VFX Voice - Fall 2017

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ANIMATION MARTIAL (BRICK) ARTS: THE MAKING OF THE LEGO NINJAGO MOVIE By IAN FAILES When Animal Logic first embarked on the computer-animated The LEGO Movie, released in 2014, it wasn’t clear how an entire world and its characters could be made in CG from the famous plastic bricks. But the studio invested heavily in a dedicated pipeline and new tools and techniques to pull it off, and then took things even further for 2017’s The LEGO Batman Movie. Now with The LEGO Ninjago Movie, inspired by the line of martial arts toys from LEGO, Animal Logic has had to once again re-think its approach to animating bricks and take on several fresh challenges, including animating kung fu action, rendering natural environments and even – spoiler alert – crafting a photorealistic cat. TOP: Garmadon (Justin Theroux) and Master Wu (Jackie Chan) battle it out among one of the natural environments made by Animal Logic. All images copyright © 2017 Warner Bros. Pictures. All rights reserved. NINJA STYLE, IN LEGO FORM Early on in production, LEGO Ninjago director Charlie Bean tasked Animal Logic with imbuing this new adventure with a particular style that combined the genres of kung fu, monster movies and the films of director John Hughes. On top of that, LEGO Ninjago had to feel – just as in the previous films – like it was made by hand and with a stop-motion feel reminiscent of ‘brick films’. Animal Logic had established that look and feel in its approach to animation, for example, by not rendering motion blur on the minifigures (minifigs) and by adhering to a number of clear rules; most importantly, that almost everything was made from ‘legal’ LEGO bricks. Indeed, Animal Logic’s pipeline for these LEGO films is built entirely around the brick. It begins with the use of LEGO Digital Designer (LDD), a product anyone can use to construct LEGO forms from legal LEGO bricks. These are then brought into Autodesk’s Maya for further modeling and surfacing. Rigging, animation and layout are done in Softimage XSI, and effects made possible in Side Effects Software’s Houdini. Shading and rendering is handled in Animal Logic’s proprietary path tracer Glimpse, 32 • VFXVOICE.COM FALL 2017
developed during the original LEGO Movie. Compositing is done in The Foundry’s NUKE. NEW LOCATIONS, NEW APPROACHES Many elements of LEGO Ninjago still made use of this brick pipeline – from the film’s buildings and city to the Mechs within, which the main characters battle. But the film also introduced a natural environment full of vegetation, water, sand, rocks and soil that Animal Logic would have to create in CG, albeit at the same scale as a minifig. “That was the director’s dream and goal from the beginning,” notes CG Supervisor Greg Jowle. “The film had to feel akin to a child playing in the backyard at a macro level with their little LEGO pieces. We aimed at everything being miniaturized.” This included vegetation, re-created to appear as if from the real world, but at LEGO minifig scale. “An obvious place to start became bonsai trees,” says Jowle. “We went to a bonsai place and did reference shoots. We looked at moss for different grasses. We also mixed in common house plants to remind people of the scale that we were in. We’d throw in plants where the leaves were smaller than our hands, but for the minifigures they were bigger than their entire body.” “That was the director’s dream and goal from the beginning. The film had to feel akin to a child playing in the backyard at a macro level with their little LEGO pieces. We aimed at everything being miniaturized.” —Greg Jowle, CG Supervisor REAL-WORLD EFFECTS In previous LEGO film outings, effects simulations had been replicated at a brick level. For Ninjago, there was more scope to simulate phenomena such as water, sand, explosions and smoke as real-world effects. However, it was still at a minifig scale and sometimes with a certain LEGO style. “There’s a scene in the film where the characters pop out of water,” notes FX Supervisor Miles Green. “In reality, often water just sheets off LEGO pieces and they look completely dry. But we TOP LEFT: Model of bamboo forest. TOP RIGHT: Characters and forest. BOTTOM LEFT: Virtual camera layout for the scene. BOTTOM RIGHT: Early render. FALL 2017 VFXVOICE.COM • 33
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