Blackmagic Design announced that Barcelona-based postproduction house Moonlight Cinema has completed both the digital intermediate and finishing of the new children’s animated film “Ozzy” on DaVinci Resolve Studio.
Postproduction director Alejandro Matus and colorist Ignasi González produced more than 40 different deliveries of the animation over a two-week period, using Moonlight Cinema’s three DaVinci Resolve color grading suites to cater for everything from different aspect ratios and frame rates through to multiple language versions.
“We had never taken on an animated film before, so there was an added layer of pressure to deliver a high quality finish,” said Matus. “Resolve was an enormous help throughout all aspects of the project, particularly with its new editing tools. Not only did we use it to conform and master the project, but we also were able to make changes to the edit during the grade without having to leave Resolve.”
Starting with 2K DPX files transferred to them by Tangent Animation in Canada, the Moonlight Cinema team applied a LUT to act as a base for the film’s overall look. “For many in the industry, it may seem natural to think that animation projects don’t require any real color correct, but in fact, the complete opposite is true,” said González. “Unlike a live action feature, a CG animation’s whole universe will have been created by many different people on many different machines. Homogenizing this content and giving greater depth to the animation through tools like light and blur is a daunting task.”
To ensure that every shot in a sequence matched uniformly, Matus and González decided to separate key elements from each scene through their respective alpha channels using mattes. This allowed for more control to modify individual assets, such as character faces, throughout the final grade. The next step was to give “Ozzy” its own unique aesthetic.
“Ozzy is a children’s film, so we wanted to maintain a bright, friendly feel even in scenes that were tense or sad,” González shared. “The great thing about being a colorist on an animation like this was that I had way more creative freedom when grading. For some night scenes, for instance, I could push the blues of the sky to a point where a live action sky would never go. The same happened with sunsets.”
“The best thing about using DaVinci Resolve for this,” he continued, “was the Color Management system. What impressed me on this feature was Resolve’s ability to handle all of the different color space conversions that we needed to output. It was quick and pain free. We also had a lot of shot replacements coming in throughout the grading process. With Resolve, I could simply save a still from a grade that I was happy with to the stills gallery, and it would include all the keyframe and tracking information, which made it stress free to update to a new shot.”
