Animal Logic is one of the worlds most successful VFX house’s working on films such as The Martix, Moulin Rouge, The Great Gatsby with animated titles including Happy Feet, the first Lego Movie, The Lego Batman Movie, The Lego Ninjago Movie and Peter Rabbit. Animal Logic was formed in Sydney in 1991 and is currently based in Fox Studios Australia in Moore Park. In recent years, it has also has expanded operations to Vancouver, Canada and Los Angeles, USA. Recently, we got to chat with one of the producers and COO of Animal Logic, Sharon Taylor about The Lego Movie 2, with a brief detour onto Peter Rabbit 2 which is currently filming in Sydney. (Interview below)
Check out a more of Animal Logic’s work here:
With the film coming out very soon here’s some fun facts from behind the scenes of The Lego Movie Part 2, you can really see how much work goes into it… 161million bricks in one shot?! Thats crazy..
● The film’s color palette uses 76 official LEGO colors, including unique materials such as transparent and glitter bricks.
● There’s a new LEGO color for 2019 that appears in the movie, called Vibrant Coral.
● Total number of unique characters in the film: 523
● Unique props seen in the film: 1011
● Unique LEGO brick types used in the film: 3433
● Unique LEGO models used to create the film: 6530
● Biggest LEGO character (largest number of bricks): MetalBeard, 251
● Biggest Single LEGO model: Megabash, approximately 9 feet by 9 feet by 18
● Biggest LEGO landscape: wasteland: citadel freeway, approximately 476 feet by 182 feet
● Biggest number of polygons in a shot: 1,248,968,392,251
● Biggest number of lights in a shot: 42,315
● Biggest number of bricks in a shot: 161,737,777
The Lego Movie 2 opens in cinemas March 21.
Here is Accessreel’s interview with Sharon Taylor.
AR: Tell us about your role on The Lego Movie 2
Sharon: My role was as the co-producer. I’m actually from Australia but I did relocate to Vancouver to partner with Warner Bros to establish our studio there and took the role of helping to strategically shepherd the film through our studio with our team, making sure we had the resources with all of the amazing talent to bring the film to life.
AR: How was your experience going to Vancouver?
Sharon: It was actually the opportunity of a lifetime. I’ve been with Animal Logic for a long time and so the opportunity to go and build a whole new team of animals on the other side of the world was quite fulfilling.
AR: What’s the most exciting thing for you to work in this VFX/animation world?
Sharon: I think it’s the people. You know, we can have anywhere from a small scale VFX with 100 people working on it to something like Peter Rabbit with 550. We had quite a huge team working between Sydney and Vancouver, like 215 here in Sydney and 316 in Vancouver, all working on The Lego Movie 2. Coming to work every day and seeing such creativity and innovation coming out of those people and everybody moving to the same finish line and wanting to make this movie, it creates quite a buzz and it’s very inspiring.
AR: So in the first film, “Everything is Awesome” was a really catchy song and the one in Lego Movie 2 is the same. Working on the film you would have had to hear it 4 million times. How annoying did it get in the end? hahaha!
Sharon: You know, you kind of become a little numb to it after a while… I think when you hear it all day, every day. But, you know, just seeing how this song actually evolved throughout the production process it’s quite interesting. You kind of hope that even though you’re suffering through it, the rest of the audience actually finds it attractive and enjoys listening!
AR: I totally know that feeling. I can still remember walking out of the first film and everyone was singing it and there were groups of kids singing it. That song really resonated with everyone. Even though the movie was good and the story-line was great, that song just melted into everyone’s brain and I have a feeling this one’s probably going to do the same. One of the statistics released on the film was the biggest amount of bricks in one shot was 161 million. That’s pretty intense! How long did a sequence of that type take to animate?
Sharon: It’s a constantly evolving process, you know, through each stage of our pipeline. Some of the scenes are in and out quite quickly, like three weeks to four weeks, and then others take months. They’re heavily choreographed with a lot of ideas bouncing around between the animation teams, the directors and the story-notes plus just constantly adding gags. I don’t have the timeline but each [sequence] gets treated with a different amount of care and you know sometimes you nail it the first go, other ones take a lot more.
AR: How many hours do you think it took to create The Lego Movie 2?
Sharon: Oh, I don’t think that is a number I could even feel confident in estimating (Ha) Our animation department spent 6600 days and that’s just one department of maybe 45 people so when you think we had 316 on the movie for different periods of time …. that’s a lot of hours!
AR: In regards to animation, you’ve got the talent and then they’re doing their voice recordings and that sort of thing so, how do you guys do it?
Sharon: It really depends on the character. One thing that is great about these movies are the gags and the humour across the board. The filmmakers try to allow the cast to improv and bring their own humour to each of the roles they’re doing. Sometimes we tend to wait for the records to come in and make sure that the performance aligns with what the actor has brought, however sometimes you know when the deadline is nearing we have to be a little bit more strategic about having them try to match the performance as much as possible.
AR: With Lego Movie 2 it felt like a lot more of the film was set in the real world then the first. How was it animating all those sequences?
Sharon: It’s difficult to make it feel seamless, I think that was the biggest challenge
AR: I think it looked fantastic you couldn’t tell –
Sharon: Thank you, I think the team will love to hear that feedback… that was always the biggest challenge, how the characters remain true to themselves between the animated world and the real world. It’s difficult of course but we love a challenge!
AR: Are we going to see any more Lego Movie spin-offs?
Sharon: It’s clear that audiences love hearing about Lucy and Emmett and their tales and I think we just need to see where the franchise takes us next.
AR: What’s the biggest challenge for your team?
Sharon: That’s a unique question. I think the challenge is always delivering something that nobody expects. We always like to challenge ourselves, whether it’s technically or creatively, and give our audiences something new each and every time so that is both exciting and challenging.
AR: Lastly, what’s next for you? I know Peter Rabbit 2 has just started filming.
Sharon: Here in Sydney as you know it’s all systems go on Peter Rabbit 2 and in Vancouver I can say that we’re working on a film called DC Super Pets but that’s all I can say.
AR: Ahh thats great! I saw some photos of the sets in Sydney for Peter Rabbit it looks impressive. Did you go have a look?
Sharon: Yes the teams have had a look at it, we’ve been down and it’s pretty incredible.
AR: Thanks very much for talking to us today. Good luck with the release of Lego Movie 2.