This film features several unique experiments into the art of pixelation that takes advantage of several technologies to create visual style that is unlike anything seen before. Beyond the traditional challenges of pixelating, we’ve added several additional ones by choosing to craft martial arts sequences into the film as well. So after designing the fight scenes, we shoot them on a stage to give us reference for animation:
Then, we’re able to use that footage to edit and choose shots to build out the scene before we animate anything. It’s a very fast way to really explore the scene and choose the best possible angles for everything. Once we have a good edit, we then use that for reference in doing animation. We’re not tracing or copying, rather, we’re using the footage as a guide for what’s going to happen. The real magic comes from the animator interpreting the live-action in his or her own way and exaggerating actions. When we’re done, we end up with this:
Notice that the animation is not very detailed or colored in. This is fine because we’ll mainly be using it for reference for pixelation, so that extra detail won’t be necessary. Like the previous live-action, this is a guide to help us on the stage. Using Dragon Frame, a popular stop-motion animation software, we can preview and capture the animation as stills using the animated reference as overlays to help us match the screen actors with what was drawn.
Once we have all of the images, we can line them up and get ready to use them. In some circumstances, we would be done, but in this case, we have one extra step that provides an extra level of finesse. Using the puppet tool in Adobe After Effects, we can build triangle meshes that will follow the shape of the actors after we’ve removed the green screen. That mesh then allows us to intelligently bend and reshape those actors, frame-by-frame, in order to better match the reference and take an additional pass at following the principals of animation like arcs and spacing. It’s this step that allows the pixelation to look much more fluid than normal.
One last bit of finesse is to add motion blur. This is something that comes at the very end, but it really helps to complete the illusion that we’re watching people really do these things. We use Reel Smart Motion Blur which works great. One complication is that because the animation doesn’t always use consistent frames, which is necessary for motion blur to work properly. Different images within the same sequence will be on screen for 1, 2, 3 or even 4 frames. Because of that, we need render out the sequence with duplicate frames removed before applying motion blur, which means that it has to wait until the end of the compositing process.
JAHELA! 