Mr. Peabody & Sherman, an adventure-comedy CG Animated Feature Film from DreamWorks Animation (DWA) is based on characters from the 1960s animated television series, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, which ispart of the Classic Media library that DreamWorks acquired in 2012. It is directed by Rob Minkoff, Director of the double Academy Award–winning animated feature The Lion King. The film’sIndia release was on February 28, 2014 and US domestic release on March 7, 2014. It opened in major parts of Europe earlier in February.
The movie is a worthwhile trip back in time of a brilliant beagle who has adopted a kid named Sherman.Theirtime travels to different parts of the world at various points in historyis central to the plot of the film. This meant a whole lot of additional work in the Modeling, Surfacing, Character Effects (CFX) and Lighting departments, to create everything unique to each place and the era it was set in.While DWA’s Redwood City studio was the primary studio on the show, its India unit, i.e. DreamWorks Dedicated Unit (DDU), based out of Technicolor India, Bangalore made a significant contribution in the areas of Modeling, Surfacing, CFX and Lighting with life line support from the TD (Technology) team. DDU’s Animation and FX too helped with the production.
A team of modelers and surfacing artists at DDU worked for over a year to create hundreds of assets.
The film had a different set of characters and costumes in almost every sequence; it holds the distinction of having the highest number of simulated garments, ever in any DreamWorks film. A team of 12 CFX artists at DDU worked on the film for about a year; they developed the garments worn by the Greek and Trojan warriors. It involvedestablishing the look and feel of the garment’s motion, solving technical problems that came along and creating set-ups to be used during shot production. The CFX team went back in time to animate the costume and hair of a very long list of personalities from world history like King Tut, Agamemnon, Leonardo Da Vinci, Mona Lisa,
Queen Victoria, Queen Marie Antoinette, Galileo, Confucius, Einstein, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Bill Clinton etc. They delivered shot work on 6 sequences out of 28 (16.46 minutes run time) including the complex climax sequence which featured a large number of characters coming together. Handling the sheer volume of the climax sequence was a huge challenge. That apart, the CFX team was also involved in 10 crowds’ sequence, simulating cloth of 2700 crowd characters. The CFX department at DDU expanded its tool base to handle the complexity involved in the hair & fur simulation – Houdini was added to the host of proprietary tools and pipeline being used. ‘The unique look of each era coupled with the stylized treatment that the Production Designer expectedmeant that straightforward physical simulation was not going to suffice; we achieved the desired art direction through an iterative and collaborative creative process. It was a very stimulating, both technically as well as artistically. ’explains Somesh Quadros, Head of CFX.
As funny and light hearted as the movie is, it is interesting to note that the movie drew its inspiration from Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic ‘The Shining’ for cinematography. Vimal Subramaniam, CG Supervisor, recalls what the Production Designer said during the launch of the movie –“’The symmetrical composition that Kubrick employs is so powerful and creates so much tension that makes his story telling very unique”. The entire look and feel had to have rich diversity reflecting the time and place where each sequence was set in. The movie portrays the characters travelling to a wide range of experiences from ancient Greece during the time of King Tut, to France during the time of French Revolution, to Troy at the time of Trojan war, to the Italian Renaissance era when Leonardo Da Vinci was painting Mona Lisa etc.
Challenging as it was, the end result projected on the big screen was more than enough to bring a huge wide smile on the artists who worked on it. DDU’s lighting team worked on 4 of the 28 sequences of the film including the sequences set in Egypt, in Italy in Leonardo Da Vinci’s house&in New York, that summed up to about 14 minutes of run time on the film. The sequences involved huge crowds, especially in the climax when great personalities from different era come to the present age, at New York. A 9 month long schedule meant that once the teething problems were settled and the expectations of the Director and Production Designer were clarified, the team was cruising. A couple of our very young and talented artists got an opportunity to do lead lighting and they eventually got promoted. We also had a good handle on our rendering resource requirement, the team rose from its original strength of 5 in the beginning to 15 at its peak. For inputs, the lighting team received color keys and was launched on the sequences by David James, Production Designer on the show. David walked the lighting artists through how the story nuances impacted the tone and lighting of the sequences.
The Technology team (TD) played a crucial role and ensured smooth flow of production between DreamWorks – US and DDU, India. Collaborating on a show of this scale, across time zones in a global context always poses unique challenges, and this movie had its own fair share of new challenges. For instance, the schedule demanded we do some parts of the CFX sequence in the US while some others in Indi. The TD department had to come up with an integrated notification system that informed everyone (in US and India and all departments) about the file transfer status, so that subsequent departments could start working. The proprietary file transfer system between the 2 sites (US and India) was reinforced to handle the biggest load it had ever seen. For lighting, the TD team wrote a comprehensive validation tool that walked the dependency chain of assets and figured out what contributed to the final result. This was instrumental in catching a lot of bad data, which would otherwise be discovered after anexpensive render. The developed solution is now being integrated to the future movie productions.
During the initial stages of production, a CG Supervisor, a lead lighter and CFX lead from DDU visited DWA assimilating and integrating with the creative and technical components of the show. The connections they developed there and the understanding & information they brought back to the DDU helped the local team come up to speed on the show style and expectations rather quickly.
Key leadership on the show such as Jason Schleifer (Head of Animation), Philippe Denis (VFX Supervisor), David James (Production Designer) and Holly Edwards (Associate Producer) visited DDU and spent a couple of weeks on the floor with the artists. Their visit of course was a hugemotivational boost for the team here. Jason Schleifer and David James used the opportunity to conduct training boot camps while they were at the DDU. Raju Vaidya, a CG Supervisor working on the show summarizes the visit this way – “the time the show leadership spent on the ground here at the DDU helped create a bond with them and paved way for a very open and comfortable communication channel with the key leadership on show – this was huge from a collaboration standpoint.” A lot of the challenges of the global production got resolved due to the very supportive and accommodative tone set by the leadership. This was the 1st show in DDU’s history which did not have a local VFX supervisor and all the department heads and leads were directly integrating with the technical and creative components of the show. Despite this, all the heads and leads at DDU will unanimously concur that this was one of the smoothest run productions that they have worked on!! All kudos to the show leadership.
Mr. Peabody & Sherman is another feather in DDU’s hat. Prior to Mr. Peabody and Sherman, DDU has contributed to features such as Puss-in-Boots, Madagascar3 and Rise of the Guardians. Currently with a staff of over 250, DDU is working on multiple shows including the full CG production of the feature ‘Penguins of Madagascar’ slated for a March’15 release and on sequences of ‘How to Train your Dragon -2” slated for a June’14 release.
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