Greg Smith, Frank Hanner and Keith Wilson
What exactly is rigging? It turns out it is quite an intricate process-so many details and it’s fascinating! I had the opportunity to sit down in the rigging lab with: Frank Hanner, CG Supervisor; Greg Smith, Character Rigging Supervisor and Keith Wilson, Character Simulation Supervisor. They showed us how they brought the stunning characters from Disney’s FROZEN to life and created the snow covered landscapes.
Before rigging, characters start out as digital sculptures. They move in a course, stiff way. The riggers build a skeleton frame for the characters and then they digitally attach muscles and skin. After, they create animation controls so that each character can be pushed and pulled through a variety of motions, making it look life-like. With this, animators are able to give characters a wide range of facial expressions and body movement. They can even make the fabric of their dresses swish as they dance! FROZEN has 312 characters-more than in any other Disney film. Imagine how many hours of rigging went into it!
Rigging Character’s Facial Expressions
FROZEN has a very Scandinavian feel: the architecture, landscape, costumes and even the hairstyles. Of course with the way that hair moves especially when blown by the wind there was a lot of work involved.
63 Hair Rigs in FROZEN
FUN FACT: Elsa has 420,000 hairs on her head. The average person has a quarter of that! Even Rapunzel, a princess known for her fabulous hair, had only 30,000!
The way snow moved and the glittery wind gusted was pretty amazing. Keith Wilson shared with us how the rigging department worked with the art department to get the integration perfect:
“We needed a way for the artists (to) visualize wind. So we created custom fields that allowed them to visualize pre-sim what the wave length of the wind was going to be, the frequency, the magnitude.” These custom fields allowed them to make an intuitive tool-allowing them to create elements that moved more naturally.
And then we have Olaf! Didn’t you just love him?! He did his share of acrobatics throughout the film: singing and dancing, rolling down hills, detaching and reattaching body parts.
The rigging team created “Flourish” to allow simple overlapping motion to things, so the animators didn’t have to do it all by hand. Basically this means when one object moved over another it was more of a dynamic process. This was the secret to Olaf’s stick hair. Greg Smith told us how Flourish allowed these sticks to bounce and have a floating movement above Olaf’s head.
And then the team gave us a chance to do our own rigging!
They set us up with our own program and gave us tips on how we would make Olaf smile, frown, wave, or perhaps look a little mischievous…
My Olaf didn’t turn out anywhere near this entertaining-thank you to Ashley from Fiddledeeme.com for letting me show you her amazing rigging skills!
Here’s a peek at what the Walt Disney Animation Studio rigging lab looked like:
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Thank you to Silvia Mtz of MamaLatinaTips.com for the use of her video!
So what fun FROZEN filmmaking experience am I going to share with you next? How about the Walt Disney Animation Voice-Over Studio! And who else would we have the opportunity to do a voice-over of but Olaf! I can’t wait to tell you all about it!
Don’t forget, Disney’s Frozen will be available on Blu-ray and DVD on March 18th!
All opinion are honest and 100% my own. Disney provided an all-expense paid trip to cover the event.
My sister minored in animation in college (she majored in art history), so I know a little bit about this, but it’s always cool to see.
So cool you got to go behind the scenes like that. When I was little I used to want to work for Disney’s animation team.
Can you believe we haven’t seen Frozen yet?! I can’t wait, neither can my kids!!
It’s so crazy how much goes into these movies and characters. It’s no wonder it takes so long for them to come out!
It always amazes me the work that goes into making ‘cartoons’. Frozen was a great movie, and I’ve already pre-ordered it.
This is so neat! My daughter loves the movie FROZEN. We had a FROZEN themed birthday for her last month when she turned 5. It was incredible. I cannot wait for the movie to be out. We already have it reserved at the Disney store!
Olaf made that movie for me! He was awesome!!
It looks like you had an amazing experience at the studio! That is just too cool that you got to practice rigging!
It would be so fun to go behind the scenes like you did. Lots of work goes into these movies.
I love learning what goes into making a Disney film/ cartoon / movie. It is so amazing how talented this group of folks is and we pr ordered the movie and I can’t wait!
This is so cool! Can you believe we haven’t seen Frozen yet? I’m definitely renting it once it’s out on bluray.
THIS IS SO COOL. I LOVE love love love this movie and can’t wait until it comes out on DVD! I am going to piss my boyfriend off when I watch it so much. Thank you for sharing – this is so fascinating.
My son LOVED Frozen and is so excited to get it on BlueRay. What a cool experience you had!
This is really interesting. So much detailed work goes into movies like this!
You sure don’t realize just how much work and detail went into everything! This is really cool to see how it’s done!
Frozen is the best Disney movie that I ever watched! I envy you for having this awesome experience. I wish I can do the same. Nevertheless, I am happy for you and I am sure that you had a great time. 🙂
What an awesome tour you had. Its so neat to see all that goes into making a movie. Oh and Frozen rocks. I love that movie more so than my boys!!!
Wow! What an amazing experience. This is not only one of my son’s favorite movies, but one of mine as well. I loved this movie. I can’t wait for it to come out on DVD/Blu Ray.
That has to be one of the coolest jobs ever! It’s crazy, the amount of work that goes into making an animation film.
What a cool experience to go behind the scenes like that.
Very cool. Animation is like magic. I cannot believe that these talented people can produce such entertaining art.
What a fascinating visit! I love finding about all the behind-the-scenes things that go into making a movie.
I love seeing behind the scenes footage of animation. It looks so cool!
I love frozen! This was neat for you to see it and to share it with us.
It’s amazing how much work goes into animation. My daughter was telling me that it took 3 years to get Merida’s hair right in Brave. Crazy!
That was so cool!!! It must have been so interesting to talk to all of them about the different processes.
I’m so jealous this looks amazing. I always love the behind-the-scenes stuff.
So, that’s why Elsa’s hair looked so amazing when she flipped it out and it was all wind blown :). It’s crazy how much work goes into the animated movies.
We have watched this movie so much already! It’s amazing to see how animated they can make characters these days.
It is amazing to really look at how much work goes into making these Disney characters!
It is so amazing how they do this. I loved this movie and I can’t wait for it to come out on Blu-ray.
What a fantastic tour…. I’m glad that they showed you the incredible detailed manner in which animation frames are created,… A labor of love.
What an amazing experience! I haven’t seen Frozen yet, but I am looking forward to watching it when it comes out on DVD.
What a neat experience. My niece visited Pixar a few years ago, and met John Lasseter, and is interested in going into animation.
it’s amazing how much work goes into these movies. i can’t wait to get this on bluray
Something new to be learned. I never heard of rigging until now. Thanks for the lesson and I can’t wait to own this.