Lion's Share of Animation Took Place in a Cage
“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” was both a hit movie and an example of cutting edge computer animation. In pursuit of realism, animators drew on every bit of animation technology available, fine-tuned the frames by hand, and even went into a lion’s den.
Lion-Sitting Not in Animation Training Manual The biggest challenge the Narnia animation team faced, explained one of the animators, was creating a realistic Aslan, the lion character. They could emulate about 85% of a lion’s movements by tapping into their artistic talents, but the other 15% required some homework. The team decided to go into a lion’s cage and videotape his movements. Once they played their animated and real life videos side by side, they were able to catch a few mistakes and make their animated lion as realistic as possible.
Computer Animation Training Hones Diverse Skills The company that created Aslan for Narnia was Rhythm and Hues. Surprisingly, most of R&H’s leaders have backgrounds in computer science and engineering, showing that the art of computer animation is based in science and mathematics. R&H’s founders created proprietary animation software that was able to render high definition characters on the big screen. Their recipe for realism gained a great reputation in the film industry, and they’ve been quite successful over the years.
Animation Training is First Step towards Career If you want to get into the animation business, you should think about getting some high level animation training. There are a number of great schools out there that introduce students to state-of-the-art computer animation software and offer professional level computer animation training programs. Many of these schools have relationships with top animation studios because these studios have a vested interest in training the next generation of computer animators.
Whether your job takes you into a lion’s den or just to your desktop computer, there’s never a dull moment in animation.
Source Animation Realism in Narnia
About the Author
Kirk Bangstad is a singer living in Chicago, IL. Having received his B.A. in Government at Harvard, Kirk previously worked as a management consultant.
