Production

Modelling

Environments

During the animation process it only made sense to work within the 3D space and the camera layout but having a modeled environment also sped up the matte painting process and provided the matte painters with added elements to work with, the ambient occlusion, basic lighting and the diffuse layer.

Environment Models - created by Josh Pedersen

Characters

The modeling process for James began with the 8 year old version, created by Isaac Swinerton. The main challenge for modeling James was to get the concept design shape of his head to translate into the 3D space and feel natural in that environment. Once this was resolved, modeling the teen and older version of James came along a little smoother, it was then a matter of understanding how he would age and how his posture could come into play. From this point we were able to adapt James and his clothing to suit a pool environment, there was influence from vintage swimwear and goggles around the 1940's to 1960's.
The two secondary characters, Joe & Bully 2 were created by Nur Erguven. The initial modeling pass was based on the concept designs and then underwent reviews and some modifications to get the most out of the 3D format. Below are examples of the two secondary characters. 

Rigging

Character Rigs

The swimming version of James, Joe and Bully 2 were rigged using abAutoRig by Supercumbly, as the foundation. This was very helpful for us as it gave us more time to focus on polishing the animation. 

We referenced the models to account for any changes to them, which could then be updated. However this did cause other issues, related to skinning and constrained objects. Our solution was to make sure the labels didn't differ and to create a new reference and bind that mesh to the bones then coy the skin weights from the old mesh to the new.

Rigging for Motion Capture

Rigging for Motion Capture was not as straight forward as we had hoped somewhat due to the limitations, such as having no facial capture. It required a single joint setup without Inverse Kinematics, set driven keys, contraints and controls. James' joint structure was created and skinned in Maya, then transferred to MotionBuilder where the model was characterized and the motion transferred to it. Once the motion clean up was finalised the challenge was then to transfer the edited motion back into Maya and attach it to a new rigged head. The transfer process from motionBuilder to Maya proved difficult and attaching the head to the body with animation was creating more issues than solving. Thankfully this was overcome by using a script that allowed the joint information to be recorded and transferred onto a new James model with the same naming convention and a facial rig.

Motion Capture

Using Motion Capture was an interesting learning curve, it was new to all of us and an experience that provided us with an extra skill. It did raise problems for us in areas but leveled those with positives in other areas, such as producing fluent animation. Capturing the data, we learned more about directing and working with actors and what was possible and wasn't with the provided technology.

The motion edit was done in MotionBuilder and we were able to constrain props and include the scenes to aid with the clean up and to finalise most of the animation within the one program. 

Motion capture edit, created by blending the best parts of different clips together. Additional animation such as fingers were animated using MotionBuilder's control rig and facial animation created in Maya. Motion edit by Josh Pedersen.


Motion capture clean up for James and transferred into the Maya scene with Joe and the park, Animation and Motion edit by Nur Erguven.

This clip displays on the left side the Motion captured animation applied to 16 year old James, which was our default rig to apply the motion too. At the time of capture we overlooked the issue of how we would transfer the captured data to a different sized rig. Thankfully when that time came, we successfully transferred the animation to 8 year old James on the right side. Motion edit by Juan Chacon.

Textures

The look development for the characters was an ongoing process, during the initial stages we came across many issues trying to find the best fit for the characters in a painted environment. With this initial look design, we aimed to create a Plasticine material that had desaturated colours allowing the coloured shadow to be more vibrant and lively in contrast. However, with the limited colours we found it difficult to sit James within the painted environments and the details and expression would also get lost. 

James Textures created by Juan Chacon

Based on this matte, rough texture we decided that adding more of a saturated colour scheme to it would help to fit the characters into their environment and maintain details. 

Texture creation and testing for Joe and Bully 2. Textures by Sahan Gamage.

Matte paintings

Backplate Animation

Below is an example of a camera movement that required manipulation of the background painting. The point of view camera seemed more difficult to match than it actually was.
 

The solution was to create a curved plane that matched the rotational movement of the camera. This curved plane would then be textured with the background painting. The only issue was as the camera rotated the painting would have a barrel distortion feel to it. 
Using a trial and error method we tweaked the painting to counteract most of the distortion.
With render layers we were able to separate the background motion, the characters and their shadows.

The door was hand animated to maintain painterly quality, above are a few variations for timing purposes.

Matte Paintings

Here are a few examples of matte paintings from different scenes, some were adjusted to match camera movements and were also projected on to a plane and then rendered out.

Retirement Home, Park & Gym painted by Josh Pedersen

James' Room, Street & Pool painted by Sahan Gamage