Fathom Studios Customer Story

Fathom Studios
Dreams come true.
Customer Success Story
Fathom Studios uses Autodesk Maya
software to create believable fantasy
world, complete with winged humans
and flying sword fights, in ambitious
animated feature Delgo.
®
Autodesk® Maya®
®
Autodesk keeps adding
new features that keep
us coming back. Things
like the Maya muscle
system and geometry
caching are exciting
additions we’re looking
forward to using on
upcoming projects.
—Warren Grubb
Animation Director
Fathom Studios
Image courtesy of Fathom Studios
Fathom Studios founder Marc F. Adler has always
had a passion for filmmaking. As children, he and
his cousin dreamed of forming “Farfelian Films,”
taking the title from their mothers’ maiden name.
“When my cousin lost a battle to cancer in 2000,”
says Adler, “I realized life’s too short to wait to
pursue your dreams.” With friend and co-director
Jason Maurer, they worked outside the Hollywood
studio system to develop and produce an animated
feature. Created using Autodesk® Maya® software,
Delgo is already generating buzz and touring the
world’s most prestigious animation festivals.
Fathom Studios began as an offshoot of the
successful interactive agency Macquarium Intelligent
Communications, which has been generating computer
animations for clients since 1991. Although gearing
up for Delgo was an ambitious undertaking, Adler
explains that it wasn’t such a big leap from prior work
at Macquarium. “Ultimately, the two companies work
together where Macquarium creates pixels for the
computer screen and PDAs while Fathom creates
pixels for the silver screen and television.”
Developing the World of Jhamora
Featuring a talented cast that includes Academy
Award® winner Anne Bancroft (Best Actress 1962,
The Miracle Worker), and Jennifer Love Hewitt,
Delgo is a film for all ages about two very different
cultures coming together and embracing each other
for who they are. Influenced by fantasy adventure
films such as The Dark Crystal, Indiana Jones, and
The Neverending Story, Delgo creates an immersive
world, called Jhamora, for the audience. To develop
the vibrant color palette, Art Directors Mark A. W.
Jackson and Jang Chol Lee studied coral reefs and
tropical fish as well as painters such as Roger Dean.
While the team was excited about the scope for
imagination that the world of Jhamora provided,
Adler admits it also presented certain challenges.
“Designing a believable fantasy world is both an art
and a science; particular attention was given to all
facets of concept development to ensure that the
world, while fantastical, was grounded in logic.”
Animation Director Warren Grubb agrees that it
was difficult to gauge how test audiences would
respond. “If you’re making a palm tree, you know
if it looks like a palm tree. We had this creature
early on called ‘the floating bunny’ that could
bound really lightly as though on the moon, due
to internally generated gas, like a puffer fish
with helium. People thought it was animated
incorrectly because they weren’t expecting a
rabbit to do that and it made it hard for them to
suspend their disbelief.”
Using MEL to Harness the Power of Maya
Since some of the people of Jhamora can fly,
designers had to create a realistic wing, eventually
deciding on a hybrid of part-dragonfly, part-fairy.
While the intricate wings of the Nohrin race provide
visual interest, they were a challenge to animate
and render, especially in crowds. “One of the biggest
difficulties was getting them to motion blur well,”
says Grubb. “Especially in crowds, you couldn’t
just flap them on ones or twos, you had to flap
them on subframes to get the motion to look
correct.” To achieve a more fluid motion, animators created a secondary motion Maya Embedded
Language (MEL) script, which was much faster
than animating by hand.
This ability to customize the software using MEL
was one of the features that initially drew Fathom
Studios to Maya. “The whole toolset is great,” says
Grubb, “but the real reason we went with Maya is
the ability to get in there and modify just about
anything you want. Anytime we ran into a technical
hurdle we could code around it.” Technical Director
John Lytle concurs. “I don’t think there was a
problem we couldn’t resolve using MEL and a
couple of other scripting hacks here and there. We
never felt backed into a corner we couldn’t get out
of. That was key for this film.”
This attention to detail paid off in the action scenes
in the film—in particular, a sword fight between two
of the flying characters, played by Val Kilmer and
Malcolm McDowell. “It really feels like a throwback
Western-style fight,” says Lytle. “But it’s got guys
sword fighting, flying through the clouds and
bouncing off rocks. It’s a really beautiful sequence.”
Digital Dailies
Many Delgo enthusiasts have already had a sneak peak
at these scenes. Unlike most films, where audiences
must wait for trailers to be released, work-in-progress
animation files have been available on the Delgo website
since 2001. There, fans can visit the Digital Dailies, an
online message board where the studio’s artists submit
and comment on animation in production.
Published online early in the process, the Digital
Dailies first emerged as an in-house file management system. Since many of the staff work on
flextime, it was important for project files to be
externally accessible. To accommodate this requirement, Lytle developed a web-based tracking system
that was integrated into Maya software. “When
the shot was done and ready for review,” says Lytle,
“the animator just hit a MEL button and it would
run a script that would update a database. The
directors could then talk about what they liked.”
Image courtesy of Fathom Studios
In many ways, making these files public took
courage. “It offers a glimpse into the process
of computer animation,” says Adler, “the good
and the bad, the mistakes and the triumphs.”
Although the team was excited to go public,
some were concerned that it would give away
too much of the story. “I never saw it that way,”
explains Grubb, “because I figured if someone
was dedicated enough to learn the story from the
dailies, they were going to go to the film anyway.”
In the end, their faith paid off, generating interest
from schools as well as individuals. “It’s definitely
something we’d consider doing again.”
Beyond Delgo
Fathom Studios currently has five projects in the
pipeline, including a four-minute test short. Just as
the company has been expanding, Maya software
has continued to evolve, a fact that Fathom
Studios appreciates. “Autodesk keeps adding new
features that keep us coming back,” says Grubb.
“Things like the Maya muscle system and geometry
caching are exciting additions we’re looking forward
to using on upcoming projects.” Lytle agrees, “It’s
kind of funny. Some of the things we wrote a script
for during Delgo are now part of the whole package.”
Although independently producing a film of this
caliber required patience, dedication, and, as Adler
puts it, “every resource possible,” the greatest factor
in the film’s success may have been the team’s passion
for the project. “Anyone who worked on Delgo had
to really love what they were doing,” says Grubb.
“It’s a very challenging industry—you really do have
to spend a lot of time and invest a lot of emotional
energy in the job. At the end of the day, however, I
always feel lucky to be working as an artist.”
The whole toolset is great, but the real reason we
went with Maya is the ability to get in there and
modify just about anything you want. Anytime we
ran into a technical hurdle we could code around it.
—Warren Grubb
Animation Director
Fathom Studios
Image courtesy of Fathom Studios
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