How many people worked on the 3D side of Feel Good Inc?

At the start of the project, one person created a layout and then five other artists came to model, texture and light.

What's a layout?

It's a sort of animatic where you set up each scene with low definition objects and simplified animation. It helps to largely visualise a shot and check it works in editing before you really begin its production. It's a kind of much more precise previz.

How long did the project take?

I would say about six weeks for the 3D side.

What was your role on the project?

I was supervisor of the 3D side of the video, and more specifically in charge of the floating island and windmill in the clouds, along with the intro sequence.

What did being a supervisor entail here?

I was in charge of finding the best technical solutions for making scenes with tough technical challenges (grass, clouds, trees and very heavy scenes). I textured, helped model and rendered the shots with the island and windmill. I also had to do the camera mapping and the compositing for the intro shot.

Was the floating island with the windmill inspired by Miyazaki's Laputa?

Yes, but the artistic director Daniel Cacouault, who also painted all the skies, brought a luminosity to the scenes a bit different from Miyazaki's, to give the video just that bit extra.

How did you mix the 2D and 3D in this video?

The 2D is made traditionally — hand-drawn on paper, scanned and coloured with Softimage Toonz. Afterwards, everything was composited in After Effects.

A mix of 2D and 3D is never easy, what was the hardest bit for you?

The biggest difficulty in my opinion is that the 2D and 3D are two processes that are completely separate during the making of the video and yet they have to match perfectly when the time for compositing comes. You therefore have to work very carefully to the storyboard and layout so that you can see and check the cameras and scenes at the earliest opportunity. In addition we give volume to a lot of the 2D background elements using tools like camera mapping.