R&H worked with a prosthetics/animatronics firm on models and designs to ensure consistency between the prosthetic and CGI creations. Rules were set up for the human actors playing the fauns (above) and centaurs. Photo credit: Phil Bray.

It’s interesting to view the maquettes in person, as I had been seeing them for several weeks during videoconferences while they were in production down here. The sculptors and I have been collaborating during these discussions to make sure that their designs also work for us technically. We plan to scan these maquettes for our models, so issues like the specific posing of limbs are required to facilitate the rigging process.

Of particular interest is the centaur design. There are two issues Andrew was most sensitive to. The first is that it not look like a pantomime horse reminiscent of two-manned horse costumes. This issue is avoided by cantilevering the human torso out in front of the horse’s front legs. This feature also makes for more elegant lines in the form, as the human torso seems to blend out of what would have been the horse’s neck. The second issue concerns the size of the human vs. that of the horse. Andrew really wants to avoid a giant human body. The upper half has to have a one to one correspondence with a real human. The horse as well needs to feel impressive and not be pony-like. Weta has modeled the maquette to work with a real human and a 14-hand horse (each hand is four inches), and has positioned the human body to the horse in a way that a satisfying ratio is achieved.

Mar. 26, 2004
Today we had a once in a lifetime opportunity to be in a cage with a real lion, leopard, cheetah, bear, hawk and several other animals, all courtesy of the production’s animal training facility Gentle Jungle, in Frazier Park, California. Our ability to build lifelike representations of these exotic animals requires detailed reference of their fur, eyes, mouths, etc. Up until this point, we had mined everything we could from books and nature videos, but none of them were as close or featured the specific areas that we needed. Today we were able to get in there with a hi-def video camera and lots of still cameras to get all the detail we needed. It was pretty thrilling to be in there with the trainers to see the animals up close. In addition, we were able to see the animals perform specific actions that we would be able to match to during our rigging process to make sure we had captured all the subtleties of their musculature and skin movement.

R&H scanned head sculptures for the minotaurs (above) and other mythical creatures to ensure that its models would perfectly match the on screen performers. Photo credit: Phil Bray.

Apr. 13, 2004
Today we shot video for a centaur and faun test at KNB, the facility in charge of the prosthetics and animatronics for the movie. My team has been working together with Howard Berger and his crew ever since we both started in December of last year, sharing whatever models and designs that were appropriate to ensure consistency between the prosthetic and CGI creations. A good example was that we supplied our digital model of Aslan both in a standing pose and laying on his side, with which KNB was able to directly create a lifesize form to use for their animatronic lion. So often the CGI and the animatronic creations follow parallel paths based on concept art, which yield things that are similar but not identical. KNB also supplied us with head sculptures for the minotaurs, minoboars, cyclopses, goblins and so on that we were able to scan, which ensures that our models will perfectly match the on screen performers.

Our test today is to nail down the process and rules we will need to follow to position and direct the human actors that will be playing fauns and centaurs. We know there is going to be many scenes where we will have to shoot real actors on set, so it is essential that we are able to get upper body motion that make sense when we replace it with a horse body or goat leg. This test will experiment with several ideas ranging from low-tech “walking on tip-toes,” to special shoes and, in the case of the centaur, walking on a platform and walking with platform shoes. To prepare ourselves for this day, we’ve already had our animators do a lot of motion studies of full CGI fauns and centaurs to try to get a clear picture in our head of what we want the upper half to do. Today is really a test of which “reverse engineering” technique works the best and is still sound from a practicality and safety aspect for live-action shooting.

We won’t know until we are able to actually replace the legs in the computer, but the tiptoe approach seemed the most natural. For the centaur, a platform shoe gave an interesting result, but I’m afraid from a safety standpoint when the actors are walking on steep mountain slopes. More than likely we will need some sort of raised platform for them to perform on.

Apr. 19, 2004
Simultaneous to the video test, we’ve been doing motion capture experiments with Giant Studios in Culver City, California. Our motion capture director, Michelle Ladd, had a performer go through some typical faun actions using the same set of techniques we employed on the KNB video test. These are being retargeted in realtime to our faun rig so we can see how each performs on the real creature. Retargeting is a process that takes the motion tracked joints of the actors’ real legs and remaps them to similar points on the target model. In this case, it is a “reverse” goat leg. In truth, it’s not really reversed topographically; it’s just that the heel of a goat is so long and held off the ground at such a steep angle that the leg appears to have three segments instead of a human’s two. The retargeting software takes this into account and uses some custom procedures to give a natural pose for the goat leg in response to the captured data.