Rio Grande Valley SIGGRAPH Meeting: The Making of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

An interesting presentation and Q&A session by Bob Winter, CG Supervisor of Sony Imageworks Albuquerque branch, and Jeff Schu, Lead Animator, for the latest film incarnation of "Alice In Wonderland" was held this past Saturday.

Bob Winter explained how the movies effects were created and how every frame of this film was manipulated in some way, either digitally or physically. What I found surprising about his explanation is that when applying the effects, most of the characters were not computer generated, but distorted afterward. For example, in the scenes with the Queen of Hearts, Helena Bonam Carter's scene is shot multiple times from multiple angles, with and without every single character in the scene, then the distortion to make her head gigantic and her body tiny is applied; without turning her into a computer generated character (the technique I wrongfully believed was being used at first). The scene is then pieced back together and she seamlessly interacts with the other characters in that scene.

Jeff Schu broke down one shot of the movie, illustrating the steps that an animator must go through to get to the final polished product. They start with a very rough animatic given to them by the director, and work up a rough CG animation based on this animatic which goes back to the director. There is a back and forth with the animators and director over the course of two and a half months, an animation is worked up and sent to the director and he sends his review of the latest one explaining what he likes, dislikes, what should be added, removed or any new ideas he came up with. After the two months of discourse, the final polished 10 seconds of animation is ready to be put into place with the rest of the movie. It wasn't a surprise to me how much work goes into movies like "Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland" but it was surprising to see how the animators work with a director they never even meet.

And just for the hell of it, VIA College Humor, this is how I imagine it really is to work with Tim Burton.