Jan 15, 2013

Thanks to the tiger in the "Life of the pie".

My favorite animated performance at Pixar's Brave was the bear-like Queen character. It supported the story and convinced the viewer that there was a personality struggle going on among the bears.

On the other side of the spectrum is the animation of the Tiger, Richard Parker, Pai's life in the film adaptation of the novel by Ang Lee. The purpose of the Rhythm & Hues animator who made Tiger was quite different from the purpose of the Brave animator, but it is also an artistic achievement.

In Life of Pi, Tiger shared the screen with live-action actors for a long time, with the goal of creating performances as naturalistic, animalistic and photorealistic as possible. They succeeded in all counts and created a convincing character that the viewer will never question as anything other than a flesh-and-blood tiger. In fact, Bill Westenhofer, the film's visual effects supervisor, said in an interview that there was even a shot of a real tiger mixed seamlessly with CG. We could not cheat at all. It inspired the artist to offer something that has never been done before, something like a photo that everyone has done with animals."

It's impressive, but I have to feel that Tiger is an anti-climate moment in the history of CG animation. To achieve such a character has accumulated over the decades, and in each film, the artist has gradually approached this goal. Tiger is not a revolution, but rather the latest evolution of the CGI march towards photorealistic and natural digital actors.

The life of Pi's animation director Erik-Jan De Boer has had plenty of time for the past decade and a half to develop an approach to naturalism, primarily at Rhythm &Hues, which distinguishes itself as one of the top effect houses for CG animals. De Boer's R&h credits include animals from films such as Golden Compass, Cats & Dogs, Stuart Little, Babe: Pig in the City and Scooby Doo.

A significant portion of Pi's life beyond animals is also computer-generated, and this article on FXguide serves as an introduction to using CG in movies. Among the 11 Oscar nominations the film won last week was a nod for its visual effects. De Boer shares the nomination with Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron (vfx Supervisor: MPC) and Donald R. Elliott (Special Effects engineer). If the film did not win in this category, it would be a surprise.

Movies have always been about creating an illusion, and nowadays, that illusion is achieved in large part through animation. Directors like Ang Lee and James Cameron have been transformed into (part・time) animation directors with less fanfare, and some of the most technologically advanced character animation works can be seen in their films. The tiger in the life of Pi is an impressive achievement and shows that photoreal animals are now in the grasp of today's animators. Anyone who is interested in the development of our art form owes it to himself to check out the film.