How big were the images for the first Akryls and the new one?

The first Akryls was rendered at 720x434 in 8-bit colour. For the new one, we tried 3k and 2k and didn't really see the difference at projection time, so we went with 2k images in 16-bit colour.

How long did the new version take to make?

It took almost six months of production. Eight people worked on the film, but not the whole film - at times the team consisted of between two and six people.

Did you use 2D or 3D storyboards at all?

Hand-drawing a storyboard for a ride film is quite inefficient since, unlike a normal film that contains a series of scenes, here there's but one scene and the camera is moving constantly. Therefore you need a vast number of storyboards to understand how the film will work.

So we made a storyboard from quick animations made in LightWave 3D and then finished in 2D. The storyboards for both films were made this way, which turned out to be rather more efficient. At the same time, we had drawings show the different "scenes" and elements from the film that weren't detailed in the storyboard.

Afterwards we made a 3D animatic so that we could get a feel for the rhythm of the film, the overall motion of the camera and the proportions of the main objects.

What are you working on at the moment?

I've just finished a rendering job for an ad. It was a Maya project with loads of animated elephants that they gave me to render, so I decided to do it in LightWave thanks to Point Oven. It was the first time I used this converter and it performed excellently.

Thanks Yann! You can see the original Akryls here but to experience the ride film a visit to Futuroscope is in order. Their website can be found here.