previous page
TOC
Event Watch Best of Show Award: Migrants
Hugo Caby
Jury Prize: Meerkat
Student Prize: I Am a Pebble
Maxime Le Chapelain
Keith Miller
SIGGRAPH Spotlight A look at the Computer Animation Festival’s three prize-winning projects.
Best of Show Award: Migrants
Directed by Hugo Caby, Antoine Dupriez, Aubin Kubiak, Lucas Lermytte and Zoé Devise (Pôle 3D Digital & Creative School, France)
T
he student team behind the poignant short Migrants, which is the winner of SIGGRAPH’s Best of Show Award, were inspired by the events surrounding the migrant rescue boat Aquarius, which was not allowed to enter ports in several European cities in 2018. “We were quite touched by this and wanted to tell a story about the issue of migration, but with the global warming theme layered on top of it,” says director Hugo Caby. “So, we chose polar bears as our main characters, as they are one of the species most affected by climate change.” The beautifully crafted eight-minute short, which was the student’s graduation project at the French school Pôle 3D, took about two years to produce. In addition to Caby, Aubin Kubika, Lucas Lermytte and Zoé Devise co-directed the project. During the first year of the project, they focused on pre-production, the script, 2D animation, characters and environment designs. The second year was dedicated to animation, VFX, lighting and compositing. The team used Autodesk Maya for the modeling, set dressing and animation. For texturing, they worked with Substance Painter and Designer. Houdini was used for VFX, and they also employed a tool that smartly and efficiently scattered assets throughout the forest environments in each shot. For rendering, they used Guerilla Render, and Nuke for compositing. “Our animator Aubin Kubiak did a lot of research during pre-production,” says Caby. “After a few different tests in 24 and 12fps, and after trying both more of a cartoony style and a more realistic look and feel, he was able to decide on the animation style for our characters. It was a lot of work to animate
the whole eight minutes of the short and, as he was the only person focused on animation, he almost did 90 percent of the animation himself. Although towards the end of the production he had some help from the rest of the team.” One of the team’s key challenges was crafting the overall look of Migrants. “Because we wanted to match the stop-motion aspect, we had to find solutions for every stage of production,” explains Caby. “This meant we had to make our characters move like puppets, make our environment and characters look like they were handmade, and work hard to perfect our visual effects. Another difficult part was the COVID pandemic, which happened in the middle of the production process and made us switch to remote working. However, while we were able to quickly adapt to this, I think it affected us mentally and reduced our productivity. To get through it, we had to stay focused and communicate a lot.” Caby says all of the directors had a deep passion for CGI animation even before they started the program at Pôle 3D. He adds, “But the passion and enthusiasm of our teachers for this industry confirmed to us that this is what we wanted to do. We learned a lot of different skill sets from all of our classes. From art courses to development/coding courses, we tried to take advantage of all the knowledge that we could get. By the way, English classes are also helpful, especially for interviews like this one!” Not surprisingly, all five directors have already found jobs in the animation industry. “We are all improving our skills and getting more experience,” says Caby. “But maybe someday, we’ll look to create new content together or on our own. Among the team, we talked a lot about creating our own studio in the future. It was a bit of a joke at first, but maybe we can make it happen one day. Ten years from now, our technical skills and knowledge of the industry will be much greater, so we will know how to manage our own projects much better, etc. So never say never!”
www.animationmagazine.net 42
TOC
august21
previous page
