| "MINOTAUR" |
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This film is probably the definitive work to date on the famous legend of Thesius and the Minotaur. Directed by Jonathan English and shot in Luxemburg, Minotaur has a variety of effects, but of course the coolest effect is the Mino himself!
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It was a challenge to get the CG creature to match perfectly to the animatronic one, especially since there was direct intercutting between the two techniques. Below is a shot of the animatronic mino, which was built by Gary Pollard in London. The neck puppetttering mechanism was so realistic, that we used it a lot more than expected and it was especially good for any shots "waist up".
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Instead of modeling the cg from scratch, we opted to scan the molds of the full size clay scupt... Inside of this shell, we created a muscle and bone systems that could flex and jiggle once the primary animation was done....
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The finished CG Model turned out great... Much of it due to the use of photoghraphic textures taken from the full size model. The hair was from photographs of the actual tufts of minotaur fur shot against bluescreen and textured onto "shells" of geometry.. In addition being able to move and flow, it also benefited from being created photographically.. instead of being created and rendered using a typical "cg fur" technique |
Creating the Iron Age Village at the edge of the Sea required a carefull combination of matching plates. We shot the exterior village sets in Luxemburg, and then matching backgrounds of the headlands and sea shore in Wales. Matte painter Dark Hoffman did a fantastic job seaming it all together. Check out these before and afters... |
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Tom Hardy rides a blue barrel for a scene where he is chasing down the Minotaur. This element was then tracked in 3D space and he was "attached" to the the 3D model of the creature. | |
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This is the original clay macquette sculpted by Gary Pollard in London. |
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We developed a custom camera motion tracking system for "Minotaur". It is an acoustic/inertial system using Internsense hardware that records every motion of the hand held camera, including zoom. The acoustic emiters are arranged in a grid pattern and are hung over the set attached to a light-weight tubular frame that can be moved arround easily. Since we were shooting in a controlled environment, this was a good solution. This way we did not have to apply visible tracking markers all over the set, and we were able to shoot in near total blackness and still have a good track. The camera operators could do virtually any move they wanted and we knew that we could track in the 3D creature and set extensions easily.
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Here, our camera operator Riccardo Besantini poses with a camera that has been outfitted with 3 inertial and acoustic sensors. (you can see them sticking out front) This was wired to an on-set computer which recorded each scene and take. | |