— Avatar 3: Fire & Ash—

Here is a detailed breakdown of several scenes that I got to help build

T E M P L A T E A N I M A T I O N

Sequence Anim Lead | Anim Supervisor: Eric Reynolds

Gondola Attack: Loak Loses his Ikran
Responsible for: Hero Template Creature Animation + Rope Harness Template

The trickiest thing about this vignette was that nothing in the layout was cheated. I needed to figure out all of the creatures’ choreography and action beats in relation to the gondola traveling through space at a dictated speed. And on top of all of that, I had to work with the performance capture and make sure that what the creatures were doing complimented what the actors had done during motion capture.

Ashley Take Off
Responsible for: Ashley Take Off Template Animation

A new creature was added for movie 3, and my Supe let me animate / dictate how her take off animation should look like! This taught me so much about scale and weight and how adding some character texture on top (like with the feet) can go a long way.

Forest Ikran Flying Into Battle
Responsible for: 5 Hero Ikran Creature Animation

All creatures in nature do things with purpose in order to conserve energy. For this shot, the VFX supe wanted to focus on the shape and formation of the ikran flock as they were flying. I started by animating flight paths for 5 hero ikran that flew closest to camera, and then adjusted the paths of the BG ikran to make sure no one was crashing with another.

Ikran Diving Into Battle
Responsible for: Hero & BG Ikran Diving Template Animation

Although there looks like hundreds of ikran diving into battle here, I really only animated 3 different cycles (+2 hero dives for the two ikran closest to camera). Another artist then duplicated the animations and slightly offset their timing.

Payakan Gets Hit
Responsible for: Hero Template Creature Animation

Although this looks like a straight forward battle-action vignette, it actually required a lot more acting mechanics than I was expecting. A lot of the time I had to ask myself: how do we make the hit look convincing enough that Payakan got seriously hurt, but not so hurt that he wouldn’t be able to survive… Essentially we started very big and exaggerated, then slowly scaled back until we finally found a good balance.

Payakan Resurrection
Responsible for: Hero Template Creature Animation

Unfortunately, the toughest part of this vignette was cut from the final which was— how would a whale pick up another whale creature from the bottom of the sea floor? From there, we then had to figure out how Tanok would get Payakan to the surface, but luckily our director had just released a docuseries about whales around that time… so we referenced a mama whale nudging her calf up to the surface for its first breath.

Nightwraith Grabs Neytiri
Responsible for: Ashley Take Off & Grab Template Animation

Luckily, I got to start by using my original take off animation as a template. From there, I layered in the leg animation to pick up Neytiri and then also added in some head animation to keep Ashely’s eyes her eye on the prey.

Tsyong Attack Matador
Responsible for: 2 Tsyong Attacking Boat Template Animation

Tsyong (SEE-YOUNG) were these new squid-like monsters introduced in movie 3! Tentacles are definitely one of the least fun things to animate, but once I got past that- it was fun getting to animate a creature that was so fluid, squirmy and complex all at once.

Payakan’s Revenge
Responsible for: Hero Template Creature Animation + Vehicle Animation

Animated Payakan against a live action plate and a digi doubled boat. This was tricky because the speed of the boat dictated the entire vignette. The speed determined how fast Payakan could realistically swim from a specific distance in order to hit the boat at the right time.

Skimwing Wipeout
Responsible for: Skimwing Template Creature Animation

NOT SEEN: Although there are a lot of cuts in this sequence, nothing about the choreography was cheated. I needed to figure out how Jake’s Skimwing could realistically crash into the vines then tumble onto the rocks below.

Ikran Save Sully Family
Responsible for: Neytiri & Kiri’s Ikran Template Landing & Takeoff Animation

Similar to the other take off animation I did, I started by using take off, landing and a smidge of idle animation from our creature library. This allowed me to quickly rough in the timing of all the beats. Once that was approved, I baked all the animation down, cleaned everything up, and added in layered animation to have the ikran reacting appropriately against the performance capture.