Are the trees and clouds (around the island) in 3D? How were they made?

The trees were created in 3D in LightWave's Modeler and were animated using displacements in Layout. They were calculated separately from the island with a simplified lighting rig to keep down render time and to give a little more flexibility. The clouds were also created separately with a simplified island in a separate scene, with help from Lucasz Pazera working on passes for the cloud Hypervoxels while I worked on the island.

The trees are polygon-based then?

Yes, they were made with polygons because the light was very important to the scene and because the camera revolves around them.

How did you make the sequence where the island comes out of the clouds?

The biggest problem with this sequence is that we see the island from right up close and very far away, all in 350 shots.
To make the sequence we used a lot of compositing. To begin with, we had to define the different layers that needed to be made in 3D.
The first step in the rendering process, once the animation and the Layout were signed off, was to render an ambient occlusion pass to avoid radiosity rendering during the lighting of the shot. It means that we had two renders, one with ambient occlusion, and the other one with the lighting - this one was done with spot lights and usually shadow maps. Afterwards those two passes were comped together in After effect. The benefit is that you render the ambient occlusion ("radiosity backdrop only" with a white backdrop on white objects) only once, and after you only make changes to the lighting pass, which is very quick to render and so more flexible.

Then we needed to make the different layers, such as the grass, the island, the windmill and finally the sky (which had previously been painted). Once done, we then had a huge compositing job to put the 3D into the 2D sequence and finally we had to track and match the character in 2D on the island.

How do you think you've succeeded in the heart of a very British company, being French?

I think it's down to the fact that I had the chance to start my career a little more than six years ago at Duran (a famous CG studio, now defunct, that used to be based in Paris) where I learned lots of things and had the luck to work on a lot of original and often well-known projects. The best examples of the top of my head were the video for Starlight by the brothers Nicolas and Christophe Gans' The Brotherhood of the Wolf.

I also worked at the very start of the Immortel project, which was great experience for me for organising a team and a pipeline.

What's the difference between London and France for you?

For me, London is today the place where the most interesting projects are being worked on. That's mainly what I miss in France.

What are you working on at the moment?

Right now I'm working on the next video for Gorillaz.

Thanks for taking the time to explain your workflow to us Antoine. We're looking forward to seeing more of the new album released as singles here! The video for Feel Good, Inc. can be seen at Passion Pictures.