Introduction

Salad Bowl was completed as an after-hours animation project and was produced at Walt Disney Feature Animation. While we are most proud of how our film stands up as a short narrative piece, we feel compelled to point out some of the special technical details of the piece.

The film was constructed using the same animation pipeline employed for our full length features and was used as a test bed for a new animation system. We presented part of our research at the 1998 SIGGRAPH convention in Orlando, Florida. SIGGRAPH is the largest and most respected computer graphics convention in the world, regularly attracting over 30,000 artists, researchers, and business people from around the globe. Our talk was warmly received by well over 1000 conference attendees. For more information, see: http://www.siggraph.org/s98/conference/sketches/animation/an6.html.
 

Background

Because computer animation is still a rather esoteric field, we thought a quick rundown on the overall computer animation process would be useful. First, before touching a computer, we go through a traditional story development process. This begins with hand drawn storyboards. While the story is refined, art direction and character design begins. Once we are satisfied that the story is working on the boards, we build computer models of our characters, props, and sets. We add animation and skinning controls to our character models to let the animators bring the characters to life. At the same time, we develop material descriptions and textures to make the models look like wood, glass, or anything else we might need. Next, we rough out camera mechanics and blocking for each scene without worrying about the acting. Once rough layout is done, the animators go to work. Finally, lights are placed in each scene, final colors are chosen, and the individual frames are computed. Many of these steps are repeated for each scene until it receives the Director's approval.