Face to Face with... Bill Dorais

Last week you saw the entertaining spot for Dell that sees a normal train commute transform into a crazy world of animated characters through Y&R New York and directed by Bjoern Ruehmann. But now we’ve dug a little deeper to show you just how much work went into the post side at MPC NY, where Bill Dorais led the team on the project. Here the VFX Supervisor/CG lead talks about digging dinosaurs, the production process and creating larger-than-life 3D heads.

How did you decide on which characters would be used for the spot?

In the script there was a toad, a rabbit, a bird and a boar riding a cricket. MPC signed up prepared to concept, create, and integrate all five characters. The only character that changed was the boar, which turned into a mouse. With both slimy and furry characters we knew it was going to be a fun and challenging project.

How much did they change in production from how they were visualised originally? Tell us about the character development and any challenges that presented themselves in the process…

At the point we got involved the production team had discussed creating all the character heads and limbs as prosthetics. We suggested creating the character heads in 3D for a couple of reasons. First, it would free up the actors’ movements. Second, CG heads would give us much more control over the look and how the animal characters acted. I think visually we were able to capture what Bjoern and the creatives at Y&R were looking for by doing this. By creating CG heads we were able to spend the time getting every wart or tuft of hair to the client’s liking. In the end, the final product was very close to the original concept drawings.

Tell us more about creating the CG heads; they’re quite amusing…

One of the challenges with creating 3D heads was capturing the actors’ movement and translating that movement onto a CG head that was quite a bit bigger than the actors. We designed 3D models of helmet rigs the actors would wear to capture the overall movement. The helmets were designed with protruding fixtures with white balls attached to the ends simulating where the CG eyes or snout tips would be. This helped with both the actors’ eye lines and also gave us accurate points for motion capture with a minimal amount of clean up.

Was it tough to get the characters to work in line with the live action actors?

We knew that the biggest challenge would be the CG head integration with the actors’ bodies.  Since we were designing the characters, we asked our concept artist to keep human proportions in mind and sketch out how the costumes should be designed to accommodate oversized heads. In many cases, we received the footage and worked with what we had, but since we were brought in from the get-go, we were able to control many aspects of the pre-production and that helped us tremendously. Once the final design sketches had been approved, the costume build started right away. We provided exact measurements and 3D mock ups of how the costumes should be designed.  It took a few rounds but we were able to get the real life costumes and head rigs to the 3D dimensions we provided.

The toad was the most difficult costume to design, as it required the actor to dress in a fat suit with a collar that came up around the back of his head. The collar width was essential, so we put a wire inside it to maintain shape and size throughout the project. Having the proper neck widths and helmet rigs made the CG integration with the live action actors go rather smoothly.  In post, there was some warping done to the collar line to accommodate the head movements, adding additional realism. On top of the actors’ movements, we added additional key frame animation.

How did this compare in relation to other 3D/post jobs you’ve worked on?

This job was different as we only provided the heads instead of the entire characters (with the exception of the mouse/cricket shot). In many ways, working with real actors’ bodies helped us make the CG look more realistic as we had many reference points to match.  We really burned the midnight oil designing motion capture rigs and costumes to fit the CG animals’ anatomy.  It looked pretty crazy on set and some were snickering about the alien-like helmets, but I think the designs and tinkering up until the last minute paid off.

Who’s your favourite character from the spot and why?

My favourite character would have to be the rabbit because his animation is very subtle and still intense. He was also the most complicated character to create.  Creating fur in CG is a testament to a company’s VFX team and their software.  The fur groom on the rabbit was a lot of fun and we were really able to take advantage of our fur software that MPC created and used on films like Narnia and Harry Potter. The cuts of the edits were fast so we had to make each frame count.

What was shooting on a train like?

Shooting on the train was an interesting experience.  It was a tight space, English and Romanian were in constant translation, and we didn't have communication with the train’s engineer so the train departure was always a surprise.  There were several times where I nearly missed the train.  I think there were a few people left behind throughout the shoot.  It was a bit stressful since we had effects in most of the shots so we really needed to do all we could with the time and space allowance. I knew we would be working with the footage for the next two and a half months so we were really scrambling to get everything in place for each shot.  The collaboration between the production company, the agency, and MPC was so streamlined we were able to get all of the plates we needed, which was a huge asset to the overall project.

What do you love most about character animation?

Working on character pieces is really the pinnacle of working in animation in advertising.  Photo-real character pieces require the full extent of a CG pipeline; it's very complex stuff.  There are so many projects where you are working with cars or products, which inherently add several constraints to the project. When a project like this comes along it allows the artist to show what they've got and infuse their own creativity into it.  MPC NY has a diverse team of artists who can work on multiple aspects of the project.

The main production was done in NY, most of the tracking and roto was finished in Bangalore, concept art and most of the fur grooming was done in London and Ross Denner in LA was our technical savour, helping us set the characters up to be rendered with fur.  MPC's integrated pipeline allows artists around the world to see and share work seamlessly. Sharing resources and talent across the MPC sites really added to this project. 

If you could be any character from a film, animation or other piece of media, who would it be and why?

That's a good question.  I would have to say I'd want to be a Velociraptor from Jurassic Park! The movie was a game changer for me as kid and because of it I started pursuing 3D animation when I was 15 years old.  Making visual effects and telling stories is really all I've ever wanted to do and I attribute that to those dinosaurs. To this day, when I watch the movie I'm still blown away by the visuals - they stand the test of time.