Renew_al

The Role of Supervising Technical Directors

It’s no secret that it takes a rather large village to create an animated film. One look at the scrolling end credits of a DreamWorks Animation production such as our latest, “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted,” reveals the hundreds of professionals responsible for creating stories that are both entertaining and visually arresting.

Vital to the communal nature of animated filmmaking are the Supervising Technical Directors, or Sup TDs. They’re the ones who turn on the lights, metaphorically speaking, at the start of production, and they’re the folks who turn them out at the end.

In simplest terms, Sup TDs manage all the technology (software and hardware) for a feature film so that the moviemaking process is a seamless and efficient one from start to finish. But they’re not just techies. Yes, they’re troubleshooters and technical whizzes but, because they work with many different aspects of the production, they’re translators and ambassadors between departments as well. They also oversee the Technical Directors (TDs) that are imbedded in almost every department of production from modeling, animation and layout to surfacing and lighting.

John Alvin’s poster concepts for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991).

John Alvin is the artist behind the iconic movie posters for such Disney classics as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. In addition to his work in animation, Alvin also did posters for live-action films like E.T., Blade Runner and Jurassic Park.

Alvin’s wife, Andrea, has released a GORGEOUS book highlighting her husband’s many illustrated accomplishments – The Art of John Alvin. As Mrs. Alvin frequently assisted her husband with his work, she also has a lot of fascinating back-stories about the paintings. Reprinted below is her account of the creation of the poster for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast:

“There were many concept sketches done of the two main characters in various settings and poses, both by the staff at Disney and by John. John’s method of working on this aspect of a job was to do very rough thumbnails of various ideas. From that point he would do a larger sketch, around 8.5 x 11 inches, with more attention to detail and composition. He would then move on to color sketches and color comps.

“John did not do too many small color comps on this film. Instead, he did several medium size paintings as color comps and at least two paintings that would be considered finishes. One was the couple dancing in front of a stained glass window featuring a rose, and the other was an image of the couple bathed in an ethereal light. The second was the image used on the one-sheet.

“The poster was done before the film was complete and the characters were not completely finalized when John started painting. That was one of the reasons to have them in somewhat of a silhouette. His technique to create the mood was to begin with a dark background and bring the subjects into the light. He applied the paint with an airbrush, building his paint in transparent layers, similar to a watercolorist. Most airbrush artists use a number of elaborate friskets or masks to protect the areas they don’t want painted at that time. However, John felt that light didn’t have hard edges, and so his painting shouldn’t really have hard edges. It was a game for him to see how few friskets he could use in a piece of finished art. He was fascinated by what he called “heavy light”—the light Steven Spielberg had used in E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That was the look he was trying to emulate in the Beauty and the Beast art.

“The final piece was a hit and John was very pleased with it. The printers had some difficulty reproducing the magentas in the art, but in the end did a beautiful job. It was the beginning of a long and successful relationship with Disney feature animation.”

“Learning is so F̡̦̣̬̬̻̝̙͖͎̀͊̊̓̽͋͒͊͘͞ư̢̢͖̙̖̤͖̽͆̿̍̕͟ņ̢̤̮̲̟͂̿̊̾̾̌̕͟͞ “

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