Day and Night-2010
The short uses a novel effect of combining 2D and 3D animation. The outlines of both characters are hand drawn and animated in 2D, while the scenes inside their silhouettes are rendered in 3D; the use of a masking technique allows the 2D characters to be windows into a 3D world inside them. The animation technique they use is inverse kinematics as the characters have a human like body which could of been made by using a skeleton of rigid segments which is connected to the joints allowing them to be moved.
The software that may have been used is After Effects and C4D, because in 2010 that was still the most popular used software within the industry. As the animation uses 2D and 3D fequaltly as the main characters are 2D and are drawn through original hand drawing techniques and the backgrounds are again creative mixer of real life footage and 3D created environment most possibly executed in C4D and After Effects. The liner concept of the story is shown through the transparent characters.
Storyline
When Day, a sunny fellow, encounters Night, a stranger of distinctly darker moods, sparks fly! Day and Night are frightened and suspicious of each other at first, and quickly get off on the wrong foot. But as they discover each other’s unique qualities–and come to realize that each of them offers a different window onto the same world-the friendship helps both to gain a new perspective. (Official pitch for the film)
This Pixar short that preceded Toy Story 3 seemed different than other shorts that came before other Disney/Pixar features. For one thing, there was no clear story that you got from others. Also, the whole thing wasn’t completely computer animated as the two characters of the title seemed actually hand drawn with the computer stuff inside them. And then there is some message that is said by a Dr. Wayne Dyer that seemed to drive home the lesson that one should get along despite differences or a fear of the unknown.
The Day and Night creative team has never done anything like this short film before. They have discussed the idea and agreed the development stages. The story has a weird concept. Amalgamating 2D and 3D animation techniques has conveyed it. They have decided to have two opposite characters that will meet and they should be drawn on 2D and within them the viewer could see the 3D environment, which will tell the story and will reflect on the character’s emotions. The concept artist drew the characters and scenes and pitched the idea in a storyboard. Then they discussed the storyboards with the rest of the team and reflected on the feedback by doing some changes. The team of animators worked closely together to make the characters move and synchronise the background and the scenes. Other members of the team worked on the transition between the scenes and some additional effects. After that the sound engineers added appropriate sound to compliment the animation and the graphic designers created the title and choose suitable typeface for the credits.
I found some information regarding Day & Night’s creative team job roles. this goes to show how many people were involved in the pre-producion and post-production processes. At the bottom of this post is the link to where i found this information. In addition I found the official page of the film on the same website with some comment from the pixar team.
Directed by
| Teddy Newton |
Cast
| Wayne Dyer | … | Radio Lecturer (voice) (archive sound) (uncredited) | |
Top of Form
Create a character page for: Create » ?
Bottom of Form
Produced by
| John Lasseter | … | executive producer |
| Kevin Reher | … | producer |
| Marc Sondheimer | … | associate producer |
Music by
| Michael Giacchino |
Film Editing by
| Greg Snyder |
Production Design by
| Don Shank |
Art Department
| Scott Morse | … | storyboard artist |
| Laura Meyer | … | localization graphics (uncredited) |
Sound Department
| Vince Caro | … | Original Dialog and Sound Effects Recording Engineer |
| Barney Jones | … | sound designer |
| Tom Myers | … | re-recording mixer |
| James Spencer | … | recordist (uncredited) |
Visual Effects by
| Laura Beth Albright | … | character shading and groom artist |
| Neil Blevins | … | digital artist |
| Stephan Vladimir Bugaj | … | additional technical director |
| Charu Clark | … | lighting artist |
| Francisco DeLaTorre | … | technical director |
| Michael Fu | … | supervising technical director |
| Andrew Jimenez | … | digital artist |
| Matt Kuruc | … | technical director |
| Josée Lajoie | … | lighting artist |
| Andrew Pienaar | … | lighting lead |
| Jordan Rempel | … | shot lighting artist |
| Erik Smitt | … | additional support |
