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10 tips for guerrilla animation production

Tuesday, August 26th, 2014 | Article by Kory Martin Juul

In the quest to complete CG feature White Tiger Legend, Hobbit compositor Kory Martin Juul has
had to turn himself into a one-man film-production studio. Here, he reveals the ten key lessons for
other indie animators.

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Kory Martin Juul has worked in animation and visual effects for over a decade.
Starting out as a compositor on Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within at Square Hawaii, he went on to
work for studios including ESC Entertainment, Industrial Light & Magic and Weta Digital, on
movies including The Matrix trilogy, Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith, Avatar, Rise of
the Planet of the Apes and, most recently, Peter Jacksons Hobbit trilogy.

But despite working on some of the worlds best-known movies, Kory wanted to tell his own
stories. His CG animated short Sunaba (The Sandbox), completed in 2005, was screened at
festivals including LA Shorts Fest, the Seattle International Film Festival and Ars Electronica.
Since then, in between commercial jobs, he has been working on an animated feature: White Tiger
Legend.

A black belt in bok fu, Kory recorded most of the mocap for the martial-arts-themed action
adventure himself via a PhaseSpace active LED system, using the data to create a full-length
previsualisation of the movie. He also shot the live-action backgrounds himself on a 30-day trip to
China. With voice recording completed, and Elysium orchestrator Alain Mayrand lined up to score
the film, Kory is now hoping to raise $858,000 to complete White Tiger Legend via Indiegogo. I
dont have $1 million, but Im willing to bet 200,000 people have $5, he says.

Below, Kory discusses his quest to complete his dream movie, and how the lessons he has learned
along the way can be applied to your own indie animation projects.

1. Time is your ally

A guerrilla production is going to have fewer people, fewer resources, and far less money than a
Hollywood blockbuster. But as the old adage goes: Fast, good or cheap: pick two. So if you
want to make something both good and cheap, its going to take time. Luckily, there is always
plenty of it. If you free yourself of a hard end date, and just keep going no matter what, you will be
amazed at what you can accomplish.

To put things into perspective, even with millions of dollars and hundreds of artists at their
disposal, Pixar and DreamWorks usually spend four years developing a film. Only the final year is
spent in full on production the first three are spent changing and nailing down the story.

Hollywood producers dont pick films up unless they are willing to spend seven years to get them
made. Screenplays sit on shelves for years. You could spend an entire year finding an agent, only
to have your project waste away in development hell. From this perspective, if you can finish in
five years, you are doing very well.

2. Story, story, story

As CG artists, we cant wait to start look development, creating awesome characters in fantastic
worlds. Resist this urge. Its easy to waste a lot of time getting ahead of yourself, only to have
those scenes dropped or rewritten by the screenwriter. For guerrilla animation, you need to do as
little throw-away work as possible.

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So create the best screenplay you possibly can. If there is any part that is not awesome, stop and
redo it now. Less gripping parts arent suddenly going to get better further down the line.

Once your script is locked down, do your voice recording, then begin previsualising each scene. I
used motion capture for White Tiger Legend, which was brilliant for putting together scenes
quickly with MotionBuilders Story Mode. The data is then reusable for final animation.
Alternatively, if youre going to hand animate, begin blocking using previs sets that you can later
upgrade, reusing the cameras and updating the models.

By the end of this process, you should have a complete low-quality version of the film. Make it
sing. When viewers are fully engaged by a bunch of primitive shapes, you know a high-quality
version will be amazing. It doesnt work the other way around!

White Tiger Legends Indiegogo pitch illustrates what is and isnt possible in guerrilla
film-making. Working solo, you wont produce Pixar-quality animation but you can get a lot of
useful mocap and previs done.

3. Do the best you can and then get feedback

Feedback is crucial. When you think something is done, show it to people. Are the ideas you are
trying to convey coming across? Are they engaged? Are they tearing up at the right moments?

When something isnt working, everyone will give you their ideas and solutions. Disregard the
solutions. You need to figure out why whats already there isnt coming across not how to make
things more complicated! Nine times out of ten, the solution is already in your film: it just needs to
be made more obvious, or set up sooner.

Everyone has their own life experience. Some things that are obvious to you will not be obvious to
others. So rework scenes to ensure everyone can understand them. Dont water the story down:
just make the communication more effective.

4. You are surrounded by resources

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Even if you dont have much money, the internet has all the resources you need. Cant afford top
talent? Use craigslist for casting calls. There are a lot of people out there looking for their break.
Look for good actors, even if they dont exactly fit your image of a character. Be flexible and let
them surprise you.

Use Google Maps for location scouting. It took a month to find all the locations for White Tiger
Legend. I had never been to China before, and I didnt speak any Mandarin. But using the
Panoramio option on Google Maps, combined with Google Translate, I was able to scour the
Chinese countryside from my living room.

Rather than building elaborate CG sets, I got a $1,000 plane ticket, and in 30 days, I photographed
every single background I needed: 54 locations, spread out over 2,500 miles of travel. All planned
out ahead of time, with all the camera angles known from the previsualization. Thats guerrilla
efficiency.

