Jan 4, 2018

From Book to Animation: What it takes to animate Roald Dahl's "Revolting Rhymes"

"Revolting Rhymes" was a finalist for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the Best Animated Short Film category at the 90th Academy Awards. Originally broadcast as two episodes on the BBC, the film is an adaptation of a Roald Dahl book illustrated by Quentin Blake. Directed by Jakob Schuh and Jan Lachauer, the film was produced by Magic Light Pictures, the production company behind "Glue. [The film is an adaptation of classic fairy tales such as "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," and intertwines the story of several characters as told by the wolf to the woman he babysits in the cafe. The film was CG-animated by Magic Light's Berlin studio and Triggerfish Animation Studios in Cape Town.

Reflecting on the enormous amount of work behind Revolting Rhymes, Xu and Lachauer spoke to Cartoon Brew about the various challenges they faced when adapting Dahl's book.

In the original poem, Dahl has a very distinct narrator's voice. That is what the filmmakers wanted to preserve in their adaptation, but what was particularly difficult was to have the unconnected stories in the book unfold simultaneously in a shared universe.

The process began with tearing up the pages of the book and performing what Shue calls "a weekend-long reality check." I wasn't at all sure that it would be possible to jump between poems without losing the flow of the rhyme. I wondered when the time of day, seasons, etc., that appear in the rhyme would get in the way ......" I tried little things like.

Satisfied that they found it worked, the directors asked storyboard artist Max Lang to help them come up with the story. It was a fairly repetitive process," said Lang. We invited Benjamin Quavec, the project's editor, and Max to take notes. We wanted them both to be involved in the project for a long time, so apart from good notes, it was a good way to synchronize towards a shared vision."

Finally, the script had to be approved by Dar's family and the producers. Thumbnails were then moved to storyboards, and the storyboards became animatics with extraordinary voices, effects, and music. Much time was spent condensing the plot before a 3D layout based on the drawn animatics could be realized.

The film's main storyline, featuring numerous fairy tale characters, has a particular stylized appearance, sometimes even puppet-like. This was inspired by a museum in Munich that the filmmakers regularly visited, which had a collection of old marionettes and dolls.

"Several marionettes and hand puppets in that collection, their simple shapes, their carved and painted surfaces, and, equally important, the simple logic of an old puppet theater stage, flat set elements with volumes just painted on, all these things were what we had a big influence when we started imagining the look of the main storyline," said Lachauer.

Of course, Quentin Blake's original drawings were also a source of inspiration, and the directors considered the slightly twisted old doll they used as a reference "the perfect three-dimensional analogue of Blake's hilarious, expressive poses and his gorgeous, meandering line drawings," Lashauer added.

As for the final production by Magic Light and Triggerfish, character rigging and animation was done in Maya, using a custom toolset from previous Magic Light work. Blender was used for modeling and ZBrush and Mudbox for sculpting and texturing. The chipped paint textures on the stage set were created in Photoshop. Compositing was handled in Nuke, shading and rendering in Arnold.

It is no secret that Dahl's work was intentionally dark and mischievous, and the film is peppered with such moments. What the filmmakers discovered, however, was that showing something of this lineage could come across as more shocking than saying or writing it. Therefore, they had to find a way to make sure that it was part of the larger story of the characters.

For example, a question that came up early in the story was why, without warning, Little Red Riding Hood kills and sacks the third pig in "The Three Little Pigs" immediately after saving it from the wolf. Dahl offers no explanation in the poem. Dahl offers no explanation in the poem. He rather puts it brilliantly in the final rhyme of the story as a mischievous final twist. We knew we had to give our protagonist a motive for his brutal behavior, but we didn't want to lose these moments of hilarious surprise in the main story."

So the team instead found an emotional setting for Little Red Riding Hood's harsh interference in the story of the three little pigs. 'There were two solutions. There's a great little illustration in the book by Blake of the third pig talking on the phone in a suit and businesslike attire. And, totally unrelated, in the story of Snow White, Dahl wrote a piece of crap called 'The Manager of Barclays Bank. He's not an actual character in the book, just an ad hoc reference in a sweet little rhyme.

"So we combined Quentin's "Pig in a Suit" with Dahl's unknown "Barclays Bank Manager." The result is a wonderful setting that further connects the Snow White and Little Red stories, but more importantly, a greedy, corrupt, and promiscuous bank manager who diverts funds to a disreputable estate made of twigs and straw. Now his murder remains hilarious and shocking, but at the same time does not betray Red's character arc in the film."

Schue and Lachauer cite the most difficult aspect of adapting Dahl's book to film as bringing the characters together and establishing their relationships. In terms of animation, they had to tell the story of Red and Snow White's developing relationship with almost no dialogue.

"It is always difficult to animate emotionally believable scenes without dialogue, especially when these snippets must also convey an important part of the story or information," says Shue. If these scenes don't work, the whole story arc falls apart."

"For similar reasons," said Lachauer, "another challenge was the entire frame story between the babysitter and the wolf in the cafe. The two characters sit together in a very small space, going through various stages of fear, disbelief, curiosity, amusement, affection, and betrayal; they converse but cannot really move around, so the toolbox for such a subtle scene is small and limited. Ideally, Wolff keeps the babysitter and the viewer under the same spell, keeping them guessing.

To see artwork from the production of "Revolting Rhymes," visit the film's Instagram page. Final nominations for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film will be announced on Tuesday, January 23, 2018.