EXCLUSIVE: Strange World’s technical director Norman Joseph talks about behind-the-scene technicalities in animated films
We all love animated films that have incredible, heart-warming stories to tell. But how different is it to tell such stories through animation than creating live-action films? And what are the possible challenges faced by the team behind those films? In an exclusive conversation with Bollywood Hungama, Technical Director Norman Joseph, who helped behind-the-scene in Disney’s upcoming animated feature Strange World, gave us an insight on the many technical decisions that go into making an animated film.
Firstly, when we asked what does a technical director do, in layman’s lingo, Norman answered, “The technical director is basically responsible to help on all the technical aspects of the production or the show. We basically take care of the pipeline – by pipeline I mean all the tools that the artists are using to animate or to light or to create the assets or create the characters, all these tools – we are responsible for making sure that the artists can use them and looking at ways to make them better.”
“We also look at the overall picture of the show and seeing that okay, these are the difficulties or priorities that the show needs to build and how can we make that easy,” he added. “So, it’s basically like the tool sets are required for the artists to work but the show also tells us what is needed so we can build what tool sets are needed to get the show done. [We are] in a sense responsible for the technology that is used on the show and building the technology and the pipeline that’s used on the show.
Speaking of how different a totally animated film is compared to a live-action one, Norman explained, “For animated [films], everything that you see on the screen, you have to build from scratch. So, like even the grass or the ground, everything has to be built from scratch and that is one big difference. Also, animation gives you the capability of creating the look what you like. The person controls the entire look of the show because we create everything.”
Further into the conversation, Norman went on to elaborate on the many technical aspects one has to bear in mind while making an animated film. “There are a lot [of aspects],” he shared. “We have to create the characters first so for that we need multiple technologies to build those characters – build the body, build the hair, animate the hair, animate the body that goes into rigging. After you have that, you start animating. Then there is camera work and then there’s crowds where you have background characters, and then there’s effects.”
He continued, “They do basically everything that is moving in the scene that is not characters, so the leaves, any fireworks or things like that, any smoke so then. It’s like how you basically create a smoke simulation, that’s technology. We use some third party softwares as well to do that but it’s basically how we fit these third party softwares into our pipeline.” Norman then went on to explain how important it is to have an experienced team of professionals who can work around with the third-party technologies.
He then added, “I don’t know if I can pinpoint one specific technology but it’s basically like you’re learning how to build a pipeline of how providing data for one department to another while also creating tools for the artists to build the information for that particular department.” Talking about how they help in animating a scene, Norman shared, “We build the tools so that the animators can actually animate the character so they have a rig to help animate. There’s a rig team as well that builds the rig, the rig for the character.”
“If you imagine a puppet, it has wires hanging up to it so that’s the rig for the puppet,” he added. “So, the same thing for us when we build a character, we have to build a rig so we can move the hands and legs and things like that.?” Next, Normon also elaborated on the major technical pitfalls that come their way. “If there’s something very different character that needs to be animated for example Splat in Strange World, it’s different than normal so it takes a little extra effort to build a rig for that one.”
He continued, “And not just when you build a rig also understand how will this character create emotion in the scene, how will it convey emotion in the scene. We speak but we also have a lot of body language which we just take for granted. How would a character, that doesn’t look normal to us and doesn’t look the same as we do, convey this emotion. So, it is not just technical, it’s also about how do we convey this emotion to our viewers.”
“It depends on the movie. So, every movie has a difficult task. Every movie had its technology challenges like Frozen 2 had challenges with water as well.” Speaking of Strange World, Norman shared the major challenges they faced were with the character of Splat and other objects in the film’s environment. “Splat was an amazing challenge that we got to work for and the environment was amazing challenge that we created as well.”
Meanwhile, Disney’s Strange World introduces a legendary family of explorers, the Clades, as they attempt to navigate an uncharted, treacherous land alongside a motley crew that includes a mischievous blob Splat, a three-legged dog Legend and a slew of other ravenous creatures. The voice cast includes Jake Gyllenhaal as Searcher Clade; Dennis Quaid as Jaeger; Jaboukie Young-White as Ethan; Gabrielle Union as Meridian Clade and Lucy Liu as Callisto Mal. The Film is helmed by Don Hall and co-director/writer Qui Nguyen and produced by Roy Conli.
Walt Disney Animation Studios’ action-packed adventure Strange World will arrive in theaters on November 25 in India.
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