Mill Blog ♥

Evil snowflakes, evil snowmen… Making the Dr Who Christmas Special

Friday, December 21, 2012

If you are a UK-based reader by now you may well have settled down with a stomach full of toasted turkey sandwiches, wearing a slightly crumpled party hat, and enjoyed the the highly-anticipated Dr Who Christmas special: "The Snowmen".

I caught up with Mill TV's Matthew Mckinney (CG Supervisor) and Darren Byford (Lead 3D) to gain an exclusive insight into just how you approach creating an 'evil snowflake' and the challenges of CG ice…

When did you start working on the Doctor Who Christmas special?
MM: The 3D team started working on it way back in June. That was when we began designing the Ice Governess and the evil snowflake. We worked on other episodes as well in between, but the ball was already rolling.
DB: I started with a few days on-set in August. I was there to collect the lighting reference that we would later use to bed the CG into shots. It's quite odd being confronted by a Christmas tree in summer.



Can you talk me through The Mill TV's role?
MM: Creating the Ice Governess, the Evil Snowmen, The Evil Snowflake and lots of snow effects and matte paintings.

And your specific involvement?
MM: I was supervising the 3D team. Ensuring we deliver the 3D work on schedule while pushing the quality as much as possible. I also built, textured and rendered the snowmen and the spooky iceflakes!
DB: Lookdev and lighting for the Ice Governess. That's to say I took Jason's 3D model and textures and developed the model's surface properties; refraction, reflection, transparency, bumpiness, surface sparkles, things like that. Then I broke those characteristics into render passes, which are separate layers that the compositors use to build and balance the CG for each shot. Once the overall look was approved I could place the Ice Governess into each shot's 3D environment and light her to match the film plate using the on-set reference.



How did you approach the project?
MM: We always try to improve the quality of our work across the board. This includes design, animation, modelling and look development. We aim to excel in each of these areas so that our attention to detail shines through in the final shots.
DB: With Matt overseeing the overall visual quality I focused on planning, testing and prepping every aspect of the development and lighting pipeline so that when the backplates arrived we could complete the shots quickly and to a high standard while avoiding the kind of dramas that can be associated with tight deadlines.

What were the challenges involved?
MM: Technically the greatest challenge was creating an ice creature who would look good in a variety of lighting conditions. We put a lot of attention into making detailed bubbles, leaves and algae which is quite subtle but gives the creature a solidity, as the brief was to make her from frozen pond water. Designing the characters is of course key to their successful realisation. Luckily we have Grant Bonser - a fantastic concept artist who came up with the grinning snowman concept and Jason Brown a great modeller/ texture artist who created the Ice Governess.
DB: CG ice! Real-world ice bounces, bends, blocks, gathers and scatters light in ways that even computers find difficult to fathom. The original idea was that the appearance of the Ice Governess would alter as the story progressed, so I created different ice layers with different properties, from ice cube clear, through murky pond water to dense, coloured glass. Although her final appearance is pretty consistent throughout the show all of those layers were used to build up the complexity and detail of the final image.



Did you use any new techniques or technologies?
MM: We are continuing to use Arnold to render a lot of our sequences, having used it first on the Dalek Parliament episode. Darren set up the lighting and rendering pipeline for the Ice Governess using Arnold. It was our most complex foray into using Arnold so far, as the creature was reflective and refractive, with lots of detail. It proved to be successful, handling the motion blur exceptionally well, without any of the artifacts we had experienced in the past. We also incorporated cloth simulations into the pipeline and animated texture maps for the cracking on the surface of the Ice Governess, all of which added to the complexity of the task.
DB: This was the first time I'd used the Arnold renderer on a production. Its ability to render complex scenes of reflective, refractive objects complete with accurate motion blur made it the ideal choice. It's still relatively new to the industry but it's rapidly gaining ground in both television and film. It allowed us to add additional detail to our work and moved us a step closer to the visual quality associated with film projects.

What was your favourite moment whilst working on the Christmas special?
MM: For me, seeing the Snowmen develop from a sketched idea to fully comped, trailer shots, was really exciting. It is very cool when a few days after a shot leaves your desk, you find hundreds of pictures of it in Google Images. It's testament to the popularity of Doctor Who that it generates such a level interest and that makes it a privilege to be a part of it.
DB: For a couple of days the filming took place in a large country house on the edge of the Brecon Beacons. While Matt Smith was waiting between scene set-ups he'd sometimes sneak off to the music room and play the piano. He's pretty good!



Will  you be tuning in to watch it be part of your Christmas celebrations?
MM: I might be tempted to stroll down my street to see who's tuned in! It's usually in the  million at Christmas.. which is pretty amazing.
DB: Absolutely! I was a fan of the show before I began working on it and I'm still a fan now. Even if I need to watch the edit for work reasons I still try to avoid watching the end of an episode so I can enjoy it when it's aired. On Christmas day I plan to settle down in front of the TV with a small, celebratory glass of scotch, on the rocks naturally!