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I didn’t work on it, but I’d have to say the magical river sequence was the most challenging. It’s great to get in there with bouncy and active characters, or ones with big personalities. I worked on a shot with Clumsy and can attest to him being a lot of fun to animate. In terms of the characters, a lot of people really enjoyed animating Clumsy and Gargamel. It’s hard to think of a specific sequence, as everyone had a lot of fun overall with the show. What was the most fun sequence or character to animate? To add emphasis and humour, we sometimes also used the lines and stars effect (that’s often seen in 2D animations when a character gets hit). If needed, we could also add extra appendages and make things smear for long distances. That way we could get pretty much whatever we could imagine, which was really cool. So if a rig only got us part way to what we really wanted, we could go in and model the specific shape we wanted for that frame. On top of that, we also had tools that allowed us to make our own blendshapes for specific frames. We used the scales that were built into the rig to make something wider or larger. We approached this in a few different ways. Can you tell us how this effect was achieved in 3D? The smear frames added authenticity to the characters and actions in the Smurf universe. We looked to them for how cartoony, appealing and squishy their animations were. Mickey Mouse, The Seven Dwarfs and Snow White were all big influences for us.
![smurfs village characters smurfs village characters](http://assets1.ignimgs.com/2017/04/06/smurfslostvillage-1280-1491503695872_1280w.jpg)
It’s the one where Mickey kills seven flies and ends up having to fight a giant (laughs). He would often refer back to the Mickey Mouse cartoons, especially The Brave Little Tailor. Our director, Kelly Asbury, really likes old Disney animation.
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What were your main sources of inspiration and reference? Establishing new rules and approaches for these situations were challenges we faced.Ī lot of what I saw felt reminiscent of old-school Disney animation.
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And we needed to re-visit how to pose the nose around the eyes to make it look the most Smurf-appealing as possible. That’s not something that we had ever done before.Ĭonsequently, we had to figure out how to get the pupils to properly function as they got closer to the invisible centre line. For example, the Smurf eye design in this film was two eyes touching each other without any separation between them. But we did have to develop new approaches for certain items. Did you develop any new animation tools for Smurfs? A lot of the animators on Smurfs had worked on those movies and as such, were already familiar with the tools and rigs we used to achieve that look.
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Hotel Transylvania is the most obvious example of that, as well as Angry Birds and Storks. And we continually referred back to the source material in order to maintain authenticity.Īs for how we achieved this in practice, Sony’s been making a lot of movies recently that have more of a graphic, 2D-looking style. We worked very closely with Peyo’s daughter Véronique to try and ensure everything felt true to the original comics and cartoon.
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It did a great job of honouring the look and feel of the original comics and TV series. Having grown up with the Smurfs, or Les Schtroumpfs as I’m used to calling them, I was really impressed by how well this reboot handled the translation of the property from 2D to 3D. Now, with the stage set, we sit down with Valerie Morrison, Supervising Animator on the project, to dive deeper into the animation process that brought these characters to life. In Part I of our look behind the scenes, we explored how the design process unfolded and influenced all aspects of the film. "Smurfs: The Lost Village" immerses us in the world of our one-foot-tall fantastical friends.
SMURFS VILLAGE CHARACTERS SERIES
This is the second interview in a series by Jessica Fernandes about the animated film "Smurfs: The Lost Village." Republished with permission from Spark CG Society.