Terra is the full-length CGi movie from artist/director Aristomenis Tsirbas and producer Dane Allan Smith. The film, which is currently being polished for distribution, features heavy-weight vocal performances from the like of Luke Wilson and David Cross and has already screened at the Toronto International Film Festival recently to very positive reviews and audience response.
Smith and Tsirbas had a creative team essentially split into two departments when creating Terra: character animation and everything else. Character animation was created in Maya, and everything else (modeling, texturing, lighting, rendering) was achieved with NewTek’s LightWave 3D. Luxology’s Modo was also used for modeling and as a great way to communicate between software platforms due to its pipeline-friendly architecture. The Beaver Project connected Maya and LightWave using its clever and reliable method of real-time updating all Maya character animation to LightWave. A suite of custom MEL scripts and LScripts, plugins and automated pipeline management programs completed the workflow.
“Since our team was small, every member had to be a sort of ‘rock star’,” says Aristomenis Tsirbas. “Each artist’s contribution would be huge. So we were very lucky to ultimately end up with a group of very talented, very committed people. Their work elevated the quality of this film.”
Being an independent animated film, several unique approaches were devised as a way to streamline the production and keep costs down, and efficiency up. “For rendering, we used every cheat in the book to minimise render time without sacrificing quality,” says Tsirbas. “This included ‘spinning’ lights (the technique of moving the physical location of a light during each of LightWave’s multiple render passes) to inexpensively simulate area lights, and to jitter geometry to simulate clouds, thereby avoiding costly volumetrics.”
Careful thought also went into the character designs. For example the human race is very militaristic, so the art team was able to avoid the render expense of hair on most (but not all) characters by simply making them bald. “The aliens also floated,” admits Tsirbas. “This not only introduced a unique method of mobility, but cut down on running and walking character animation, which is very time consuming.”
The movie also exhibits a unique approach to narrative conventions. The film is essentially an alien invasion story with the premise spun 180 degrees. The audience witnesses a human invasion from the alien’s perspective. Tsirbas came up with the idea about a decade ago while watching the original War of the Worlds and thinking that the aliens were represented in a somewhat one-dimensional way. “I felt it would be more compelling, at least to me, to give the aliens some color and nuance beyond the caricature of their motives being simply ‘evil’,” says Tsirbas. “Why are they invading? Do they feel there is no alternative to destroying an entire race? Are they inherently benign creatures? So I thought I’d take a stab at my own alien-invasion story that had an expanded sense of balance and perspective.”
During initial development it became apparent to Tsirbas that the aliens in this sub-genre typically exhibited very human characteristics, at least in terms of historical patterns: invasion, colonization, imperialism and so on. So at some point the idea of flipping the point-of-view became a natural progression of the approach. “The final story paints the invaders, us, as a race of conflicted people,” says Tsirbas. “Although first seen as more traditionally ‘evil’, the humans are progressively exposed as a people who feel they need to invade and destroy in order to preserve their own species. Out of that comes the film’s theme, that there is more than just ‘destroy or surrender’, more than just ‘invade or perish’. There’s something else; a third alternative.”
The production’s biggest challenge was simply getting this film made. “It’s an enormous task to make any film; creating an epic 3D animated adventure on an independent budget even more so,” says Tsirbas. “To achieve the seemingly impossible, we started with a highly detailed animatic that was completed prior to bringing in a full team. All assets of the animatic, including camera and lighting, were used as a first pass for production, and most of the big creative choices were nailed during this less expensive phase of production.”
Then the small but incredibly talented team of Maya character animators and LightWave digital artists worked tightly in a single studio space with no outsourcing. “Communication was key,” says Tsirbas. “And the approval pipeline was fairly flat. The producers and I had very specifically scheduled periods of time to make our notes before a shot was committed to final render. We would final shots throughout production, and therefore not keep things open to pile up at the tail of the schedule. Halfway through production, half the film was complete. This regular finaling process was integral to getting the film completed on time and on budget.”
With Terra beginning to wind down Aristomenis Tsirbas has started development on his next film project with the same producers. “We already have screenwriters in place and a great story,” he says. “This time we’ll combine live-action with CGI. I love working with actors as much as animators, so this next film may offer the best of both worlds. I’m really looking forward to it.”
For more info on the CGI animation Terra visit the official website
