By TREVOR HOGG
By TREVOR HOGG
“We looked at how real paintings were done, and the visual development team sent us actual paint strokes that we used. A tool was built that used various types of projections on everything. The trick is that you don’t want it to look texture-mapped. As the characters move through the light, all of these watercolor strokes would organically build on top of each other to create shadows and light. That was one of the biggest tools that we used because it was over everything.”
Creatively, it was important not to hold back on ideas and experimentation. “When you’re creating brand-new looks the worse thing that you can do is inch your way there because you’re never going to get there,” states Lasker. “You need to go nuts, boldly try different things, and see what they like.” Whereas Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse had ink-inspired linework, The Mitchells vs. the Machines utilized a style that resembled a watercolor marker. “We needed to emulate the variation, breakup and the naturalism of the stroke; it would also come off of the surface sometimes and light would have to react to it.” The most expensive prop was the jacket worn by Rick Mitchell (Danny McBride). “Rick was our development testbed. He was the first character that we built. The jacket became indicative of the whole look.”
When everyone involved with the project bought into the look of The Mitchells vs. the Machines, the process became a lot smoother, says Lasker. “Once we had nailed down different frequencies and styles of brushstrokes that you pick for different scenarios, we stopped getting notes on that stuff.”
“The Stealthbots were created by PAL, so they’re not going move like a person. Animation created this tool to slice up the geometry so that the robot could come apart in the most optimized way and find its next pose in the most optimized way. When you slice up the geometry you’re changing UVs and the topology, and we also needed the inside of these faces to glow. It went against everything that we would typically do.”
—Mike Lasker, VFX Supervisor, Sony Pictures Imageworks
The beginning of the action family comedy has a camera style that resembles a handheld student project, and by the end the visuals are slick and smooth. “So much of these styles are related to the type of lensing,” notes Lasker. “If you want something to look graphic, the camera has to play to that. If you’re fighting 3D too much it’s going to be harder to make things look illustrated.” Continuity remains a challenge as hundreds of shots are being produced at the same time. “The characters had different levels of being dishevelled. Their hair gets slowly more messed up as they get more into act three. The car gets more destroyed over the course of the movie. We had to track it all.”
Breaking the animation pipeline were the Stealthbots. “Alan Hawkins [Head of Character Animation] had this great idea,” remarks Lasker. “If artificial intelligence creates something, what does it look like? If you look it up, there are weird, scary- looking things that a robot has designed that a human never would because it has been designed in the most optimal way. It has weird curves to it. The Stealthbots were created by PAL, so they’re not going move like a person.
Animation created this tool to slice up the geometry so that the robot could come apart in the most optimized way and find its next pose in the most optimized way. When you slice up the geometry you’re changing UVs and the topology, and we also needed the inside of these faces to glow. It went against everything that we would typically do.”
“Spider-Verse shook us up, got us to think differently, invent new tools, and tear down all of these CG principles. The Mitchells was the same thing. We had to come up with new approaches for depth of field and lens flares as well as a new way to guide the eye of the audience in a more painterly fashion.”
—Mike Lasker, VFX Supervisor, Sony Pictures Imageworks
“You see tons of trees and grass, so you need to find a way to make them look simple and artistic. On Spider-Verse, we developed this tool for the look of Gwen’s World because she had this artistic look going on. When I came onto Mitchells, I felt it was the tool that we needed to use. We started working on it again and created a way to take our raw render of grass and simplify into brushstrokes. … We had to build our trees in a certain way that they had enough leaf detail but also had geometry inside of it to create a simple, yet busy underlying coat of detail that we would then simplify. In order to simple things artistically you need detail underneath it. How we did the trees and grass was one of the most successful stylistic treatments that we did.”
—Mike Lasker, VFX Supervisor, Sony Pictures Imageworks
A favorite tool was the ability to turn the settings into painterly landscapes. “So much of the frame ends up being vegetation,” observes Lasker. “You see tons of trees and grass, so you need to find a way to make them look simple and artistic. On Spider-Verse, we developed this tool for the look of Gwen’s World because she had this artistic look going on. When I came onto Mitchells, I felt it was the tool that we needed to use. We started working on it again and created a way to take our raw render of grass and simplify into brushstrokes. Basically, no one is going to paint every blade of grass in a field. You’re going to have these nice swabs of color. Then we had to figure out how to do trees. We had to build our trees in a certain way that they had enough leaf detail but also had geometry inside of it to create a simple, yet busy underlying coat of detail that we would then simplify. In order to simple things artistically you need detail underneath it. How we did the trees and grass was one of the most successful stylistic treatments that we did.”
“Rick and Linda in the kitchen talking about Katie was the scene where we landed on the painterly style. That’s one of my favorites from a look standpoint,” reveals Lasker. “When Katie is in front of that window at the Dino Stop, the explosion happens, she is falling back in slow-motion, you see the Slurpee, she lands and the robots show up. We pushed the style of the movie more in that sequence than anywhere else. They were graphic, saturated, and had this light shining on them. Then when the robots capture the humans and Rick is flying through the air, the clouds have a beautiful, saturated style to them. The lighting schemes of those two sequences were my favorites. It had our style, action, color and great effects. It was everything that was great about the film.”