FILM
TRANSLATING DISNEY’S 2D ANIMATED FEATURES INTO LIVE-ACTION By IAN FAILES
You may have noticed that 2019 has been an epic year in terms of the release of Disney films based on 2D animated classics. The Lion King, Aladdin and Dumbo are among the major films from the studio that have brought the original animated films into a new dimension, either as live-action or fully photoreal features. With more such films in the works from Disney including Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Lady and the Tramp and Cruella – all of which likely have a large CG component – visual effects studios are being called upon to help translate what had only been seen previously as ‘flat’ animation into enriched characters and worlds. So, what does that involve, exactly? What are the challenges of taking often highly expressive 2D animated characters into the photoreal 3D world? Do VFX studios need to specifically retain certain parts of the 2D performance and the film? VFX Voice asked artists from The Lion King, Aladdin and Dumbo about how the translation process worked from their point of view. TURNING A 2D CHARACTER INTO 3D
All images copyright © 2019 Disney Enterprises, Inc. TOP: Mena Massoud as Aladdin in the Guy Ritchie film. Although many of the same events happen as in the 1992 animated version, this new live-action movie had to be grounded much more in reality.
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One of the first questions faced by visual effects teams on these 2D to ‘live-action’ films is, ‘How will the main characters be realized?’ Visual effects studios regularly work from production designs, concept art and filmmaker notes. It’s a collaborative effort to bring these characters to the screen, and in the case of characters such as Simba, Genie or Dumbo, audiences also know them very well. That means that any major departures from the original have to be thought through significantly. In the case of 2019 Aladdin’s Genie (voiced by Will Smith, who also drove the performance of the character via facial capture in the Guy Ritchie film), ILM was tasked with crafting the character in his blue form completely in CG. A predominant trait of the 2D character in the original film from 1992 was that Genie (voiced by Robin Williams) often changed forms. “In 2D animation, one of the easiest things to do is change a
shape,” notes ILM Animation Supervisor Steve Aplin, who says in 3D it is usually harder to go ‘off-model’ and do so many shape changes. “The way we approached it in the new movie was not so much shape changing, but costume changing. We did do experiments with stretching limbs, but we found we came away from the physicality, which you need for a live-action film. We couldn’t quite push Genie around and deform him as much, although we do it in some places.” Similarly, the character of Abu, a capuchin monkey, is a character with extreme expressions and movement in the original Aladdin. But in the new film, ILM felt that Abu had to appear as much more photoreal, so that the audience would ‘buy it’ and not actually question whether it was a real capuchin. “Abu started off probably a bit more human, a bit more character-ful,” states ILM Visual Effects Supervisor Mike Mulholland. “And then he gradually steered toward some rules that we established, which were basically that every performance, every action, needed to be based on a real-world action. We found we couldn’t replicate what was in the 2D animation, and so then we had to draw on other sources, like real-world footage, to get something that was believable within our new environment for the film. A lot of it ended up being about finding the right reference and beginning to stick a performance together using real monkey footage as a guide.” ACTING FROM ‘LIVE-ACTION’ ANIMALS
A similar challenge lay ahead for the visual effects team from MPC on Tim Burton’s Dumbo, a re-imagining of the 1941 film. “You’ve got this highly emotive 2D cartoon animation that you have to re-realize in a photorealistic way, using the technology we have,” discusses Production Supervisor Richard Stammers, who also hails from MPC. “Once you start taking that hugely expressive 2D animation into the photoreal world, you’re suddenly becoming a lot more limited in the range of expressions you have. So getting to that point where you can actually still capture the feeling of the original cartoon can be hard.” For MPC, that ultimately meant that their baby elephant was – compared to a real elephant – quite different. He remains in the new film a caricature, but, as Stammers notes, “feeling as real as possible.” The CG Dumbo retained a cartoon-quality cute factor and was somewhat unusually proportioned. To alleviate the mis-match between that and the real world, the filmmakers also crafted a slightly expressionistic world for him to live in. “I think that was an important thing, trying to get the film to have this sort of coherent look, while still being photoreal, but not hyper-real,” adds Stammers. The cute factor – partly achieved with an oversized head and large eyes – initially wasn’t something MPC was going to replicate, but after looking to real baby elephants, which are incredibly wrinkly and hairy, they noted that simply creating a photoreal baby elephant was not going to work. Still, the team did visit zoos and collect countless amounts of reference for Dumbo, but then pulled back on the detail in their CG model. “Tim wanted more of an idealized elephant,” remarks MPC
“The way we approached it in the new [Aladdin] movie was not so much shape changing, but costume changing. We did do experiments with stretching limbs, but we found we came away from the physicality, which you need for a live-action film. We couldn’t quite push Genie around and deform him as much, although we did do it in some places.” —Steve Aplin, Animation Supervisor, ILM
TOP: ILM used Disney Research Zurich’s new solver, Anyma, to help capture Will Smith’s performance as Aladdin’s Genie. BOTTOM: Director Guy Ritche talks to Naomi Scott, who plays Jasmine, about a scene that heralds the arrival of Aladdin.
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