‘Pier’ is part of the next installment in SSE’s multi-award-winning ‘Proud to Make a Difference’ campaign. The VFX team worked to re-craft orangutan Maya entirely in CG, developing her muscle movements and character.
The film sees a 100% photo-real Orangutan called Maya experiencing the wonders of energy in all their manifestations; discovering a funfair and encountering a wonderland of light, sound and movement. Part of the challenge was crafting an orangutan that could interact more intimately with her environment and the energy around her within the film as our lead character Maya is seen in a hall of mirrors and with the wind blowing through her hair on a fairground ride.
The animation team went to extraordinary lengths to create an orangutan that looked 100% photo-real, crafted entirely in CG. The team developed muscle movements and sculpted each skin wrinkle by hand, before seamlessly comping the orangutan onto live action plates of a busy pier and funfair. The skeleton was built first starting from very loose blocking to small details such as wrinkles and pores of the skin - Maya’s rig was then developed in-house, with the muscle system adding an extra level of weight to aid realism. The team created a system that enabled the development of realistic hair movements on the windy ride. The team built a custom eye rig in which the pupils dilated and contracted depending on light conditions and a small amount of liquid was added into each eye to give it a sense of depth.