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MillimeterNights Alive: New CGI Version of 1001 Nights Plays in L.A.
Jul 1, 1998 12:00 PM, Michael Mallory
Digital animation is conquering yet another classic entertainment venue: the concert hall: In May, the Los Angeles Philharmonic premiered 1001 Nights, an event that combined the talents of artist Yoshitaki Amano, composer David Newman, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, and animation director Mike Smith.
"We tried to describe the project as Fantasia with computer graphics, but even Fantasia did not play with a live orchestra," says Inertia Pictures' Noriaki Kaneko, who served as computer graphics director and creative supervisor for the 23-minute animated film. "This is totally new."
Presented in the form of a feverish love dream, 1001 Nights (based on Amano's book of artwork) is the first performance of the groundbreaking "Filmharmonic" series, which presents new orchestral works by film composers in tandem with short films made by A-list directors. Nights is the series's only animated work, and plans originally called for the film to be completely computer animated.
"But once we actually saw the storyboard that Mr. Amano was using as a template for this film, it was pretty clear that to go all computer was not the correct way to do it," says Jean Kim, executive producer at Venice, California-based Inertia Pictures.
With Hyperion Studios, Glendale, California, set as the supervising production house and Smith on board as director, the creative team broke down the imagery into sequences and assigned each sequence to the techniques that best fit the mood and emotion being expressed. Seven additional animation houses in the US, Canada, and England contributed to the piece and created a stunning collage of traditional animation, watercolor animation, cut-out animation, and 3-D computer animation.
Employing both Intergraph PCs and SGI platforms and using primarily Softimage and 3-D Studio Max, Inertia worked with another Venice studio, Blur Animation, to build a 3-D world for some sequences and used digital techniques to open up Amano's two-dimensional imagery for others.
"Mr. Amano's drawings are very flat, which is the mortal enemy to 3-D computer graphics," says Kim, "so we had to create depth without making it look so 3-D. For the opening [a zoom shot through an Arabesquely crowded scene into the eye of the sleeping Princess Budu], an actual painting was scanned in and pieces were separated and then layered, so the audience can actually go through the painting."
The production is also remarkable in that no effort was made to conform the work of the different animation shops, which included San Francisco's Maverick Studios, Canada's Red Rover and London's Stardust.
"This is a collaborative work of freedom," Kaneko states. "There wasn't even a model sheet. We wanted to give the freedom to each production company and each animator." To coordinate the work from all studios and to keep Amano himself in the loop as the piece was being created, Hyperion set up a Web page that was updated daily with the latest passes and imagery.
The final production played only four performances in L.A. but is expected to have additional life on tour and in recorded form. In the meantime, the project has generated considerable attention from digital animation aficionados. "Computer graphics and visual effects enthusiasts are looking at this and saying: 'You are actually using the computer to recreate an artistic look, not to recreate reality or blow things up!'" relates Kim.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.