“He was always pushing us to get more and more action into each shot to be more and more creative. “Michael had an amazing eye,” says Kavanagh. For emphasis, the animators even moved the robots from real time to slow motion within a shot. When their entire bodies were visible, the robot had to slow down. The animators also discovered that the closer the robots were to the camera, the faster the movements they could get away with. On other occasions, the team kept the same frame rate, but added an extra action in the middle of a shot. “We could animate one-to-one to the reference, then go into the animation curve and stretch it out until it looked right to get a little more weight,” says Kavanagh. To bring the animation back into the realms of plausibility, the animators added extra frames to the reference footage of the stunt actors to slow their movements. But the action Michael wanted was performed by a 160-pound martial arts guy, and we were animating 6,000-pound robots!” “We got that footage and knew exactly what he required. “He wanted the action to be fast, so he shot reference of stunt guys doing the spins, kicks and the martial arts actions he wanted,” says Paul Kavanagh, one of five animation leads on the show. The results were promising, but Bay wanted more of a martial arts feel. Working from Bay’s animatics, Benza motion-captured fight scenes and used those along with footage of a variety of stunts as reference to create some shots of robots fighting. Making progress but coding issues getting you down? Find out how to debug web animations. In animation, you need to slow movement to get weight.” He wanted them to be agile, not limited by their weight. “Michael never wanted to see these guys as lumbering robots. “We had to find a balance between selling the weight of these heavy characters and athleticism,” says Benza. The Transformers’ physical performances were even harder to nail than their facial expressions. Optimus Prime had around 200 facial parts, and the animators could move each one. To create facial expressions, the modelling team, led by Dave Fogler, created sliding pieces for the cheeks and jaws, multi-segmented parts for the lips, and a turbine system for the eyes that turned to simulate pupils dilating. To care about him and have him deliver an emotional performance, we needed to see his entire face.” In the cartoon series, he had a battle mask that he spoke through, but Michael felt it was important for this character to connect with Sam and with the audience. One of the first things I was surprised to see is that Optimus Prime has a completely articulating face and a speaking role. But Benza also asked Bay to pick reference characters from movies to help establish each robot’s personality, especially the Autobots.įor example, “ picked Michael J Fox in Back to the Future as Bumblebee,” Benza says, “and Liam Neeson as Optimus Prime, the leader, who is soft-spoken but has a big presence. In part, this simply involved archive research. Although a real ‘puppet’ of Bumblebee appears standing fairly still in some close-ups, all the running, jumping, fighting and transforming robots are digital.īefore production began, pre-viz artists worked with Bay to develop the fighting sequences and at ILM, animation supervisor Scott Benza worked with the director to develop the robots’ characteristics. The Decepticons are Bonecrusher, Starscream, Megatron, Brawl, Barricade, Blackout, Soundbyte and Scorponok. The Autobots include Ratchet, Jazz, Bumblebee – who appears as both a 19 Camaro – Ironhide, and Optimus Prime. ILM built and transformed all the hero robots, and built CG cars and military vehicles for the transformations. However, this is very much Industrial Light & Magic’s show. Interested in animation but not sure where to begin? Check out our latest guide on how to get started in animation. (In a nod to the original cartoons, Sam skips past a Volkswagen Beetle – Bumblebee’s original form – when picking out the car.)Īll told, ILM created around 450 shots for the film, with Digital Domain supplying another 95, including a transforming ‘Nokiabot’, a digital Mountain Dew machine and an Xbox, and contributed to the flashback and desert sequences. The movie stars Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox as Sam and Mikaela, the two kids the Autobots protect, and who become caught up in the action when Sam buys a secondhand Chevy Camaro, which turns out to be the Autobot Bumblebee in disguise. But, until now, the huge robots have never fought their war on earth in a live-action film.
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