Shrekology
Just got out of the Shrekology special session. It was a really entertaining discussion about the evolution of the Shrek franchise. There where a lot of clips from from the Shrek series, which was great because the audience really got a chance to see how much progress has been made from film to film and just how far the capabilities and characters have come come from Shrek 1.
The panel gave a demonstration of a storyboard artist pitching a scene (absolutly hilarious, in a good way!). Then they reviewed the creation of the character designs through clay modeling (”clay is good”). There seemed to be a large focus on how valuable a role analog creation like pencil to paper and clay can be even in a modern project. I liked that a lot.
They also talked about the animation process for each character. Shrek was tough because he was a heavy character that needed alot of weight, but they had to balance that with keeping his energy up. Donkey was fun, basically they would animate his head and his body would follow from that. Fiona presented some issues to the mostly male animation crew and Puss had so much personality he was a joy.
They showed many of the keys from the art dept, and talked about how that informed the lighting process and they talked about the impact that global illumination made on the production as well.
Finally the panel wrapped up with a lengthy discussion on on the effects process. On each one of the Shreks the effects team rethought their process’. Fire, which was a major focus, was never done the same from film to film, and it is only with Shrek 3 that the crew found a process that they truly seemed to deem worthy.
It was a fun panel, lots of lively discussion and plenty of Shrek clips which is aways a good thing!