating the trial, I would not only avoid clichés, I would be able to have used in the past, but make a statement about the circus-like nature of the courtroom.” remixed in a new way. It has evolved While the overall look of the Chicago 10 animation is reminiscent of Linklater’s from a project in the late 1990s called style, the creation process was different and proprietary. For A Scanner Darkly, artist- Avenue Amy, whereby we originally shot animators drew and painted over live-action footage and converted it into a cartoon. live actors with heavy makeup against For Chicago 10, there was no original courtroom film footage to draw and paint on. greenscreen and digitally treated Here, Kofsky details the process and explains how it was integral to the film. [the footage].

______www.cgw.com APRIL 2008 Computer Graphics World | 47

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Has the style evolved since original 3D previs, now with animation, ried the facial performance and nuanced Q then? into a final animation cut. the animation. We had an amazing ren- Now we have complete control der pipeline with all the data housed on over the look of the characters What occurred next? a SAN. This allowed animators to press A using 3D models. Q Amorim and his team were a button, and their work was carried able to tune the animation per- through scene building, pass breakouts, Why did the director choose fectly to the camera. We then composite, and final load into the edit. Q this look for Chicago 10? A moved into [Autodesk’s] Maya, We also used some great software to retar- He wanted very directable, where we used an in-house get and control the facial performances. fluid, and smooth animation retargeting system to map the motion A that had amazing performance capture to our models. They spent time What tools did you use? and verite. adding nuance and refining the lip sync. Q We worked in Maya, After We were not able to motion-capture Effects, Shake, and Final Cut, in In what way does the style everything, so we also added keyframe addition to a number of propri- compliment the film? details and performances. A etary ‘helper’ tools. Our facial Q The style helps develop the Concurrent to the animation process, animation tools were amazing. characters who otherwise are Anthony Santoro and Marci Ichimura Ray Forziati and the other artists wrote A only featured in archival footage. led a team to develop the look. Todd lots of code that did just about every- It helped Brett [Morgen] develop Winter was an amazing art director thing in the pipeline. We could take an a narrative arc within a documentary and who actually worked on the box with approved performance select from the show events and sides of characters that them. We created toon shaders with all edit, and with a few keystrokes, get the were never captured on film. kinds of special lines, and developed data mapped to a character ready for some great compositing techniques. We animation tweaking. We could then run How does motion capture had little time or money, so the team a command and this animation would Q fit into the animation had to really put as much work on the show up with proper lighting, compos- equation? code as possible. ited into place in the final edit. It leverages the on-set live- A action experience of our direc- Who served as the mocap How did you create the tor. It also allowed us to do Q actors? backgrounds? many takes, whereas in traditional ani- We used special actors, Q They were done through a com- mation, we would only get one. We including our director, who bination of hand painting, 3D started with traditional storyboards that A played the lead as well as A modeling, and creative shader our DP, Todd Winter, and his team trans- several supporting characters. writing. Veronica Jones worked lated into a 3D previsualization. This In real life, I have seen Brett impersonate closely with Anthony Santoro to come allowed us to shoot all our sequences one every muppet in the troupe dead-on. up with some special looks in the 2D actor at a time. One of our mocap leads, With his ability perform and direct, he realm that really blew everyone’s minds. Michele Matt, devised a system on set had a unique level of control. He had a that enabled us to orient the actor within very specific and deep vision to get to What were the major the virtual courtroom and play back other the screen. Brett had lived with the challenges you encountered? performances for actors to react to. While judge for years and with [the late actor] Q We did this with a lean team in we shot, we also directly digitized video Roy Scheider, who brought an amazing a short time with a lot of new of the performances, synced to the perfor- side of the judge to life [through his A technology. We had versatile mance data via time code. voice talent]. By the time we shot, Brett artists; rather than using an After shooting video reference, all knew exactly what he wanted and was assembly-line style, we had many of the the different takes were edited together able to get amazing performances, even same people on set handling final com- to get our performance selects. An ani- from himself. posites. And everyone was generous mation team led by Joao Amorim then with their time because they believed translated the motion-captured data out Can you offer details about in the film and its message. The entire of our in-house Vicon IQ and onto our Q the animation process? team rallied with some amazing artistry models with [Autodesk’s MotionBuilder]. After we had the camera work and technical solutions that allowed us The editor, Kris Boden, and our camera done, we moved into the ani- to get as much great work on the screen team worked back and forth to refine the A mation phase, where we mar- as we could.

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