KISHAN THAKRAR
A LEVEL ART PHOTOGRAPHY PORTFOLIO
Animal Logic Studios - Artist Study
I chose to study Animal Logic, an animation and VFX studios based in Sydney, as they served as a great inspiration for my animation and also really stood out to me having animated Lego figures in The Lego Movie and dragons in other films. Here is Animal Logic's showreel:
Animal Logic have created visual effects and animation for many international blockbusters including the Iron Man films, The Lego Movie, Happy Feet and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.
The Lego Movie
Textures
One of the most important things I was conscious about in the animation was achieving a convincable plastic Lego brick texture. After watching The Lego Movie, and also some behind the scenes videos featuring interviews with staff at Animal Logic, I discovered that they wanted the Lego bricks to look worn and used, rather than pristine and perfect, because in reality, bricks do get worn, and it makes the animation look more believable. In my animation write up, I show how I add scratches and dust to the bricks to make them more realistic, taking the inspiration from this film.
Worn plastic effect used on body texture, even a cracked helmet, which gives a very realistic effect.
Realism
As Lego is such a well known toy, the animators were more conscious about making the Lego environment and objects as real as possible. As well as the techniques above, they also took out various frames from the movements of the figures, as if it were a stop-motion animation, for which Lego figures are often used. I wanted my animation to look realistic, but more because it is superimposed onto real video, rather than it being realistic to match people's understanding of the characters. The movie clip on the right shows examples of this realism.
As well as animating Lego bricks, I had a go at rendering some Lego people. If I were to create a scene like the ones above, I'd need a much more powerful computer, due to the amount of bricks used in each scene. Animal Logic have even used techniques to make it appear to be taken on a DSLR camera, with depth of field, chromatic abberation, and higher f-stops on the cameras in the animation software.
