In the age of heroes, a mighty warrior named Beowulf arrives at the court of King Hrothgar and offers to rid the kingdom of a vicious demon called Grendel. He successfully slays the beast but thus incurs the wrath of Grendel's mother, a creature as vicious and vengeful as she is seductive.
Beowulf, a heroic poem, one the highest achievement of Old English literature and the earliest European vernacular epic. It tells of a tale based in early 6th century and is believed to have been composed between 700 and 750. The story of a heroic warrior who saves a kingdom plagued by foul creatures, who is eventually defeated in his old age, abandoned by his men, fighting a dragon. Heaney, S. (2001)
Zemeckis drew inspiration for the visual effects of "Beowulf" from his experience with "The Polar Express", which used motion capture technology to create three-dimensional images of characters. Zemeckis decided to chart realism as his foremost goal for the look of the animated movie.
Unfortunately The Polar Express' characters suffered from the uncanny valley. "When a replicant's almost completely human, the slightest variance, the 1 percent that's not quite right, suddenly looms up enormously rendering the entire effect somehow creepy and monstrously alien". Weschler (2012).
A 25 × 35-foot stage was built, and it used 244 Vicon MX40 cameras. Data from the actors’ body markers, 78 on each actor, recorded by 44 cameras dedicated to realtime capture, streamed to offstage computers where a “Director’s Layout” crew prepared shots for Zemeckis to review each day. Working in MotionBuilder with a camera operator who manipulated a virtual camera using a real camera head, Zemeckis laid out the camera moves and tweaked the shot.
Imageworks uses Maya for modeling, with ZBrush adding details. In addition, the Beowulf pipeline included MotionBuilder, Houdini, Photoshop, CINEMA 4D, RenderMan. Most of Grendel’s layers are texture maps, but some of the detail is in the model, and some in displacement maps.
Over 450 graphic designers were chosen for the project, the largest team ever assembled for a Sony Pictures Imageworks-produced movie as of 2007. The mead hall battle scene near the beginning of the film, among others, required numerous props that served as additional markers; these markers allowed for a more accurate manifestation of a battlefield setting as the battle progressed. However, the data being collected by the markers slowed down the studios' computer equipment and five months were spent developing a new save/load system that would increase the efficiency of the studios' resources.To aid in the process of rendering the massive quantities of information, the development team used cached data. In the cases that using cached data was not possible, the scenes were rendered using foreground occlusion, which involves the blurring of different overlays of a single scene in an attempt to generate a single scene film.
The designers looked at bats and flying squirrels for inspiration. As the beast is Beowulf's son with Grendel's mother, elements such as Beowulfs eyes and cheekbone structure were incorporated into its look. The three primary monsters in the film share a golden color scheme, because they are all related For the dragon attack, Imageworks was very detailed for the ground and whilst it was in the air and were picky on where to show trees and shrubs. Matte paintings were actually used for larger environments.
The film has been acknowledged to draw extensively from the philosophy of Freud. In particular, the portrayal of Grendel and her kin appeals to multiple forms of sexual unease, among them the monstrous feminine and the challenging of traditional gender roles. The film reflects the "American obsession with sex as the root of all evils," to the extent to compare Beowulf's and Hrothgar's portrayals to Bill Clinton and the history of sexual misconduct that caused his political decline. Nadine Farghaly also argues the story makes the point that unbridled desire only causes ruin.
The idea to make Beowulf fight Grendel naked was a reference to Richard Corben's comic book "Den", while also taking inspiration from legendary berserkers, who purportedly fought in battles while naked. I think they also wanted to show off their state of the art modeling for the human form.
Weschler, L. (2012). Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative. Counterpoint.
Desowitz, B. (2007, November 27). “Beowulf”: A New Hybrid for an Old Tale. Animation World Network. https://www.awn.com/vfxworld/beowulf-new-hybrid-old-tale
Heaney, S. (2001). Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (Bilingual Edition) (1st ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.
Richard, C (November 16, 2007) Beowulf and Grendel - and Jolie. TIME
This was an informative project towards the further dive into the development of an animated production. Discovering the history behind the feature, the people who made it and techniques used to produce it. It was a great introspective into how to produce a quality media feature. Having an understanding of the themes and history of the piece before its created will always benefit the artist design. I worked on my presenting skills before the assessment, posture and ensuring I don't read to much content and keep a solid flow. During the presentation I felt confident in my content and visual aids, and I hope that it was reflected in the presentation.