Layers Models Textures

Layouts, Models, Textures

Bringing Paintings to Life

Current project trend: “The interesting thing in a lot of the projects we’ve been doing more recently are literally bringing paintings to life”
Core challenge: “A painting is a static image. Once you start to move the camera, you start to move characters through that world, it presents another entire challenge to figure out”
Movement complications:

“When that happens that you may see things that you didn’t realize”
“Things may be a lot harder in movement that they are when they’re still”

Design Philosophy & Process

Emotion-Driven Design

Design driver: “The animation, the performance, the emotionality will dictate the design”
Reverse workflow: “We kind of work backwards. We find a painting that eventually delivers on that emotional connection we’re trying to make”

“Then we will make the design based off of that painting. And then we build”

Modeling & Construction

Team Structure

Asset building: “We take all those designs and we start building it all in modeling, working with a huge team of modelers, building every aspect”
Quality control: “Making sure, and this is the less glamorous parts of the job, making sure it all looks exactly like it needs to be”

Department Breakdown

Specialized teams: “We break it down into a lot of different departments where we’re building the models, we’re painting, we’re painting colors, we’re painting with light”
Management challenge: “You’re corralling hundreds of people, hundreds of artists in the same direction, and they all have their own individual tendencies”

“We want them to express their unique opinions and yet get us all to this one place”

“What we normally do is block in the set, so build a simplified version so that we can get a camera in there”
“Make sure that we can get the shots that we want”

Matte Painting Integration

Extension technique: “Then we’ll use matte painting to extend back into the world and just fill the screen and give us depth”

Texturing Approaches

Various Methods

Procedural texturing: Automated material application
Pre-made materials: “Just dragging and dropping pre-made materials onto things”
Hand-painting: “There’s what I love to do, and that’s just getting in there and hand-painting something, like literally with a stylus on a Cintiq or a digital tablet”

Purpose Beyond Appearance

Dual objectives: “We combine those things to basically make an object not just look like what it’s supposed to be, but to feel like what it’s supposed to be”

Character-Driven Environment Design

Storytelling Through Sets

Design questions: “We will design every set piece, asking ourselves the question, who lives here? What can this set say about the character that lives there?”
Subtext communication: “All this stuff that we don’t get to say out loud, you know, there’s no point in a film where Peter B. Parker gets to say, I’m a hopeless slob, and I’ve given up on my life”

“It’s his junky apartment behind him that’s going to tell us that”

Quiz Question: “Matte paintings” are used in both live-action and animated filmmaking. What do they do?

Correct Answer: Extends the set to give an illusion that the environment reaches farther than it actually does

Quiz Summary

Matte paintings = extend environments beyond what’s actually built

The process of creating animated worlds involves transforming static paintings into dynamic environments through careful planning, detailed modeling, and artistic texturing that serves both visual appeal and character storytelling. Teams coordinate hundreds of artists to build only what cameras will see, using matte paintings to extend environments and create depth while ensuring every set piece communicates character information that dialogue cannot express.