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Episode III Animatics Experimentation
“This week is all about refining what we turned in last week,” says Dan Gregoire describing what he and his Episode III team have been concentrating on. As Previsualization Effects Supervisor, Gregoire leads a crew of 11 computer artists previsualizing Episode III in a video-resolution computer-animated form long before digital cameras roll in Sydney, Australia.
Star Wars fans are no strangers to animatics. The highly visual and dynamic nature of these films requires meticulous planning, and static storyboards often don’t suffice because they don’t show motion as well as animated movies. To better envision and communicate what the finished effects shots will be, animatics artists efficiently deliver video-resolution preliminary iterations of sequences that require considerably less turnaround time than Industrial Light & Magic’s finished photo-real versions.
As a result, the Animatics Department becomes a place of experimentation, as shots and scenes are initially explored. Every Friday since late February, Gregoire has presented his team’s latest work to George Lucas. “At this point in time the first level of a sequence is actually more of a litmus test,” explains Gregoire. “It’s getting it in front of George, so that he can see where we’re going, and then having him react to that sequence one way or the other. Either way we can use that feedback to hopefully nail the sequence the second or third time around. At this time it’s all about trying things and seeing what works and what doesn’t.”
In this early stage of Episode III’s development, Gregoire’s team has been concentrating on the opening five to ten-minute sequence of the film. “As with any early development some of the main story elements are still in flux, so we’ve been concentrating primarily on getting the assets for the initial sequence built.” An asset is any computer model or element to be used in animation. “It’s a two-part process: when we’re assigned the sequence, we build the assets: the ships, the environments, and any dynamic situations such as lasers and explosions. Once they are near complete we clean them up and place them all on a central server. That way we don’t have to develop assets in the middle of trying to animate a shot. Two weeks ago, we had turned in a handful of shots. Last week, we turned in about 30 or 40.”
Though Gregoire describes the development of assets and their animation as two distinct steps, every artist in the team has a hand in both. “At this point everybody’s a jack of all trades,” he says. “Everybody’s expected to do some modeling, texturing, set-up, and actually animating and composing their own shots.”
At Celebration II last year, Gregoire cautioned an audience of fans that animatics work typically requires long hours and hurried deadlines. The incredible push to deliver eleventh-hour animatics of the Clone War and the droid factory scenes for Episode II proved this. But even this early in Episode III preproduction, the workdays are much longer than nine-to-five. “We’re in a rushed state from the word go,” he says. “Last week was pretty intense. I think Wednesday, Thursday, Friday some people got a total of five hours of sleep.”