Snail and the Whale -animating the characters
“You feel the vulnerability of the bigger character in this film, whereas the snail is much more stylised in terms of the design and the way the snail moves, as well, is a much more stylised approach to that character. ”
The Snail and the Whale: © Magic Light Pictures Limited 2019
Katharine Nicholls What I found really interesting is that you'd created a whale. That's fairly. I mean, it's a little bit stylised, but it's on the whole it's fairly naturalistic and you feel because we know that whales are vulnerable in the real world. You feel the vulnerability of the bigger character in this film, whereas the snail is much more stylised in terms of the design and the way the snail moves, as well, is a much more stylised approach to that character. And I was quite interested in that choice, which I think works beautifully to make the whale. In the end, the whale is the vulnerable character. Despite the enormity and the snail being so stylised and that kind of interesting movement, a sort of, twisting movement. I was quite interested in the journey that you took to get to those two places. And I'm sure that was a conscious decision.
Daniel Snaddon Yes, absolutely. So with Whale, our feeling was, he's not anthropomorphic, he's not sort of, you know, gesticulating all the time with his flippers… I think it comes back to that relationship between the two of them to try to create a sense that he really is that big and she really is that small.
The Snail and the Whale: © Magic Light Pictures Limited 2019
The Snail and the Whale: © Magic Light Pictures Limited 2019
Daniel Snaddon When he (whale) moves, he moves very much like a whale, even when he speaks. What we found, which was really, really funny, is that you could barely move his mouth without losing the sense of scale. If you were to try to get him to do lip sync because of it, all of a sudden you've got this mass that has to move, you know, whales can, they can open their mouths a lot you know, when they're scooping up krill or whatever it is that they the feeding on. Even though they're moving fast, it's only fast in relationship to how much they're moving, you know, compared to their size. So it's that same thing when you see the T. Rex swinging his tail in that, you know, the original Jurassic Park, it sort of feels like it's slow motion, but you realise it's, you know, it's going metres per second and you read that as, 'Oh, that's really, really big.' You have this kind of inherent sense of how those forces are working and that creature.
The Snail and the Whale: © Magic Light Pictures Limited 2019
The Snail and the Whale: © Magic Light Pictures Limited 2019
Daniel Snaddon We were doing a lot of simulation with him, the simulation has to be, in order for the VFX team to start something that actually could make use of all the normal tools, it had to kind of be the scale. And it had to move at the same rate as a whale would. I mean, something that we do, on most of the specials we animate on twos…because we feel that that's much more in keeping with the stop-motion aesthetic. And I just I personally just like it as a look. You know, you get a chance to read the poses a bit more and you get as an animator, you get a chance to craft the poses a bit more and then you can do this thing where you move to ones for quick action and you have this. It's like a little magic trick that you can actually all of a sudden move much quicker. And that's, I always love that. You know, they do it, (in) those classic Disney features, like why not do it.
Rosa Mulraney So that's interesting. So then you... so when you're gliding through the water are you back on ones?
Daniel Snaddon Back on ones because if you were to move through the water on twos with the simulation would see is no movement, then all of a sudden a jump and then no movement. And we actually saw that. We saw that in some of our tests that you got this water that looks like it looks like a sprinkler sort of shooting out its jittering, you know, like on either side is sort of vibrating through the water. So the whale, I mean, we talked about simulating it on ones and then chopping up every second frame. But when we thought we always just thought, well, it doesn't really add anything. But whereas Snail, on the other hand, is on twos for most of the show.
“There are even moments where she’s on the whale and the whale is on ones and she is on twos, you know, as you would do a camera moving on a stop motion film”
Rosa Mulraney That makes sense though because like in sports, you want the motion blur and things like that for the movement and the whale is moving in such a way that doesn't lend itself to on twos, so that makes sense.
Daniel Snaddon Yeah. And I think also what we kind of found is that, you know, you can kind of create... if you can create a little bit, just a little bit of contrast because you don't actually have a lot to work with with either character, because they don't have hands, they don't... they barely have eyebrows! Anything that we could do that to kind of create a little bit of interest and to kind of show. And they also both move slowly and she moves quite slowly and he moves quite slowly. She's got to be small, but he's gotta be big. So that I think that actually does help them to feel that they're at different scales. That she has a bit more of a stop motion kind of quality to her, to her look.
Katharine Nicholls I love the way the snail twists and kind of interacts with with its shell. It uses it's shell to kind of get along and does all sorts of complicated acrobatics, really.
Daniel Snaddon She was a.. I think it was one of those kind of exercises in minimalism and how to kind of try to do a lot with, but just with these very simple kind of gestures and emotions, I had an amazing, amazing animation team and rigging.. a fantastic rigging team. I mean, I barely.. usually when I'm working on a show, you spend quite a lot of time with the animation, you know, setting up the rigs and doing the character designs. But the snail and the whale team basically just took the ball and ran with it, and we would see things like, 'Oh, that looks great, that looks like what it's supposed to look like.' I mean, I think that the snail could do all sorts of stuff like you could you could set objects to to be influences, so basically if there was an uneven surface, you could take the body of the snail, put it on the surface and then the body would deform over the surface whenever you would run.. I don't know if you can ever tell?
Katharine Nicholls Yeah, no I was watching it quite closely. And there's some really interesting, lovely movements. Absolutely gorgeous to watch. Completely sort of sucks you in, and there's a charm to that character as well. And it is that kind of stop-motion charm, actually that kind of rubbery and stop motion sweet character.
Daniel Snaddon Yeah, we I think the moment the other moment we knew we had there was going to work was that one of the very first sequences that we animated, funnily enough, was the goodbye or the fake goodbye. Spoiler alert to anyone hasn't seen it. It was a false goodbye. Towards the end where the snail has to kind of hug the whale. And we showed and we showed a daily to the team of the sequence animated just in greyscale before it was rendered, and it was basically a giant eyeball. And then the snail rubbing itself up against this giant, just underneath this giant eyeball. And instead of people going 'urgh!', they went 'awww! and we were like 'great! phew! It'll work!' Because if you think about it for too long, it's sort of like, 'Well, mmmm?'.
Katharine Nicholls But after they've been through what they've been through, it really is a tender moment, a lovely moment.
Rosa Mulraney Aww!
Daniel Snaddon Yeah
Rosa Mulraney Yeah, that sounds like a perfect place to wrap up, is the giant eyeball hug.