A VFX breakdown from White Tiger Legend illustrates how inexpensively shot source material can
be assembled to provide an alternative to full-3D environments. Use Google Maps to scout
locations remotely.

5. Use technical shortcuts to shave time

Although processors have increased dramatically in speed, render farms on blockbusters are still
slammed. As a guerrilla animator you cant afford to waste render hours, so you need to use
technology to your advantage.

First, check out image-based modelling software like Agisoft PhotoScan: its a great way to build
complex geometry very quickly. Use IBL to quickly set up lighting environments similar to your
background photography. Grab a $5 mirrored garden ornament and photograph multiple exposures
with a 120mm lens. The first thing we did on the The Matrix Reloaded was to blur our
high-quality chrome ball references to save render time. Save money and by a cheap blurry ball
instead!

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Spend time making translucency maps instead of using SSS. Learn about spherical harmonics in
V-Ray, and how to bake textures. Use projection mapping wherever possible. All will vastly
reduce your render times. Avoid heavy FX simulations by using real elements and compositing
them in. The only thing that matters is the final image. No one cares if it took two days a frame, or
15 seconds. Only build what you are going to see.

A 3D reconstruction of Russias Gatchina Palace: one of Agisofts application examples for

PhotoScan. It isnt perfect, but image-based modelling provides a cheaper alternative to modelling
complex geometry by hand.

6. Take care of your body

As a guerrilla animator, you are sprinting a marathon. Youre going to have to do the jobs of many
people, so taking care of your body is imperative. In order to work like a ninja, youve got to fuel
your body like a Ferrari.

Ive worked on productions and pounded the super-caffeinated drinks. You can go hard for about
two weeks this way. But Ive also worked a hundred hours a week for six months straight. The key
to this is eating foods low in sugar and exercising hard. Sugar lowers your immune system. Work
through lunch, eating at your desk, and saving your lunch break for an afternoon run to the gym.
Slam a ginseng, guarana or similar beverage of choice before working out like a maniac. This is
the last thing you want to do in your exhausted state, but amazingly, it works. Have dinner at your
desk at six, and you can keep going for hours.

7. Stay inspired

This is a big one on long projects. You are going to hit low points: points where things arent
working. I take lots of showers when the ideas arent moving. I also watch one of my favorite
movies when I wake up each morning, no matter what genre. When youre exhausted from the
previous day, a great film has a way of dusting you off and sending you back into battle.

8. You will get stuck: dont sweat it

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No production goes without a hitch. People drop off your project. Things happen to derail you.
But the difference between projects that finish and those that dont is perseverance.

If you get stuck somewhere on your story, keep working on other elements. Often times, two or
three weeks later, a solution will suddenly appear out of nowhere. You can then go back and fix
the problem in minutes instead of being stuck for days.

When pieces arent coming together the way you think they should, take a step back. You usually
have everything you need around you: you just cant see it yet. For White Tiger Legend, we only
found 20 of the 30 voice performers necessary. But when we asked, it turned out that many of
those 20 were so talented, they could play multiple characters. A show-stopping problem was
averted.

Erik Braa during recording sessions for White Tiger Legend. A games industry veteran, Braa
voiced three of the characters for the movie when it proved impossible to find separate actors for
the roles.

9. Your biggest obstacle is yourself

You will face a lot of practical challenges in creating a feature-length animation, but ultimately,
your own thought patterns are going to determine your success. On White Tiger Legend, there
were plenty of days when I didnt want to get out of bed since I was stuck, and didnt have a
solution to the problem yet. Dont listen to yourself. Keep going anyway. Every day is one step
closer to your goal.

10. Be tenacious

To be a guerrilla animator, youve got to do whatever it takes. Do things and ask for forgiveness
later. Let other people tell you no.

On the second to last day of background shooting in China, I wanted to film a massive waterfall
that lies on the border with Vietnam. I had gotten a day entry visa for Vietnam a few weeks
beforehand: what I didnt know was that there is no border crossing nearby. There I was at this

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epic location, and I couldnt get the shots I had planned. The Chinese side was full of guard rails
and winding lines of tourists. The Vietnamese half was vacant, with the exception of a few
fisherman standing out in the middle of the falls. All Im going to say is that the next day, at 5am, I
went fishing. A few hours later, I got all the shots I needed. Like I say, you do whatever it takes.

Support White Tiger Legend on Indiegogo

Visit the White Tiger Legend website

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Related Posts:
1. How To Train Your Dragon Production Interviews
2. Q&A: Alexis Wanneroy, DreamWorks Animation
3. FMX 2012: Where next for virtual production?
4. Video tutorials: Animation in 3ds Max and Maya

Tags: animation production, Avatar, casting, directing, feature film, guerrilla animation,
image-based modelling, indepenent, indie, Industrial Light & Magic, Kory Martin Juul, location
shooting, motion capture, movie making, Photogrammetry, PhotoScan, previsualization, Rise of
the Planet of the Apes, scriptwriting, spherical harmonics, texture baking, The hobbit, tips, voice
acting, Weta Digital, White Tiger Legend

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