thescratchpost.com

It’s a drizzly overcast Friday in Marina del Rey, California. One week to go before the opening of the most anticipated film that Rhythm & Hues has ever worked on: “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” — and the buzz is building, as the weekly barbeque is underway. 500 digital artists grab lunch and return to work on their current projects, (“Superman Returns,” “Charlotte’s Web,” “Garfield 2,” “Fast & Furious Tokyo,”). As they do, a growing wave of press and media attention starts to pour in through the high speed web servers of the privately owned company that doesn’t normally toot its own horn.

For months, the artists have been eagerly awaiting feedback from the public about their two year long effort to bring Aslan and Narnia to life. Now the online reviews and features are picked up and instantly circulated through the company’s internal community email alias, and commented on with appreciation, humor or invective, depending on the quality and accuracy of the review or article. The clear majority today are more than favorable.

The early reviews were tantalizing. Newsweek saw Narnia shortly after R&H delivered in late October, and cheekily noted “Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) is a magnificent bit of computer animation, whether or not you think he’s Jesus.”

By mid afternoon, Part One of R&H Visual Effects Supervisor Bill Westenhofer’s Narnia Production Diary goes live with Bill’s detailed memoirs of the production cycle.

Then, Disney’s popular kids’ show Movie Surfers comes in with an online featurette with Bill, creature supervisor Will Telford, and lead lighting TD Greg Steele, along with VFX supervisor Dean Wright, comparing R&H’s CG Aslan with a real lion.

Then the mainstream reviews start to arrive. The British press seem especially enamored of Narnia; The Guardian calls it a “Triumph,” awarding 5 stars. and The Mirror praises Narnia’s battle sequence as “The biggest, most breathtaking battle you’ve ever seen.” Another 5 stars.

By the end of the day, the important trade review from The Hollywood Reporter comes in, praising the CGI in the first paragraph, and later noting “The CG characters are terrific. Aslan is the Real McCoy as a lion from the individual strands of hair in his mane to those sad-angry eyes.”

It’s clear the artists at R&H are going to be enjoying a lot of superlatives for their work on Narnia. Not that they don’t usually, after all, the company has been around eighteen years, and has worked on over 100 feature films, including the Oscar winning “Babe” back in 1995, not to mention hundreds of commercials like the Coke Polar Bears and GEICO’S Gecko. But they’re more than ready to ride the coat tails of the biggest marketing and publicity push in the history of Walt Disney Studios, and take pride in the fact that their work is the essential thread of the film’s success.

The King of CG Beasts: R&H’s Aslan / Narnia Fast Facts:

• Rhythm & Hues work was over two years in the making, with 350 digital artists, including 50 animators.
• Aslan had more than 5 million individual strands of hair.
• R&H technical animators used thousands of guide hairs to simulate the effect of physics on Aslan’s mane.
• The guide hairs drove a high-density pelt that was rendered as moving fur.
• Aslan’s animation rig consisted of over 1400 controls animators used to bring him to life.

The final stat for the Massive brain building was as follows:
- 22 weeks of motion capture (including capturing a horse!!)
- 49 massive agents
- motion clips retargeted, cleaned, modified, imported = 5,620
- simplest agent = arrow with 81 brain nodes
- most complex agent = centaur with 7,093 brain nodes
- total number of brain nodes for all agents: 123,355

• In addition to Aslan, R&H also created the following CG actors: ankle slicers, boggles, centaurs, cheetahs, cyclops, dwarves, fauns, giants, goblins, gryphons, hawks, horses, leopards, minoboars, minotaurs, ogres, satyrs, werewolves, bears, gorillas, rhinos, and white tigers.

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