CGTalk Meet the Artist: Doug Ikeler,
Visual Effects Supervisor, Open Season
Sony Pictures Imageworks.
Intro by Barbara Robertson.
Open Season is Sony Pictures Animations first CG feature and the first animated feature created at Sony Pictures Imageworks.
Imageworks has scored two Oscars recently for its CG work a visual effects Oscar for Spider-Man 2, and a Best Short Film Oscar for the CG animation The Chubbchubbs. Sony funded The Chubbchubbs in part to test whether the studios pipeline could handle an animated feature. With Open Season, Imageworks got the real test and what a test it was.
Open Seasons directors decided to base the style of the film on paintings by Eyvind Earle, an artist who developed looks and painted backgrounds for Walt Disney Studios in the 1950s. Earles distinctive style focused attention on foreground characters with such techniques as reducing background environments to their essence, taking backgrounds out of focus, and using long, raking shadows.
Visual effects supervisor Doug Ikeler led a team of around 250 people at Imageworks who worked on Open Season. They converted the 2D visual style from SPAs art department in to a 3D film, animated the film using classic pose-based, non-volume-based animation techniques implemented in 3D software, and allowed the film to be art directed as if nearly every shot was a still painting.
In addition to new layout tools and data management software, under Ikelers supervision, Imageworks developed specific tools to handle the demands of the visual style: Fur and cloth that doesnt break a characters stylized profile, water simulations that hit the beats, 3D trees that look 2D, rendering tricks for casting shadows that are not accurate to geometry, and much more.
[img]http://features.cgsociety.org/cgtalk/meettheartists/doug_ikeler/OS-002.jpg[/img]
[img]http://features.cgsociety.org/cgtalk/meettheartists/doug_ikeler/OS-003.jpg[/img]
[img]http://features.cgsociety.org/cgtalk/meettheartists/doug_ikeler/OS-004.jpg[/img]
[img]http://features.cgsociety.org/cgtalk/meettheartists/doug_ikeler/OS-021.jpg[/img]
[img]http://features.cgsociety.org/cgtalk/meettheartists/doug_ikeler/OS-011.jpg[/img]
Before joining Imageworks, Ikeler was effects designer and supervisor on DreamWorks The Road to El Dorado, and received an Annie nomination for his work on a water system he developed and animated for that film. Prior to DreamWorks, he was a modeler at Rhythm & Hues for Babe and at Amblimation, he supervised compositing and digital ink and paint for An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, and effects for Balto.
During SIGGRAPH this summer, Ikeler and members of his team taught a course titled, The Art of Open Season: Traditional 2D Styling with Todays Bells and Whistles.
Please welcome Doug Ikeler!
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