• Rango character card
  • Rango
  • Rango and Beans storyboard
  • Rango and Beans layout
  • Rango and Beans final animation
  • Rango and Beans final rendering
  • Bad Bill and Rango storyboard
  • Bad Bill and Rango layout
  • Bad Bill and Rango final animation
  • Bad Bill and Rango final rendering
  • Running in a bottle
  • Glass half broken
  • Maquette
  • Rango in dirty Dirt
  • Sun flares
  • Rango's eyes
  • Landscape
  • Big fish
  • Bad Bill
  • Eyes
  • Shadows
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Making an animated film look live action (images)

Rango character card

SAN FRANCISCO--On March 4, "Pirates of the Caribbean" director Gore Verbinski's latest film, "Rango," will open in theaters everywhere. Starring Johnny Depp, the movie is a Western that's 100 percent CGI. It's the first-every fully animated film for the Industrial Light & Magic visual effects house. But with Verbinski's direction, ILM set out to create a style that made the animation look like it was live action.

As part of his Road Trip at Home series, CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman visited ILM last week to find out how to make a digitally animated film look like live action.

This is one of dozens of character cards that were created to allow the teams working on "Rango" to get a sense of the characters they were dealing with. This is the card for Rango.

Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Rango

The character of Rango is played by Johnny Depp in the new all-digitally animated film by "Pirates of the Caribbean" director Gore Verbinski.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Rango and Beans storyboard

This is a storyboard of a scene involving Rango (left), played by Johnny Depp, and Beans, played by Isla Fisher. Over the next three slides, you can see how the imagery for the scene developed from storyboard to finished frame.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Rango and Beans layout

Here, we see how the image for a scene between Rango and Beans has evolved from its original storyboard to what is called a layout.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Rango and Beans final animation

Here, we see the final animation version of the scene between Rango and Beans. After this, the artists at ILM take the image and fully render it.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Rango and Beans final rendering

This is the final rendering of the frame in the scene with Rango and Beans. Here we see all the lighting elements, as well as the backgrounds, textures, and other things that make the animation in "Rango" appear almost as if it is live-action footage.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Bad Bill and Rango storyboard

This is a storyboard for a scene involving Bad Bill (left), played by Ray Winstone, and Rango, inside a saloon in the fictional Mojave Desert town of Dirt, where the film is set.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Bad Bill and Rango layout

This is the layout of the scene between Bad Bill and Rango.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Bad Bill and Rango final animation

This is the final animation of the scene between Bad Bill and Rango.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Bad Bill and Rango final rendering

This is the final rendering of the scene between Bad Bill and Rango, as it is seen in the film.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Running in a bottle

This is a screen grab from a "Rango" animation sequence in which the title character and a friend run from a belligerent hawk. Rango is inside a glass bottle, and his friend is seen with his image distorted through the glass.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Glass half broken

In another screen grab from the bottle sequence, we see Rango and his friend still running, with the glass bottle having broken in half.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Maquette

One technique the ILM team used to create the characters for "Rango" was to create 3D maquette models, like the one on the left. With these, they could see how the character will look from all sides before they animate its details.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Rango in dirty Dirt

In order to properly convey the sense that the town of Dirt is a Western-worthy town, director Gore Verbinski asked for a look and feel that conveyed the sense of dirt and dust one might see in the desert. The goal was to make the town look like it would in a live-action film.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Sun flares

Another technique used in the film to make it seem like live-action was to build in digital sun flares and other effects that one would see in a normal film when the sun is shining directly at the camera.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Rango's eyes

In keeping with the run-down feel of a Western, the "Rango" crew wanted to make sure the animated characters' eyes didn't have the clean and fresh, ping-pong ball look seen in most animated films. While some characters did have large eyes, "if they were ping-pong balls, they'd been in a couple matches and hit the floor a few times," said associate animation supervisor Kevin Martel.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Landscape

The live-action look and feel of "Rango" is evident in this landscape-at-dusk frame.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Big fish

An image from "Rango," the new film from "Pirates of the Caribbean" director Gore Verbinski. The film is the first-ever fully animated feature for which ILM did the visual effects.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Bad Bill

A scene from "Rango," which stars Johnny Depp in the title role. Depp plays a chameleon who gets lost in the Mojave Desert.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Eyes

Another image from "Rango."
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

Shadows

In a bid to make the lighting seem realistic, ILM made many of the high-noon scenes in the film appear to have shadows that slashed across characters' faces, as they would if they were wearing hats in the sun.
Photo by: ILM/Paramount

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