Surf's Up - post #3

Shelly Wan asked for some color script stuff. Here you go Shelly:)

We did a LOT of color script (color key) paintings for Surf's Up...hundreds of them. We had six painters working on them for a couple years: Art Director Ron Lukas, Joty Lam, Sunny Apinchapong, Noelle Triaureau, Jerry Loveland, and myself. Ron and Joty did most of them.

For those not familiar with the process: color keys are paintings we use to design the color, lighting, mood, and overall effect of specific sequences in an animated film. This is where the "cinematography" happens, and in short, is where we determine what all the scenes will look like.

The paintings can be loose or tight, depending upon the needs of a sequence, and the number of paintings per sequence will be determined by its complexity. Some sequences require only one or two keys, while others require dozens.

In the case of Surf's Up, we used frames from the "Rough Layout" pass for composition. Once the paintings are approved, the "Lighting Department" uses them as guides for creating the color and lighting for the final 3D scenes.

(Technical note: In a 3D film, I think it works best when color keys are painted directly on top of frames from the layout department...as opposed to sketches, or storyboards...which is how it's done at some studios. More often than not, the sketches don't end up reflecting the final compositions of the scenes...making the color keys all but useless.)

Here are some color keys I did for the sequence called "Cody and Z Surf".
(For the 3rd, 4th, and 5th key, I lifted Big Z's face from a marketing painting done by Jim Salvati . Thanks Jim.)