One of the most visually striking films screened at this past Cannes Film Festival was "Zombillenium," an animated adaptation of a popular European graphic novel series created by Arthur de Pins. We asked 2 Minutes, the French animation studio responsible for the film’s unique aesthetics, about the technical challenges and their inventive solutions.
BEGINNING THE JOURNEY
The Zombillenium comics are well-known in Europe, so we knew we had to recreate an aesthetic that would be familiar to fans. On top of that, the author of those comics, Arthur de Pins was also one of the two writers and directors for this film, so we knew he’d have certain specific expectations about the style, particularly because it’s so essential to the tone of the comics.
Zombillenium © 2017 Maybe Movies, Belvision, 2 Minutes, Pipangaï
Ultimately, a lot of thought went into this film, into creating something faithful to the original works and yet intriguing enough to stand on its own. We were in preproduction and financing for three years, making sure the details were perfect, and then production itself still took another two years, so the final product is something we’re very proud of.
In an early conversation with Zombillenium creator, Arthur de Pins, he indicated that he wanted to stick to the look of the comics as closely as possible for the film. That meant working with a lot of flat colors within a limited palette, and a lot of shading and shadows. This aesthetic is hard to translate from the pages of a comic, where everything is static, to the moving frames of a film. If two characters of a similar color are standing next to each other, for example, it’s easy to keep them separate for a single cell of a comic, but in a movie, when they’re interacting, you start to have problems with their skin colors blending. The same problem would occur when a character puts a hand in front of their face; it was challenging to create a visual distinction.
All images: Zombillenium © 2017 Maybe Movies, Belvision, 2 Minutes, Pipangaï
THE ARNOLD SOLUTION
In the end, we developed an algorithm implemented within Arnold, using a kind of shadow ID that would trigger the outline any time two color elements overlapped. We hired an illustrator to make this outline as seamless as possible.
All images: Zombillenium © 2017 Maybe Movies, Belvision, 2 Minutes, Pipangaï
LIGHTING AND SHADING QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Another difficulty with Zombillenium's muted visual style has to do with the lighting. We needed to be able to control the composition of the colors and remove or change a character's shading. Arthur specifically pointed to an older animated movie made in France, Renaissance, that ran into these lighting troubles.
The best way we found of doing that was adding every layer of the shader to each other, and allowing some blending between these layers, depending on the effect we wanted. Still, it’s one thing to do this in a still frame but when characters are moving and there’s a dynamic lighting source, it can get very complex. If the character shading gets too light, you lose the dark, muted aesthetic you’re trying to achieve, and if the shading gets too dark, the audience won’t be able to understand the character’s subtle facial expressions.
One of the solutions we came up with was to attach a lighting source to each camera setup. We could manipulate this lighting source enough to get the kind of lighting we wanted or remove it entirely when we’re compositing if we felt that it wasn’t adding to the look of a given shot.
All images: Zombillenium © 2017 Maybe Movies, Belvision, 2 Minutes, Pipangaï
SETTING THE STAGE
The stage – or the background, or set, or whatever you want to call it – was also unusual. We used the same shader, but with a softer setting, and we used the 3D prompt algorithm to lend the whole thing a bit more volume. And unlike with the characters, we were able to consistently use real light sources for the set – that made things a bit easier for us. The script we wrote for our shader was able to handle everything in the box, and the background toon shading was largely done with a Lambert setup.
There was one exception to this, though. In a sequence shot in a house, with lava as a lighting source, we had budget restraints that made it impossible for us to use the bio-illumination adapt. We found a workaround with an LED source and a less exact composition style, though.
All images: Zombillenium © 2017 Maybe Movies, Belvision, 2 Minutes, Pipangaï
THE TOOLKIT
Before we even started on the film, we did a lot of experimenting with different software. We wanted power and stability, and packages that a wide range of people had experience with. For the rendering, for example, we tried Render Man, VRay, and Mental Ray. Mental Ray seemed obsolete, VRay seemed fine for print stuff but not so much for video work, and Render Man was too new. In the end, we rendered everything in Arnold, and we lit everything using Maya.
Shotgun was also vital for project management since we were coordinating work between four different locations: two in France; one, the island of Réunion, in the Indian Ocean, 10,000 kilometers from our offices in France, and a final studio in Belgium. It was essential to be able to communicate and share data efficiently between the different sites.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING ZOMBILLENIUM
We’re very proud of this movie and the work we did on it, and equally proud that we were able to complete our work on time and under budget. This was the first full-length film our company has worked on, and we’re thrilled with the result.
Merci beaucoup to 2 Minutes for sharing your story with us! "Zombillenium" releases in France, October 18th, 2017.
The team at 2 Minutes made "Zombillenium" come to life with products available in the Autodesk Media & Entertainment Collection.
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