“Fishing” by Pacific Data Images (PDI)
Conference:
SIGGRAPH Video Review:
Track:
- 02
Title:
- Fishing
Director(s):
Company / Institution / Agency:
- Pacific Data Images (PDI)
Description:
An excerpt from the PDI short film by David Gainey.
Fishing is the story of a fisherman whose wildest daydream becomes his worst nightmare. Told in the style of an animated watercolor painting, Fishing was produced entirely on PDI’s proprietary software, and employs some simple tricks and non-sense to make it all look as loose and hand-drawn as possible.
The 2D, traditional look of the film began with animation of 3D characters in a 3D setting, i.e. the fisherman on the shoreline. The 3D models were then lit and a shadow matte was produced. Fishing Technical Director Cassidy Curtis used traditional hand-painted watercolor paintings as reference and added all the watercolor effects using PDI’s image processing tool-set.
Also featured in Fishing is PDI’s proprietary fluid dynamics simulation system. When the story called for a “tsunami of fish”, animators applied PDI R&D team-member Nick Foster’s 1998 A.M.P.A.S. Sci/Tech winning system (last seen in the flood sequence of ANTZ). Animators adjusted the parameters of the simulation to feel heavier and denser than prior applica-tions – resulting in a murderous deluge of wiggling fish.
Additional Contributors:
Direction, Animation, and Story: David Gainey
Producer: John “JR” Robeck
Watercolor Effects: Cassidy Curtis
Executive Producer: Carl Rosendahl
