American Cinematographer - February 1990 - 79

Opposite page:
The background

Richard Taylor wanted a certain look. He
wanted special reflections, he wanted

is

special shading

on Spot's body and he
wanted shadows. The other spots fea¬

It

computer. Top:
Spot struggles

watch them, but
was so much going on that an
audience's eye wouldn't be too critical.
was great to

with his contribu¬
tion. The quarter
was photo¬
graphed, enlarged

But Richard wanted this 'critter' to be
believable and in the spot-not a car¬
toon character

composited

on top

of live

for

using

2000 times and

digitized so that it,
too, could be ani¬
mated. Below: In

action.

"Another

reason

typical Tex Avery
fashion. Spot's
finger distorts as
he points to the

computer animation was that there is
some

very

transparency,

machine were
created in the

tured clusters of spots and they acted 'en
masse' so the camera was much farther
away.
there

a

but Spot and the

sophisticated action with the

quarter. If Richard had had to fly the
quarter around on a wire, it would have

camera.

meant very difficult compositing. It also
would have been somewhat limiting to
the animation. Working as we did, we

could animate the quarter any way we
wanted to and when it was rendered by
the computer it would look as good as a
real quarter. That kind of rendering is

mercial progressed, he found that some
additional software was needed to make

Spot's hand look right.

something computers can do really well.
The result was that the shot had fluidity
and a natural feeling to it that you might
get if you had to work with an exist¬
ing quarter."
To prepare for "Saxophone,"
Rhythm and Hues had done two seconds
of animation for a previous commercial
called "Skiing." Gibson explained that
this work was supposed to be just a
"proof of concept" exercise to see if they
could do something that would feel natu¬
ral in the context of the spot. "We did it

The live-action sequences
Soup before they came to

went to Duck

Rhythm and Hues. Gibson explained,
"They did a set of tighter layouts and
rough animation specifically for each
scene on paper. Once we got the paper

not

as a

test, but it blended so well that the

agency used it," Gibson confessed. And
what they did felt natural enough that
Leo Burnett came back to them when it

time to put

Spot in the spotlight.
Rhythm and Hues was joined
on the project by Image Point Productions
and Duck Soup Produckions. Image Point
and Richard Taylor provided the liveaction and overall direction. Duck Soup
was

is the animation house that had created
the cel animation for the previous spots.

They provided all the rough animation
layouts in an effort to retain the estab¬
lished character, timing and sense of
humor. "Duck Soup determined things
like how big Spot would be, where he's
located in the shot and where the shad¬
ows might fall-just to give us an idea
of how much detail we were shooting for
and where we should direct our energy,"
Gibson said.

animation,
Gibson couldn't say enough
about the working relationship with Duck

able to look at the
put them into our com¬
puter. With our computer we are able to
put a field chart over each frame and just

Soup. "One thing that

track

success

not an automated process because there
is not really anything to automate."

we were

extremes and

was a key to the
of the spot was the creative
people of Duck Soup. These spots are
more than just animating these crea¬
tures-there's a real style and it's some¬
thing Richard and the agency just didn't
want to lose. It was important for us to
work from their layouts and use the tim¬

ing that had been successful in five spots
before this."
Like the

majority of commer¬
began with storyboards.
From them Rhythm and Hues determined
that they could do the work and that it
was appropriate for them to be involved.
cials, this

one

Even before the live-action segments
were

mator

completed, Rhythm and Hues ani¬
Larry Weinberg began designing

wire-frame movements for the character.
Much of the software for manipulating
the character had been created by Gibson
for the two-second test. Weinberg said,
"For the majority of the shots, I used what
Charles had done," though as the com¬

February 1990

positions off their grid by

eye.

It's

Weinberg and Gibson agreed
that the next step was probably the most
difficult. As Gibson put it, "We now had
to translate the process from 2D back to
3D. Duck Soup had translated from 3D to
2D. In 2D animation there are a lot of
short cuts that are just naturally taken.
There is a shorthand where characters
are

adjusted to look good. In 3D anima¬

tion you have less control over what each
individual frame looks like. You might as

well be

manipulating

a

solid character.

So, in the translation, we were really
trying to get the essence of what Duck
Soup was doing. For instance when they
have

something look as though it's mov¬
ing in z [the z axis], we have to really
move it in z and it's not going to look quite
the

same. A human [animator] is not
going to do perspective that is mathe¬
matically correct. It's going to be aes-

American

Cinematographer

77
American Cinematographer - February 1990

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - February 1990
