"Puss in Boots: The Last Wish": Exploring the "Unknown Territory" of the Visual Painters Suite

The influence and impact of 2018's "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" reverberates far beyond the next sequel to the Oscar-winning superhero adventure: the two current contenders Best Animated Feature from DreamWorks Animation indulge in the kind of 2D experimentation that was brought into the mainstream by Miles Morales and his fellow web slingers. For the heist comedy "The Bad Guys", the studio opted for the look of an illustrated book. Meanwhile, “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” — which finds the fearless feline of the “Shrek” franchise (Antonio Banderas) battling mortality after burning the first eight of its nine lives — sports a painterly vibe to match. with its fairy tale trappings.

"At DreamWorks, we had 'bad guys' pushing one way, and we went a different direction, all leading to the expansion of the toolbox," says 'The Last Wish' director , Joel Crawford at IndieWire. “So we benefited from some of their R&D and vice versa, mixing hand-drawn effects with CG. But the other things related to how a painting looked were all uncharted territory. »

Crawford credits production designer Nate Wragg with recommending that he try a more impressionistic approach to reintroducing Puss in Boots, whose last star vehicle was created more than a decade ago. This started a look development process to test every visual aspect of the production, which, in turn, led to the creation of a new set of tools for fur grooming, shading, l lighting and visual effects. “I remember Nate painting three Puss in Boots,” Crawford said. "One was the classic CG, where you could see all the hair on him. Then there was a middle one. And then there was an extreme one which was a flat graphic. But you lost the tangibility. We so we did a corner test to find the right balance, but it didn't stop there."

"Puss in Boots: The Last Wish"

Courtesy of DreamWorks Animation

Indeed, the first priority was to update Puss to suit this more painterly style, which required many iterations. “It meant we had to look at every aspect of what we were doing across all departments,” added VFX supervisor Mark Edwards. "A lot of that was between surfacing and grooming, and then the shader team found ways to simplify and render the elements to look like brush strokes. The trickiest part was still getti. ..