| Bill Watral | … | effects lead |
| Jane Yen | … | shot supervisor |
| Lou Hamou-Lhadj | … | character modeling and articulation artist (uncredited) |
| Sherrie Law | … | digital paint intern (uncredited) |
Animation Department
| Doug Frankel | … | traditional animator |
| Tom Gately | … | supervising animator |
| Lou Hamou-Lhadj | … | ink & paint lead |
| Ken Kim | … | inbetween artist |
| Bob Scott | … | traditional animator |
| Daniela Strijleva | … | clean up artist |
| Kristoff Vergne | … | traditional animator |
Editorial Department
| Thomas Gonzales | … | assistant editor |
| Katelin C. Holloway | … | management assistant |
| David Lortsher | … | colorist |
| Noah Newman | … | assistant editor |
| Tessa Swigart | … | assistant editor |
Music Department
| Ashley Chafin | … | music coordinator |
| Stephen M. Davis | … | music editor |
| Aaron Meyer | … | music preparation (uncredited) |
Transportation Department
| William Wray | … | camara truck driver |
Other crew
| Cathleen Brown | … | clearances |
| Susan Brunig | … | color grading operator |
| Laurens Fein | … | production coordinator |
| Stephen Galgas | … | production assistant |
| Natalie Lyon | … | development production support |
| Adrian Ochoa | … | technical manager |
| Lauren Topal | … | production coordinator |
| Chris Wiggum | … | publicist |
| Samantha Wilson | … | development production support (uncredited) |
Thanks
| Ben Burtt | … | thanks |
| Gary Rydstrom | … | special thanks |
| Bob Whitehill | … | special thanks |
|
|
Luxo Jr – 1986
Luxo Jr. Animation short film it demonstrates the use of shadow maps within the rendering software.The film was classed as a test of “self-shadowing” in the rendering software- that is, the ability of objects to shed light and shadows on themselves. The background would be plain black and there would be no camera movement. His energies would rather be focused instead on working out techniques based on classic animation principles to convey emotion.Even though the characters were faceless and wordless, but the emotion is shown by the speed of the child’s hops and the way it carried its head when the child is feeling joy and when it was feeling sadness. At every moment, the parent and child seemed to have a definite frame of mind.
The animation technique they used is forward kinematics this is shown in the way the characters move as they move with selected joints as they move their heads and body’s in different ways. The software that could of been used is difficult to know as most of the leading software today was not available back in 1986 which is when Luxo Jr was made but they did use the Render man graphics software package, and the pixar image computer. The texturing they use is stranded lamp design like you would see anywhere and background is basic black background but it is manly there so the viewer only looks at the two characters on the scene. The lighting that is being used comes mainly from the two lights that are in the lamp.
in the creation of Luxo Jr Pixar used Render man to created the shadows that are seen when the Luxo lamp looks around. RenderMan was used in the creation of Luxo Jr to create a surface shadier inserted of more traditional textures so that they can create the shadows for the Lamp. Pixar started to use RenderMan in 1988 and constantly developed it to improve its features and uses. The reason that other applications such as C4D ,Maya and AutoDesk weren’t used was because they were not accessible at the time due to them not being released for roughtly another 10 year
Due to the success in a animation festival of a screening of the test footage for the Luxo lamp convinced John Lasseter to created a better story of the Lamp with a child therefore creating Luxo Jr that went on to becon a example of Pixar’s work.
Luxo Jr. represents not only a ground-breaking moment in the history of computer animation, but also an important change in the way computer animation is viewed.It was the first fully computer animated film to ever be nominated for an Academy Award. Since the Luxo character won so many awards they have placed the lamp appearing at the start of every Pixar film in the animated logo. Luxo Jr. hops in, and jumps up and down on the ‘I’ in Pixar until it flattens. It then looks somewhat sheepishly at the camera as the shot fades.Luxo or Luxo Jr also appear in the background of several other Pixar films, There possible keep the lamp as it has now become a symbol of pixar over the years.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1620446/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast
kcimgdmatthew 
Leave a comment