Red is getting a new animation team for The Angry Birds Movie 3, but fans should not expect a dramatically different bird. DNEG Animation VFX supervisor Patrick Harboun says the studio rebuilt the franchise's hero almost entirely from scratch, then worked hard to make sure he still looks like himself.
Harboun broke down the process during a presentation at View Conference in Turin, Italy, on Friday (October 16th), as reported by Variety.
"He's similar by choice," Harboun said. "Once an IP becomes popular, it kind of belongs to the fans, and we have to respect that. We can't just add our own spin just to give our mark."
Starting With A Plucked Chicken
The first two films were made by Sony Pictures Animation, and DNEG takes over animation duties for the third movie. That handover was not simple. The proprietary grooming, rigging and surfacing tools used on the earlier movies could not be moved into DNEG's pipeline, so the team had to rebuild Red's fur, facial rig and expressions, and even rework his underlying geometry.
"We had to start from this. A plucked chicken version of Red," Harboun joked while showing a bare digital model of the character.
The final design makes only small changes. Red's plumage is a little softer, and his eyes and beak have firmer, more toy-like surfaces.
Finding The Unwritten Rules
To keep Red feeling right, the team studied the previous films frame by frame. "We analyzed the past movies to find the unwritten rules of animation," Harboun explained. Animators cataloged the angles of Red's beak, the shape of his narrowed eyes, and the point where a stretched expression stopped looking like Red. Those findings became a style guide and a reusable library of facial expressions for the whole crew.
There was a lot more freedom with the film's new characters, and there are over 20 of them. They include Red and Silver's kids: aspiring athlete Glider, voiced by Walker Scobell, temperamental June, voiced by Emma Myers, and baby Olly, voiced by Psalm West. The family also has a pet spider named Fuzzy, voiced by James Austin Johnson. "The goal was to make a spider that even an arachnophobe would love," Harboun said.
Olly brought his own challenge, since his glasses act as his animated eyes, complete with moving lids and brows. The team's solution was nicknamed "Pancake Eyes," flattening parts of the baby's facial rig behind the lenses and then restoring their curve so his expressions could still squash and stretch.
Automation, With People In Charge
DNEG also built a system that automatically handles character effects like fur, feathers and deformation once a shot's animation is approved, then flags shots that need an artist's attention. It builds on work the studio did for The Garfield Movie. Around 25% of shots could go through the process early in production, and by the later stages, that number had climbed to 75%.
"It's not machine learning, it's human learning," Harboun stressed, noting that artists maintain the templates behind the system. "This frees up a lot of artists for hero work." That 75% figure applies only to character-effects processing, not to shots being animated without artists.
Other tricks include a hidden second layer of fur that appears when characters stretch, so they never get bald patches, and one-click tools that let animators build ropes, hay and props on their own.
Release Details
The Angry Birds Movie 3 is directed by John Rice and reunites Jason Sudeikis as Red with Rachel Bloom as Silver as the pair navigate parenthood. The film also expands Bird Island with Pigtropolis, a city for the pigs. Paramount releases it in theaters later this year (December 23rd), and Harboun even recommended the 3D version, despite admitting he is usually not a fan of 3D.
Are you glad DNEG kept Red close to his original look, or would you have liked to see a bolder redesign?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.