Project: “Smallfoot” A Warner Animation feature.
I worked on this movie as a CFX Technical Director. My mainly duties were:
– Shot work simulating cloth (nCloth) and hair (nHair) and doing groom fixes (propietary)
– Writing utility scripts and software code that streamlines the simulation development process.
Smallfoot Reel
Behind scenes
There is a very interesting article about the fur in Smallfoot. The article features one of my shots.
Snow And Fur Article
I will show an insight to some of my work on the movie:
(Clip 09 in the Reel) This is one of my favourite shots in the movie, not because of its complexity, it wasn’t one of the most complex shot, but because of the chance to contribute with my idea to the movie. For this shot I thought it would be funny to have a messier hair when Migo jumps and uses his scary face. That way his look is even scarier and it makes the situation funnier. I remember the supervisors likes it and they showed it the the directors just to confirm they like it. And they were, that is why I’m really proud of this shot.
(Clip 31 in the Reel) This one was a tricky shot. Mainly because of the rope. Animation didn’t touch it. It was just an static prop. But the funny thing is that the position of the characters and the edge are cheated to the camera. So the rope is not straight actually. It is surrounding the characters. Besides, they were looking for a cartoonish rope movement, so they wanted different kinds of jumps and waves on it. I played a lot with the simulation parameters, and at the end I animated som jumps and movements on top the simulation to give it that cartoonish look they were looking for.
(Clip 02 in the Reel) I really like the look of this shot. In general I love the shots where we need to add wind. I played with different winds intensities to find the right one for the shot. Apart from that, in this shot, the characters feet were inside the cliff. I had to reposition them, not changing the look of the character pose and also leave enough room for their hair (not only for the hair, but as there were wind in the shot, it was needed room to have the hair moving)
(Clip 17 in the Reel) Thorp was my favourite character to work on. I found it very challenging with all of his head hair. In this shot I did different simulations and assemble them together in order to controll the movement of the head hair and speed, as he is jumping. Also I love when there is interactions between two characters. When I started working on this shot, his feet interacted with the mammoth head hair but the supervisors found it a litle distracting, so for avoid it I made the mommoth head hair shorter. But if you look carefully, you can see there is interaction between Thorp hands and the memouth hair when he jumps. Also Migo is carrying Percy bag on his back. If you pay attention to the detail, the bag has two small ropes, and they are simulated too. I did the simualtion setup for this shot and I find it a pretty cool small detail in the shot.
Awards
Smallfoot was nominated to ‘Outstanding Effects Simulation in an Animated Feature’ by the Visual Effects Society
Trailers